About Syrynx
After a long gestation, Syrynx was born in early November 1995, as both symbol and tool of a new phase of my life.
I'd had an Internet connection for a few months-- text only, which was all my computer at the time would allow. After only brief exposure to email and Usenet, I became fascinated (to the point of obsession) with this facet of the Internet:
Suddenly, it was possible for humans anywhere on the planet to communicate with each other, without that communication being crippled by the stereotypes which accompany our awareness of age, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or geography. It struck me that we humans could now approach pure mind to mind communication more closely than ever before. I wanted to experience it for myself, to find out just how real this possibility is.
I also realized I wanted a taken name. Nothing against the given name bestowed upon me by my parents, but I thought it time to join the actors, bikers, carnies, clowns, comedians, corporations, DJs, strippers, tattooists, whores, Popes and other members of religious orders, musicians, body piercers, jugglers, writers, painters, and others who had chosen a public name different from the one known to the tax collector.
I chose a word free of gender association, coined by science fiction and fantasy writer Samuel R. "Chip" Delaney. In his novel Nova, he described an instrument which in capable hands could produce not only music and other sounds, but realistic visual and olfactory effects as well; he called it a "sensory syrynx." The word obviously derives from the Greek syrinx, panpipe; now an English word for the vocal organ of birds. For me, the name represents both achievement and aspiration-- I have made beautiful music, literally and figuratively, but I have also failed. There's an ironic tinge, as well-- my own vocal apparatus more closely resembles the crow's than the nightingale's.
Without divulging my age, gender, etc., I can tell you that I have been, and perhaps still am, for love or money or both, for varying lengths of time and to varying degrees of success: A reader, a writer, a student, a teacher, a listener, a singer, a musician, a composer, a songwriter, a parent, a child, a spouse, a surviving spouse, an ex-spouse, a top, a bottom, a believer, an agnostic, an atheist, a conservative, a liberal, an anarchist, a cook, a journalist, a body piercer and piercee, a bartender, a photographer, a dry cleaner, a radio disc jockey, a one-person band, a fruit and vegetable stand clerk, a dabbler in graphic arts, a music junkie, a science fiction junkie, an Internet junkie... and a Web site perpetrator.
In no particular order.
Syrynx
~ Tile Territory
~ Canon Corner ~
~ Animation Alley
~ Mixed Media ~