I will start this story in the present: some of my friends still call me ‘Mr Ben’. It has served me well as a pseudonym for approximately nine years, having first come into use when I felt in need of an internet alias. Many embrace the online world for its anonymity, and this certainly is one of its distinct advantages: on almost every blog, chat forum or other website, web authors reinvent themselves with pseudonyms. I am reluctant to say that they hide themselves: some commentators have suggested that the Internet nick name can be used as a mask, so that people can avoid revealing their real identities online; but I am more interested in the way this re-naming allows them to transform their identities, at once re-branding themselves and genuinely altering the way they interact with others.
This is certainly what happened to me – at least, that is how I remember it now. Shortly after establishing an online alias of mr.ben (I always signed it like that, before eventually relaxing the strict punctuation), I cemented my online identity when I was given the opportunity to create a website for a local band called Frayed, which consisted of three of my good friends at the time. This involvement gradually evolved into a general commitment to rock music in my local area, and consequently my Internet identity spilled over into the real world, as I attended gigs and began to introduce myself as mr.ben. It was what the majority of my friends called me for about five years.
The name suited me. I liked not having to use my real name, which I have never particularly liked. Indeed, as a child I was constantly reinventing myself: to my horror, I recall that I once announced to my family that from now on I would like to be called Bruce. Then I decided that I preferred the name Luke. Now, neither of those names appeals to me. On another occasion I invented the alternative identity of Rubsy Binns, but that never really took off.
My alter ego, mr.ben, served two functions. The first was that I did not have to use my real name. Aside from the seemingly endless scope for crude insults (which my school days had made me pretty much immune to), it just never seemed like a particularly strong name. Surnames that have appealed to me for their solidity include Crow, Raine; even Pitt (although I’ve never wanted to be called either Brad or William). I would compare, mentally, a name like Anthony Crow with Ben Hoare. When I imagined having my writing published, the name Ben Hoare simply seemed too weak to appear on the cover of a book. mr.ben, although perhaps a little too comical (and equally difficult to imagine being printed on the front cover of a book), helped to get me away from a name I was never keen on.
Perhaps more interesting is the impact that the name had on my identity. In the past few years, my reading and experience alike have shown me that identity is fluid, and that we perform our identities rather than revealing them. I am increasingly coming to find it absurd when people are advised to “Just be yourself”. It amuses me on the reality TV show Big Brother when certain characters claim that “I’ve been myself”, while others, re-watching footage of their antics in the house, say something like, “That’s not what I’m really like”. Circumstances change identities – there is no “me”; I only exist in relation to the people around me. But my name, I found, influenced the identity that I projected. As mr.ben I was more confident, more comfortable in my own skin, and therefore more likely to project a good image to others. I found myself making a lot of new friends during this period (something I had always found difficult to do). I would never claim that this person wasn’t “me”; but the circumstances foregrounded qualities that I did not always show.
Even after I stopped introducing myself that way, I kept the name ‘Mr Ben’ as a pseudonym for my online writing, which at the time was predominantly music-related. I wrote semi-regularly for the Drowned in Sound website, and during this period the meaning of my pseudonym changed. I was becoming increasingly disillusioned with the idea of music journalism, feeling that it was full of clichés, arrogant value judgments and almost meaningless hyperbole. I realised that, when I wrote about music, I was performing in a self-consciously artificial way, adopting a style that I felt was appropriate for this kind of writing, rather than producing copy that I was proud of. When I started to have my work printed in other publications, I used my real name. By this point, then, I had come to separate my writing into what I was proud of, and saw as somehow representative of me (my fiction, poetry and literary criticism), and the lightweight music journalism that I wanted people to know I did not take seriously.
In 2006, I established this website as a way of publishing some of my work, shortly after tentatively launching the Autobiographical Memories website in November of that year. On both sites I could not decide what name to use, first using Ben Hoare, then switching to Mr Ben, before finally fixing on my real name. I had some reservations about doing so. It seemed that I was moving away from the anonymity of the Internet: it would be possible for people to find me online, so I had to be sure that I truly did feel that what I was publishing contributed to the personality I was trying to construct. I still feel that there could be risks involved in using my own name.
I was intrigued to note that, at precisely the point when I had decided to reject my erstwhile pen name, and had started signing my online and offline work alike with ‘Ben Hoare’, the next two authors to join me in contributing to the Autobiographical Memories project had decided to use pseudonyms. obandsoller is an author I have already commented on in these pages, perhaps insensitively rejecting his pseudonym and referring to him by his real name, Ramesh Satkurunath. Why anyone with a name as cool as that would want to adopt an alias escapes me; but when he started posting his autobiographical memories, I realised that it ought to be an author’s choice how he is named. I know, following a real-life conversation on a related topic, that Ramesh is not offended by my references to his real name, but I am increasingly recognising the need for sensitivity. My other current contributor, Tatjana Cocoon, has commented on the therapeutic nature of writing autobiographical memories. I entirely agree: there is something therapeutic about facing up to the memories that have formed you; even in forcing yourself to try and capture those memories as concisely as possible. But if we are to use our writing, in part, as therapy, do we really want that process to be made entirely public? Should there not always be some things that are hidden? I am still working out my own feelings on this matter: my own autobiographical memories are of moments that have affected me deeply, but there are other characters in my stories whose real-life counterparts have not always been made aware of my feelings. It is too early to know what the consequences are of making these feelings public, but I sense that being honest, revealing my true and potentially offensive feelings, could be a risky business. For some reason I have decided to take the risk; but I can see why others might avoid it. At the same time, it is worth noting that both obandsoller and Tatjana Cocoon are pseudonyms that are known to many of the friends of both parties, so nothing is entirely hidden.
Choosing what to hide, and how to do so, is an art that we are all learning.