Degrees of Separation
When I first started this blog over three years ago, it was totally on a whim. I had no idea really what blogs were, but one night I saw that my husband had one, and I said, "Hey, I want to try that." So I started this on-line journal thing.
When I first started blogging it was under my "real name" because CB had set it up for me and he is one who has never had to be concerned about hiding his identity. Well after I started really writing on this thing, I realized that this was a very cool outlet for my art and writing, and I started writing more "controversial" stuff – namely my autobiographical material and my writing on sex and sexuality. But in those early blogging days, my name appeared on my LJ link and there was little separation between who I was, my relationship to CB, and my blog. It didn’t take long for things to get complicated because of this. The first thing that happened is that a few of CB’s colleagues started giving him grief about my blogging because they decided that somehow having a "wife" who writes about sex and about her dark criminal drug and sex-filled past was bad for his professional image. Then there was this kind of "cult of secret knowledge" that permeated CB’s professional environment, as in "he’s the professor with the wife who writes that shit."
It didn’t take me long to decide to change my blog name, since I wasn’t really happy having my real name on it in the first place. I didn’t change it as a concession to CB’s oppressive and antiquated colleagues who seemed to think that I was the first woman on the planet to write about such things. I changed it because I wanted to protect and shelter myself and because I realized that my blog had become another one of my performance identities and I didn’t want it to be misconstrued as "the real me." So I’ve been well sequestered and hidden inside this constructed identity for a couple of years now. Me and CB have successfully separated any connection between us in the blog world, and things have settled down remarkably at his workplace. No longer is he the object of controversy because his wife publicly writes about her vagina. Me can CB were talking about this today on our drive down to campus, and it just dawned on me again how ludicrously archaic the views of certain "academics" at his workplace are. I mean, what if I was writing in a magazine, had a column in a newspaper, a television show, was performing live on stage, or any other number of venues for my art and writing? Would they have been equally chastising of me and my "dangerous ways"? I mean for fucksakes, there is a huge tradition of women who use their bodies, their sex, their personal lives as their artistic medium. I continue to be flabbergasted about the response we have received about my writing because I happen to be "married" to a professor.
Anyway, I had the opportunity to exchange correspondence with another professor this week who also has a blog, and he mentioned that he’s had a lot of problems with people perceiving somehow that because he is a professor he is not privy to the privacy, boundaries, and other "protective barriers" that those of us operating in the "real world" take for granted. What is it that makes a "professor" public property and held to this kind of public scrutiny and trespass on his/her personal life because of his profession? I want to think about this more, and would welcome any comments or ideas on this. I know that JD was recently reflecting on the burdens of being an academic, a professor, and blogging under her real name.
But what really brought on this train of thought is that I have been confronted with a major "reality check" of late. I’ve been really tripping on the fact that I have this entire "alter identity" – KDD – and that somehow she has become this person entirely separate from myself. I was sitting on the toilet a couple of weeks ago when I had this ludicrous thought, "Does KDD sit on the toilet and think self-reflexive thoughts?" What would "people" think of KDD sitting on the toilet pondering her identity? Then I started thinking about the specific characteristics that quantify KDD and make her an identity and what variables I could insert into her identity that could potentially lead to her deconstruction. Is that some crazy shit?
What I realized is that I actually have been very naïve by living under this illusion that somehow by keeping my writing contained within this artificial identity – KDD – that I was able to keep myself, the real me, safely behind the barrier of the internet and the blogosphere. I could write KDD, perform KDD, rant from KDD, cry from KDD, but somehow I was safe and the real me could stay hunkered in my hermit-like existence, flop around the house in my flannel PJs, and not have to worry about the infiltration of my personal space by my "audience." Wrong. I failed to estimate how much I can be affected by my audience in this venue just as much as when I used to perform on stage. When I performed on stage, I always managed to "trigger" certain audience members to respond very aggressively and personally to my work. I was physically jumped on stage once because of the content of my work. Some people became obsessed with just wanting MORE MORE MORE of me and my stories and my life and my sexual presence. It got exhausting and draining. I’ve had opportunity lately to reflect how this dynamic can also occur within the blogosphere, that I can trigger unexpected responses that could impact my personal life, my freedom of expression, my voice, my sense of boundaries and security. At first I was taken aback by this realization that I, me, the real person behind KDD, is susceptible to my cyber-audience. My first inclination was to just stop blogging and move onto another venue for my art, writing, and performance. But now, I’m looking at it as a good thing. I’m thinking, hey by invoking this kind of response in certain people, that means I’m saying something and doing something that’s different, that has voice, that’s daring, that is vibrant. I’m creating energy and life and art with my words even if the energy I create sometimes gets kind of perverted and fucked up. At least, I’m having an effect!
I’ve really enjoyed reconstructing my performance identity in this venue that seems to allow for so much distance and control. What I’ve learned lately is that the distance component is very illusionary and that cyber words and actions can have as much impact as an actual physical presence. Nevertheless, the distance may have dissipated, but I still have control, and I don’t plan on losing that. But the distance, well, that was an illusion. In reality my performance here has affected my husband at his workplace and has drastically changed my life by introducing me to a whole spectrum of people I otherwise would not have known, including all my bear friends, my strong female readers, JD, Kpunk , and even O, who I met through my blog and who is now an integral part of my life. This blog has taken me into a whole new era of creative expression, and I am so grateful that I decided on "a whim" to create this damn thing.
So what am I saying here? I’m saying that I have given a lot of thought to my various constructed identities over the years. I’ve always somehow managed to convince myself that, even though I use my own body, my own life, my own stories, my history as the platform for my art and writing, somehow I still manage to keep myself safely removed from the work by selectively choosing what parts of myself I offer to the public and keeping them contained within the form of art/writing. When I moved into the blog world, I naively felt that these barriers were even more secure. But I’ve had cause lately to reflect and realize that, no, it is me who is KDD. They are not separate. KDD comes out of me. It is me who is writing these words right now. It is me who is embedded in all my poems and stories and movie reviews and music reviews. It is me who writes about my daughter and my pets. It is all me. And yes, I am vulnerable. I’m damn vulnerable. But am I going to stop because I’ve been forced to realize how vulnerable I am? No I am not. I am not stopping. Ever.
End ramble.
KDD
When I first started blogging it was under my "real name" because CB had set it up for me and he is one who has never had to be concerned about hiding his identity. Well after I started really writing on this thing, I realized that this was a very cool outlet for my art and writing, and I started writing more "controversial" stuff – namely my autobiographical material and my writing on sex and sexuality. But in those early blogging days, my name appeared on my LJ link and there was little separation between who I was, my relationship to CB, and my blog. It didn’t take long for things to get complicated because of this. The first thing that happened is that a few of CB’s colleagues started giving him grief about my blogging because they decided that somehow having a "wife" who writes about sex and about her dark criminal drug and sex-filled past was bad for his professional image. Then there was this kind of "cult of secret knowledge" that permeated CB’s professional environment, as in "he’s the professor with the wife who writes that shit."
It didn’t take me long to decide to change my blog name, since I wasn’t really happy having my real name on it in the first place. I didn’t change it as a concession to CB’s oppressive and antiquated colleagues who seemed to think that I was the first woman on the planet to write about such things. I changed it because I wanted to protect and shelter myself and because I realized that my blog had become another one of my performance identities and I didn’t want it to be misconstrued as "the real me." So I’ve been well sequestered and hidden inside this constructed identity for a couple of years now. Me and CB have successfully separated any connection between us in the blog world, and things have settled down remarkably at his workplace. No longer is he the object of controversy because his wife publicly writes about her vagina. Me can CB were talking about this today on our drive down to campus, and it just dawned on me again how ludicrously archaic the views of certain "academics" at his workplace are. I mean, what if I was writing in a magazine, had a column in a newspaper, a television show, was performing live on stage, or any other number of venues for my art and writing? Would they have been equally chastising of me and my "dangerous ways"? I mean for fucksakes, there is a huge tradition of women who use their bodies, their sex, their personal lives as their artistic medium. I continue to be flabbergasted about the response we have received about my writing because I happen to be "married" to a professor.
Anyway, I had the opportunity to exchange correspondence with another professor this week who also has a blog, and he mentioned that he’s had a lot of problems with people perceiving somehow that because he is a professor he is not privy to the privacy, boundaries, and other "protective barriers" that those of us operating in the "real world" take for granted. What is it that makes a "professor" public property and held to this kind of public scrutiny and trespass on his/her personal life because of his profession? I want to think about this more, and would welcome any comments or ideas on this. I know that JD was recently reflecting on the burdens of being an academic, a professor, and blogging under her real name.
But what really brought on this train of thought is that I have been confronted with a major "reality check" of late. I’ve been really tripping on the fact that I have this entire "alter identity" – KDD – and that somehow she has become this person entirely separate from myself. I was sitting on the toilet a couple of weeks ago when I had this ludicrous thought, "Does KDD sit on the toilet and think self-reflexive thoughts?" What would "people" think of KDD sitting on the toilet pondering her identity? Then I started thinking about the specific characteristics that quantify KDD and make her an identity and what variables I could insert into her identity that could potentially lead to her deconstruction. Is that some crazy shit?
What I realized is that I actually have been very naïve by living under this illusion that somehow by keeping my writing contained within this artificial identity – KDD – that I was able to keep myself, the real me, safely behind the barrier of the internet and the blogosphere. I could write KDD, perform KDD, rant from KDD, cry from KDD, but somehow I was safe and the real me could stay hunkered in my hermit-like existence, flop around the house in my flannel PJs, and not have to worry about the infiltration of my personal space by my "audience." Wrong. I failed to estimate how much I can be affected by my audience in this venue just as much as when I used to perform on stage. When I performed on stage, I always managed to "trigger" certain audience members to respond very aggressively and personally to my work. I was physically jumped on stage once because of the content of my work. Some people became obsessed with just wanting MORE MORE MORE of me and my stories and my life and my sexual presence. It got exhausting and draining. I’ve had opportunity lately to reflect how this dynamic can also occur within the blogosphere, that I can trigger unexpected responses that could impact my personal life, my freedom of expression, my voice, my sense of boundaries and security. At first I was taken aback by this realization that I, me, the real person behind KDD, is susceptible to my cyber-audience. My first inclination was to just stop blogging and move onto another venue for my art, writing, and performance. But now, I’m looking at it as a good thing. I’m thinking, hey by invoking this kind of response in certain people, that means I’m saying something and doing something that’s different, that has voice, that’s daring, that is vibrant. I’m creating energy and life and art with my words even if the energy I create sometimes gets kind of perverted and fucked up. At least, I’m having an effect!
I’ve really enjoyed reconstructing my performance identity in this venue that seems to allow for so much distance and control. What I’ve learned lately is that the distance component is very illusionary and that cyber words and actions can have as much impact as an actual physical presence. Nevertheless, the distance may have dissipated, but I still have control, and I don’t plan on losing that. But the distance, well, that was an illusion. In reality my performance here has affected my husband at his workplace and has drastically changed my life by introducing me to a whole spectrum of people I otherwise would not have known, including all my bear friends, my strong female readers, JD, Kpunk , and even O, who I met through my blog and who is now an integral part of my life. This blog has taken me into a whole new era of creative expression, and I am so grateful that I decided on "a whim" to create this damn thing.
So what am I saying here? I’m saying that I have given a lot of thought to my various constructed identities over the years. I’ve always somehow managed to convince myself that, even though I use my own body, my own life, my own stories, my history as the platform for my art and writing, somehow I still manage to keep myself safely removed from the work by selectively choosing what parts of myself I offer to the public and keeping them contained within the form of art/writing. When I moved into the blog world, I naively felt that these barriers were even more secure. But I’ve had cause lately to reflect and realize that, no, it is me who is KDD. They are not separate. KDD comes out of me. It is me who is writing these words right now. It is me who is embedded in all my poems and stories and movie reviews and music reviews. It is me who writes about my daughter and my pets. It is all me. And yes, I am vulnerable. I’m damn vulnerable. But am I going to stop because I’ve been forced to realize how vulnerable I am? No I am not. I am not stopping. Ever.
End ramble.
KDD