Upside My Head (Pay Attention Now)

Drum roll please....

I just changed the name of my blog from Embrace Your Age! You're Living! to Upside My Head (Pay Attention Now)

Why, you may wonder, why?

When I started this blog in late 2008, I had no plan. I just sat at my computer one day, great music rolling through my headphones, and made this blog. I was not really sure what I wanted to write about, but knew I had a few things to say. My inaugural post sums it up, and my anniversary blog says a bit about what I've learned so far.

I called my blog Embrace Your Age! You're Living! thinking it would mostly be about aging and about being fully alive. I was wrong. It is about all that and more. Much more. In fact, the best title for the blog is probably All Over the Place. Not so great for building a following, but it works for me.

So I've been thinking about changing the name to better reflect the array of subjects I meander through. Lacking inspiration, I asked my good friend, the brilliant and sly George Quotidian Hoagland, for some help on a new name.

George Quotidian Hoagland

Being the brainiac she is she broke it down for me. Below is her (slightly edited) response:

"I was just talking yesterday with my new 'teach me everything you know' friend about how the world does not need another scholar of race or gender or sexuality as representation (like tropes of black femininity in Toni Morrison's work, for example, or queer identities in Lady Gaga, or whatever), but what it/we do need are explorations of how we work to make and read race, age, class, gender in ways that may or may not map directly onto our bodies.

On the one hand, this idea makes people who think that white people will exploit any non-white experience really scared (unnecessarily so, I think). But the difference between saying you (or anyone) has a black experience in white skin and saying that you work to read the world in a way that explains the contingent experience of seeing and being in ways that accurately represent your complicated human circumstances is enormous and important.

Personally, I think that my saying that I am black, or queer, or poor (even though those labels are all sometimes really pertinent), negates my actual lived experience of benefiting from white privilege (in some sometimes insidious ways), of having some very traditional and awesome heteronormative romances, and having the luxury of buying whatever I need whenever I need it, even though that usually means I have to save up money or use credit in order to get it.

So, and this message is probably way deeper than you intended, but this is what happens when you ask somebody like me a question we take seriously, my ideas for a new name, in accordance with the above, are as follows:

1. Nothing is black and white
2. Homo-normal (although I bet this one is already taken)
3. Don't assume the position (my old blog, now defunct, was 'assume the position')
4. Trending towards awesome
5. Sharpie and Razor (this one comes from goz)
6. Complicated and Fabulous
7. Negrolicious! (Negro is my new favorite word)
8. Upside the head
9. Where's my drink?
10. Everyday ethics/ethnics

I could think of more but I'm starving and need food."

See. She is way way smarter than me. So many good ideas to ponder. "Upside the head" kept sticking, but it wasn't quite right. Then, with a burst of light (of the disco ball variety), a file drawer inside my aging brain flew open and out popped the Gap Band! Specifically the 1979 hit, Oops Upside Your Head. It was all downhill from there.

The lyrics are awesomely bland, but the song is just a great dance groove! The missing link! (I call myself Dancing Diva, after all.)

So there you go! A brilliant analysis (by George) combined with pure digression (by me) and a funk classic = new name! So edgy. So quotidian. So all over the place. So me!

Let's all get up and dance now!