if it's all the same to you
Last night I dreamt that I had a dog, and before I awoke the damn thing had puppies and then up and died, leaving me to care for its new born. I had no problems feeding them and keeping them warm and safe from harm but when it came to naming them I was at a loss. Before I could bring myself to apply labels to their cute little puppy faces the sound of 8:59 becoming 9:00 sprung me from my sleep. While walking to school I was accompanied by the Weakerthans ‘A New Name for Everything’ and stumbled across an ad for Sarah Harmer’s new album ‘All of Our Names’. Simple synchronicity? Perhaps, but I can’t help feeling that the importance of names is springing up all around me. My latest encounter with these given handles came from a book I’d been reading by Salman Rushdie called ‘The Moor’s Last Sigh’. His use of names not only shows the importance of names but also conveys how much a name can reveal. Each character in the novel has a name that can be interpreted beyond a simple label. There are the obvious examples such as Cashondeliveri which of course implies certain business sensibilities. But beyond the simple representation and upon researching some of the names I can see that Rushdie chose each name because of the past associated with it. The novel’s narrator and perhaps protagonist goes by the name Moor, a name which carries with it the significance of its people and both their triumphs and defeats and evokes discussion of religion not unlike that which is ongoing within the novel.
This book came to me at a vulnerable time in my life. With graduation looming and questions of the future hanging overhead, my thoughts have been consumed by what I can now define as ontological doubt. Sounds perhaps too much like live journal jargon but what is live journal jargon based on if not literary terms. Rushdie’s novel has allowed me to think in terms of this ontological doubt by displaying the question of being throughout its entirety. Moraes’ birth into a life of accelerated ageing and a crippled arm forced him from a very early age to question the existence of being. It’s that thought that scares the shit out of a younger version of yourself when you begin to wonder if it’s all constructed. Why is this street one-way going north and why does this man on the sidewalk scream obscenities to no one until he shakes himself into a quivering pile on the sidewalk.
This book came to me at a vulnerable time in my life. With graduation looming and questions of the future hanging overhead, my thoughts have been consumed by what I can now define as ontological doubt. Sounds perhaps too much like live journal jargon but what is live journal jargon based on if not literary terms. Rushdie’s novel has allowed me to think in terms of this ontological doubt by displaying the question of being throughout its entirety. Moraes’ birth into a life of accelerated ageing and a crippled arm forced him from a very early age to question the existence of being. It’s that thought that scares the shit out of a younger version of yourself when you begin to wonder if it’s all constructed. Why is this street one-way going north and why does this man on the sidewalk scream obscenities to no one until he shakes himself into a quivering pile on the sidewalk.