Name (November)

The favourite doesn’t always win, which is why people bother, supposedly. November again. Silly money goes on nice sounds: Amelie’s Star, Rekindling. Who’d call a horse US Army Ranger? And why? We browse for real horse names (Gallante, Big Duke) but it’s nigh useless, confronted with Bondi Beach and Max Dynamite. The loaded horse? Good breeding leads to weird compounds: Almandin, Marmelo. A horse named Johannes Vermeer, okay, but Thomas Hobson? In the sweep we settle for Humidor, ready ourselves to yell at the TV: Cismontane!!!  We’d flutter on Who Shot the Barman, only it’s Who Scratched the Barman, inexplicably.

Name (March)

[Opera] Our minds may recall, by will or chance, names from our lifetime. Accidents of reading, reference in passing, an instant memory, may remind us through their name any number of stories, emotions, characteristics. A name from childhood may rise and prompt tones of voice, their special gestures, many connotations. Consciousness is like an opera where each name connects with you and your network of almost infinite characters, a cast that may ‘turn on a performance’ at any moment whatever, whether you’re sane as a saint or mad as a March hare. Then, there’s your own name, fixed and fragile…