There’s lots in a name!
As a kid I sang a song while running down my father’s church halls, which echoed on those long linoleum halls, all which led to the fellowship hall.
The song sang like this: “I’m not a boy, I’m Derek DeMonte.” I sang it over and over. Not sure how it came into my head. But I had a need to declare or at least celebrate my name so that it would resonate through church halls. So it came from somewhere.
Some of it was probably ego or the need to be seen, or exist. But some of it was something I still carry—a sense that everything and everyone has a name. No-one is nameless. Everything has identity.
Later in life when I read that God had been called “The Father of names” it started to make sense to me. And then when His Son was called the Name of names. It resonated. Everyone has a name. And each name matters.
In Judaism, a person exist now as long as someone remembers their name. That people really like names, and still refuse to even pronounce in prayers The Name of God.
I like their reverence for names.
And much of my life has been about knowing I’m named, and going on a discovery of that name, and then helping others feel safe enough to find their true names.
In Christianity, we say our identities are “hidden in Christ”. That is He who knew us before we knew ourselves; He who, created us as master poems, as St Paul put it; also is able to reveal us to ourselves, and even celebrate our names as something He wrote, and that we get to collaborate in writing out together even in this life.
In Revelation, it talks about our “white stone names”; that is our already forever names which only God knows. This is part of what it means that we are hidden in Christ.
Our names and callings work in tandem. You remember in the old book it was said of Jeremiah—“I knew you, knit you, and thus, I called you to do this and that…” Our names and pathways in life are connected.
But identity precedes calling. For what we do changes seasonally, but who we essentially are is eternal, and where we meet Him is the source of all our life’s actions.
King David similarly declares: “I am wonderfully made!” That’s not an ego statement, that’s a statement from God’s perspective. He was letting God sing the song of David, or the song of himself.
I hope that when I was running down church hallways singing my name, that I was beginning to sing it more as one of his songs, than just my own.
God seems to like to sing us as one of His songs; and this seems to happen best when we are singing to Him.
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Winston Salem, where I grew up was a small artistic city of churches and old tobacco warehouses. The smell of tobacco being dried was night; everyone rustling off the some church activity was day.
And then there were the artist who often both smoked and went to church.
I liked them. And the few deacons who smoked. I trusted people who knew they had some issues.
But my hometown was a great mix of workers and wealthy and saints and sinners among both.
My elementary school was working class. My highschool was not. My high school was future senators and congressmen. My elementary school was more blue callar. I liked both worlds.
But mostly I liked the artists who drifted in between the unspoken class system.
I still feel comfortable in high and low brow worlds. And like to slip between them daily, and try to stay myself in both. People are just people at the end of the day.
But I appreciated growing up more lower middle, but getting to mingle with the folks who knew wine, and had nice fingernails. And could quote literature.
Plus, those rich girls are pretty.
And I was already interested in girls even in the fourth grade.
My first poem, which was read out loud to the class, because I wasn’t supposed to be writing poetry instead of taking a test, was written to Shaun Grimsly-arguable the pretties girl in the whole school. I’ve always had good taste!
It was a love poem, and my teacher, who herself was stunning and had Polynesian dissent, read my words with such care, that even as a punishment, I felt endorsed as a poet early on. It did not win me the girl, as she was embarrassed by the whole thing; but it did affirm my desire to express myself well.
One thing I learned from growing up though, is that people are just people, and any kid can write a good poem about their life.
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Cars and what mentors taught me: l
When I look at my life as a film, I see lots of amazing cars, and lots of poetic people. Let me start with the cars. Each car Ive had has symbolized that season of my life.
So if I want to look at all the seasons at once, I see lots of cars lined up—a 69 white Camera with blue leather interior; a 68 Saab, a 68 Volvo (which I out bid Colin Powell for—that’s another story!); another car which I painted as art, still another I bought in Paris—86 Abarth-and left at an airport in England filled with gifts for my friends-still another story; and then the car I left on a bridge while 9/11 was happening. My cars tell my story or at least make the narrative make more sense.
Cars take us in between, and I’ve always been most home in the in between. I’m a liminal person, somewhere between heaven and earth. I’ve been in between lots of places in my life—as I’ve lived nearly everywhere at one time of another. And I know thousands of rest stops, parks and service areas all over the world, but my cars and I would rest there, as we moved towards the next place.
I’ve written my best poems on bridges and bathroom walls across this nation and many others! I know they are still being read! My cars told me so. And they have lots of poems on napkins in all their gloveboxes as well! In between here and there is where I feel most at home! But I travel on, because I do really love people and places. Cities are like people to me, and people are my favorite poems to read.
And my cars could keep me there most constantly. Art does the same, just as prayer does. So driving, making art and praying have become my go to for staying alive.
I really like how we get from here to there, and what the style of how we do so, symbolizes. The seasons of my life had certain symbols. And knowing the central symbols in your life help you stay on the road!
A recurring symbol was uniqueness. Never status or wealth, but uniqueness and authenticity. Each of my cars were cars you had to consider to know. They broadcasted one of a kindness. And a certain celebration of the uniqueness of each identity. I’ve learned lots from my cars.
I know for most people vehicles are primarily functional or about status in society, but for me they have been primarily symbolic.
As for the poetic people, that is who the cars took me to. My mentors and co-lovers of life who lived, as the little man, I often painted in my art-on a tight rope between worlds.
Most of them were artist and healers of one flavor or another. All of them were dreamers of what is truly possible in life. And all of them were encouragers of being. None were cynics about life.
They taught me to see the realm of the possible all around me. The one piece of glass in the woodpile. The odd bird just passing through your region for a week. They taught me to see the anomalies around us which offer wonder.
Even to this day, when photographing or painting, the first thing I see is the anomalies. When I look at art, I see the one blue bird on the far left branch that no one expected. The surprises. The unexpected. The unlikely presence.
That’s how God is to me. What you didn’t expect given the situation. So much suffering, but then, sudden lightning of love at a grocery store or in an elderly woman helping a squirrel. Everyday, this stranger breaks in. Love find a way.
And art is only hunting for that breakthrough. And having eyes to see it when it happens.
As one homeless friend at the Tasty (an old hamburger joint) in Harvard Square said: You stay out in the storm until you get to see the lightening, if it comes, and it will if you stay out in the storm long enough. His version of “He who has eyes to see, see!”
I used to often pray, Lord give me eyes to see your love all around me, even when people can’t. Art is just a spiritual practice for me, in that way.
I see so many people around me just existing but not really living. That is blindness to seeing love in everything, but it does require practice to find the glisten of glory constantly breaking in around us daily. My mentors taught me to make that type of seeing a way of life.
Sometimes I even see people real names either when with them, or in a dream later! We all have beliefs about ourselves, but there is always that one deep inside who has the belief! And I often see that someone when with people. And I try to address them from my someone to their someone. That’s the space where our names get seen!
It’s not just seeing angels and saints “over there”—although that is cool too! It is seeing light in the pile of dog poop in the alley, or the glory of a woodpile at dusk, or the wonder of each person’s eyes when they really open them.
I was blessed both by my parents and mentors in life to be given eyes to see Love’s radiance all around me daily. Art is just a practice of keeping our heart’s eyes open to that flow of glory even in the midst of great pain and suffering. That light that is alway here. But sometimes we have to find the cracks of anomaly around us. I often still pray, Lord, where are you in this scene, this person, this situation. Show me your face here. And then we are meeting face to Face through daily life.
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One meeting Rabbi Telushkin
He wrote a book on Jewish humor, and it wasn’t funny. Like Freud’s book on humor, which was also not funny, it was more about than from, as they say. Still, I though in person, he was funny. He kept making jokes about his own dandruff. And things like that.
Normal things, which we all share, that turn out to be funny.
I was working at a large bookstore, and we would host readings. I mainly did children’s literature, but occasionally, they let me do poets and philosophers—ie the big guys! And very often religious teachers, as I had been a religious studies major in college.
That day, we had a good mixed faith audience who were all interested in how jewish humor worked, and what it revealed about their unique culture.
The Rabbi delivered in a way his book did not; which made me wonder, if he was more from the oral tradition than the written one.
According to some, there were two streams coming off Sinai—one the written on stone Torah, the other the living interpretation of those written in stone words.
Anyway, that Rabbi got me thinking, and it turned out, he was funny.
Not sure about Freud. Never met him, or hosted a reading with him. Although, I did meet Carl Jung once, but that’s another story. And, a funny one at that.
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