Unmasked - 'A Name'

Continuing Unmasked - a creative writing series exploring different aspects of identity.

One aspect of identity that holds huge fascination for me is our obsession with naming every nuance of human experience. I remain undecided whether this is helpful in knowing and understanding yourself and others better, or if it limits the vast and complex world of each unique individual.

I accept that we need language to describe our inner world, but too often I find that the specific words available are laden with unhelpful connotations and can have very different meanings for different people. To put a definitive name on certain aspects of our being also seems to create rigidity where there should be fluidity, nuance and a certain ebb and flow. It's like creating a statue of a dancer.

In some ways I think this is a battle between scientific and artistic mindsets - the need for conclusion and diagnosis vs. the need for open-ended freedom and creative possibility. Anyway, this poem explores this idea.

A Name

I learned your name, after living with you for a lifetime.
It changed everything but changed nothing,
Rendering you as old friend and stranger
Simultaneously.

For years I wandered in your misty twilight,
Heavy with clouded possibilities, multiple meanings, open-ended questions,.
Like an impressionist painting that changes with the light.

But now the mist has burned off and clarity emerges,
Hurting my eyes with its glaring strip-light of definition.
The warm, fluid, womb-like shapes of anonymity I dwelt within
Are suddenly cast in stone, fixed and hard and narrow.

Nothing has changed, but everything has changed.
I cannot unhear, unsee, unknow this once unfamiliar word.
While some find comfort in clarity, consolation in classification,
And welcome a convenient name to coolly toss into casual conversations,
I am left lamenting.

I mourn the death of ambiguity.
The loss of everything...
And nothing.

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