Most of the people who lie to you on TV do not use pseudonyms. I have generally embarked on creative projects using pseudonyms. What the hay is it about when people do this? I also go off on a brief horse tangent.

Hello, new follower zubaidi, good luck with the blank slate that is your new Substack. This episode is kind of about blank slates.

When I was a young dude, I played music. blah blah blah. pseudonym, blah blah blah.

Why? Anonymity, privacy. But there is more, like removing oneself and trying to take oneself out of the equation.

To see the art as it’s own thing to be observed and not the product of a person. Where the art itself takes precedent over the artist.

Often, a pseudonym is a vehicle for separating the art from the artist. The art is actually the point, not the person writing it. There are people who do not understand that. Or, they simply do not look at art that way. For them, it’s about personality. There is a good chance the intention of the artist is lost on them. They can also be unable, for whatever reason, to separate the art from the artist.

An artist sometimes creates a character and gives it a name, assuming the role of that character themselves. Actors do that, of course, but that’s their gig. Writer’s do this too. I have done it. It’s a super fun thing.

Fluidity. Some people see gender as a non-static thing, as a fluid thing. That’s how some people see their identity. It has nothing to do with gender for them. Maybe it’s their mood or a creative phase they are going through that disrupts them in a good way, and this thing emerges as their new identity. Ziggy Stardust. David Bowie did that. Elton John was Captain Fantastic. The Beatles were Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. These things happen.

It’s really fun to create characters and the schemas to go with them. The character and their situation are a schema. It’s like a POV grid that your character has. They have a backstory, and they arrive at different decisions than the creator of the character does.

It feels good to imagine. It's a good, healthy activity. It stimulates both your mind and your brain. For some people, it is second nature, it’s unconscious competence, to just step outside of themselves and look at something and evaluate it from a position of ego death. The name of the specific observer is not even the point.

Credibility?

If you say you have some system to determine by observing the surface of something whether it is credible or not, keep walking. That’s called prejudice. You are incorrect. “I believe this person; this is not credible, etc.” Really, you can know by the facts of a situation what is true? Most of the people who lie to you on TV do NOT use pseudonyms. Some of them do. Most of them do NOT.

There is no correlation between honesty and the name of the person speaking.

If I could do it over again with my first rock band, my name would have been Ben Belvedere. My first car was a Plymouth Belvedere, and Ben is rhythmic and memorable with it. I’ve used a half-dozen over the years for various things and reasons.

It is a way to hide, in a way. It’s a great vehicle for shy people. It’s not weird or sketchy. Sometimes people want to get their poetry or their writing. Their songs and whatever else. They just want to express themselves and maybe they want to see people’s reactions to it. They don’t care about the being famous part.

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