by Dr. David Sanders
The door into self-exploration is less of the standard type, more like a revolving one. There is often a bit of tentativeness in aligning oneself to enter and as its mechanism suggests, you can find yourself at the precise place you started having missed the exit. Sometimes, I feel that my thoughts are a revolving door which lead me in circuitous paths only to find in the ending a new beginning to self-exploration.
We have been focusing on our names as a door into self-exploration. Our given names are labels bestowed upon us, in Kabbalistic terminology, clothing. Yet our names become a part of the experience of “who I am.” I knew at some point someone in class would quote the line from Romeo and Juliet, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet” with the implication that our names are not entryways into self-exploration, at most they are simply window dressing. Indeed, Shakespeare follows his oft quoted sweet smelling rose with Juliet pronouncing, “So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d, retain that dear perfection which he owes without that title.”
Let’s enter the revolving door. It began with a phrase by Gertrude Stein I had not hitherto come across: “A rose is a rose, is a rose, is a rose.” Reading it reminded me of a song I heard as a boy, “I love you Alice B. Toklas, and so does Gertrude Stein.” I knew it was a song, but it entered my mind without a reference point, and what did it even mean? Who was Alice B. Toklas, anyway? Looking it up led to another rotation of the door, a song in which the lyricist, Ed Askew, wanted to know what Stein’s roses meant, and asked:
What was that all about?
I heard about it in art school
And thought I’d look it up
Gertrude Stein would write all night
and in the morning Alice would type it up
And in the evening they would take their little dog
and go see Picasso and Dora Maar
Now, I was intrigued. I will not take you down the circuitous path of learning about these women and their relationship to Picasso and Dora Maar. Suffice it to say, these were names of people who lived fascinating lives as Alice and Gertrude. (Gertrude’s most famous literary piece is titled: The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas and Picasso’s portrait of Gerturde was titled in her name).
Stein’s phrase feels a bit like a revolving door, “A rose is a rose, is a rose, is a rose.” Perhaps her intent is that when we stay with the name of a thing (or a person called Romeo) we begin to see beyond surface, we encounter essence. That is precisely what has happened through focusing on our names. Doors have opened to self-discovery, to what is held in our name and what we make of our name. What our name conceals and what it reveals. Does our name wear us or do we wear our name?
O name of mine, o name of mine, where for art thou?
