The time is here: I really want to consolidate some of the mishmash of identities I’ve got here on the internets. It’s confusing for me now, so I forget how disconbobulating it must be for others…
Y’see, I set this blog up all those years ago as a bit of a whim. I wanted to have a record of what I was doing and making and thinking at the time and it seemed like the internets was a safe place to put it so it didn’t all get eaten alive by yet another computer. That’s all.
“Ephemeral Gecko” was just a couple of words I liked. I liked the way they sounded together.
I didn’t figure on anyone else noticing. I googled the phrase and when nothing untoward came up in the results, I made the choice and claimed the name. It didn’t occur to me anyone else would be interested in these musings. So, live n learn, huh?
Recently I heard Seth Godin talking about blogs – when you start to write online, he advised, use a pseudonym, gauge the response, if it isn’t favourable then who cares – it wasn’t ‘you’. Yes! clever me and my forethought! I knew that already! that’s what I did!!
Then he went on to recommend you switch to your real name after a few weeks.
Oh, not that bit. I didn’t do that bit.
And it’s been a few years now …
… and a few names too.
Ephemeral Gecko became the me that instagrammed and twitted (not twitting often enough to matter… until I remembered the auto-twitting of my blog posts I set up and promptly forgot about. So in that sense, a version of me I’d forgotten about was busy over there.
A long time before all this happened I used the name pentangled for my jewellery making and early dabbles into digital art. I disliked that name more and more over the subsequent years and having established myself in that guise in deviantArt & redbubble, I finally ditched it.
I know, I know.
I adopted the name Mixy on facebook, to begin from pure silliness, then stuck with it as a point of principle. That was a time when it was being claimed fb was closing down the accounts of folk not using their real name. Which was really screwing up the lives of ppl who needed anonymity for their personal safety. That wasn’t my story, but I wanted to stand in solidarity with those for whom it was. No matter how futile and ineffective. I knew why, and that’s what mattered to me at the time.
There’s all sorts of reasons why this all seems scrappy and indecisive and bad practice, not quirky and adorable and fun. But there we are. I’m all those things, and I’m using the defence of “I’m an artist” in the same way as Marvin Gaye (formerly Spartacus) Chetwynd does. Because really, who cares? I make stuff. I share it online and sometimes real life exhibitions.That’s all that really matters. If things like this get you all tangled up, don’t let it, pour that angst into something important and leave me here.
This is all of me. Here I am – just the one of me – typing this too you in all the places I type to you from. And perhaps someplace automated I don’t remember too.
If you’d like more insights into my ridiculous & made up world, my colorful antics & frippery, you can do so by hopping onto my newsletter list for sporadic updates. And I’ll send you my lovingly hand crafted ebook all about color
Be well, my friends, Much love to you all X
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(Your email is absolutely safe with me, I’ll just pop by and check up on it time to time, feed it biscuits, plump up its cushions, that sort of thing.)
Mixy's Art Blog 