A Metropolitan Guide to Identity
On this the fifth entry into this song journal project, the familiar urge to retreat has appeared, as it always does when the sharing of myself is concerned. I waffle between periods of grotesque oversharing and lockdown isolation: Days that bring a celebratory belief that vocalizing my thoughts and ideas, and ultimately, my story, matters, are interspersed with deafening moments that suggest I am simply adding to the noise of a society drowning in its narcissistic, self-congratulatory, endless stream of content. Perhaps what is most difficult about these conflicting internal voices is that both are probably true.
That voice asks me if being vocal, open, and vulnerable, is the sort of person I admire, and, thus, the sort of person I want to be. Is it not better to move through life with a quiet dignity, asking for no applause or attention for anything that you do?
Everything I do feels like it is indicative of a larger truth about who I am. How I decorate my office, how I keep my house, how I use the AABB rhyme scheme way too often, how I had fun playing Genshin Impact for dozens of hours, despite its narrative being better suited for a twelve-year old, how I don’t have a fancy career, how I don’t care to have one, how I obsess over paying off debts, how I existentially wobble after every rejection instead of being able to let it run off my back. All of these things make me question whether each is a valuable component of who I want to be, or whether each is something that requires reflection and revision.
When you search “Brian Davis” on Google, you will find many famous people: Congressmen, NBA and PGA players, circuit court judges. Focus in on “Brian Davis music” and you will be taken to a country artist who is basking in beer kegs and pickup trucks. Years ago, this musician led to my receiving a Facebook post from an unknown woman thanking me for my amazing performance in Tulsa the previous night. Sorry, I said, I played to an empty room in Charleston, IL last night. You’ve got the wrong guy.
When I wielded my strongest bowling skills, with a respectable 193 average, there was another Brian Davis on the local bowling circuit, pulverizing my respectable average, routinely bowling perfect games in tournaments, and leading people, after seeing his exploits in the newspaper, to mistake me for him, and congratulate me on my dominance. Sorry, I said. I shot a 524 series last night, and almost quit bowling because of my ineptitude. Even at my job, the named portion of my company email address is “brian.davis2.” Another Brian Davis got there first. That son of a bitch.
Buried in all of this might be one of the reasons that I struggle with identity as much as I do. Even my name rarely belongs to me. And so, in December 2012, A Metropolitan Guide was born.
I felt silly using a stage name. If I am honest, I still do. It feels unnecessarily complex and sort of dumb. But I wanted to get away from my name. I hid behind explanations concerning things like marketability, or Google search results (as if there were hoards of people searching for me on search engines), because I figured people would understand, and maybe even respect, that thinking. In reality, A Metropolitan Guide gave me the means that I could be myself, no longer mistaken for the exploits of others, or that my own would be drowned alongside.
Where this name came from can be found in my “Metropolitan Guide” poem. The actual wording of the name stemmed from a user’s mislabeled YouTube video concerning the Tom Waits song, “Metropolitan Glide.” Combined with a well-timed poetry assignment, I wrote the poem about a tour guide who only gave tours of places and things that no one needed, wanted, or cared about.
In this song, you’ll hear me waxing philosophical about love and lighthouses and Starbucks. But in it you will also hear the one thing I know about myself; the one thing that transcends, in a sea of identity crises, inferiority complexes, and laments on the commonality of names: No one can take you on this particular tour better than I can, regardless if you need, want, or care about it. And so, on and on it goes. With the help of a metropolitan guide.