Why did I choose the pen name "Kiran Blackwell"?
Why did I choose the pen name "Kiran Blackwell"?
On my wall I have a printout of a poem called Thy Magic Power by the teacher and mystic Paramhansa Yogananda. One line in particular represents my aspirations as a writer and artist:
Make my speech the fountain of nectared words showered over souls scorched with bitterness.
Why, then, did I choose a name like Blackwell under which to write stories that involve devotion, spirituality, and mystical realism? Isn't blackness and darkness a symbol of ignorance and perhaps also, *gulp*, evil?
Western culture of course has many assumptions and tropes about light vs. dark, white vs. black, good vs. evil, and these are too easy to conflate. God knows how much people of color have suffered because of such biases.
In choosing to write under this pen name I am choosing to challenge those assumptions.
The beauty of the night sky goes unnoticed during the light of day. When I sit to pray and meditate with God and close my eyes, my physical sense of sight perceives only darkness. In fact, I prefer to meditate in a dark room. I also sleep in darkness, a time that is deeply refreshing and the time of dreams—dreams that include some of my deepest and most powerful experiences of love, beauty, and joy.
And consider how the contrast between light and darkness is given as the very impetus of creation:
In the beginning, God created the heaven. and the earth.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness moved upon the face of the deep.
And God said, Let there be light, and there was light.
—Genesis 1:1-3
Creation and light, in other words, sprung from the darkness and the silence—light itself is inherently part of "the deep." And what are creative acts other than drawing or awakening a kind of light or manifestation out of the darkness of the unknown and unmanifest?
That's what Kiran Blackwell means to me. In fact, it’s not so much a name as an idea or a mindset. But it also works as an author name not to mention that the domain name was readily available.
Kiran, which is an alternate spelling of the Irish name Kieran, also means "beam of light" in Hindi/Sanskrit. As such, it's a name with both Western and Eastern associations. (And, for what it's worth, I rather like that it retains the KB initials of my legal name.)
Blackwell comes from the Old English bloec meaning "spring," and a well, is of course, a well. This surname thus means "wellspring," as in a fountain—a deep, source of life and vitality.
Consider also that so-called "black" holes are the most powerful energy sources that we know about in the physical universe. Indeed, “black” is a terrible misnomer: the blackness applies only to the very narrow spectrum of visible light, and also indicates the deep bias toward “whiteness” in the Western culture that assigned that name in the first place. Had these extraordinary cosmic phenomena been first identified by someone without that bias—someone whose vision was more expansive—we might know them instead as "radiant wellsprings," for that's what they are.
I do admit that darkness, blackness, and night might connote "negative" or "ignorance" to some. But the terms also connote depth and mystery, which in my case means the depths and mysteries of the inner self and the depths and mysteries of our inner connection with God. God is all. He is both light and darkness, and beyond those qualities altogether.
Consider this text you're reading right now. Notice the light background, which says very little by itself. What, then, makes the words? What brings meaning to the page? What brings out the meaning of any story, any thought, any revelation in scripture? It is the contrast: dark on light (or light on dark).
Both are needed.
That contrast reminds me of the song that Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder made together called "Ebony and Ivory":
Ebony and ivory
Work together in perfect harmony
Side by side on my piano keyboard—
O, Lord, why can't we?
My other top contender for a pseudonym was Kiran Brightwell. I do like the name; I like the positive connotations, the lightness and brightness. It nicely represents the kind of energy I strive to give to the world, be it a smile to a stranger, a piece of writing, or simply calm patience when others are agitated.
Yet the name lacks that the depth, mystery, and potentials of contrast: "beam of light" and a "bright well" . . . the ideas are redundant and suggest an overly cheerful attitude and might even suggest toxic positivity, which is the denial of the role of contrast that, deep down, forms the backdrop of our reality:
Without silence, what is song?
Without night, where is dawn?
Were it not for men's woes
Who would smile at a rose?
—Song of the Nightingale, by J. Donald Walters (Swami Kriyananda)
Fiction that engages readers is all about contrast: to draw out a theme or premise one must show it in contrast to opposing forces. Without contrast (also called conflict), stories are not really stories. They are mere decoration, frosting—no more nourishing than aspartame.
As an author and artist, I necessarily have to envision and give life to villains in order to accentuate the ideals of the hero. For protagonists to learn better or find completion in another, I have to inflict them with deeply flawed beliefs about the world that can manifest as pitiful and even despicable behaviors, and yet I must also help you sympathize with their pains as they struggle to overcome those beliefs. But always, always with the purpose of drawing out something higher, drawing wisdom from the depths of the soul.
In short, I chose this name because its apparent dichotomy invites exploration, conversation, and illumination. And is that not what writing, indeed all art, should accomplish?
Why use a pen name at all?
Why am I not just doing all this under my given name, Kraig Brockschmidt? There are a few reasons:
My given name doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. Try saying “The latest Kraig Brockschmidt story” or “Today I have Kraig Brockschmidt with me in the studio” out loud. Now try those phrases with Kiran Blackwell.
My given name is already established in technical writing with various books I wrote for Microsoft along with The Harmonium Handbook. I’ve also used it for two self-help books, Solving Stress and Finding Focus and a self-published memoir, Mystic Microsoft. In publishing and marketing, it generally makes sense to keep author personas distinct.
I wanted a more specifically meaningful name for fiction work. “Kraig” means crag-dweller and “Brockschmidt” is “a smithy for broken stuff,” aka the handyman. (Which is a common trait in the Brockschmidt family, by the way.)
Within the context of the Ananda Sangha and the Ananda Sevaka Order (and with The Harmonium Handbook), I also go by my spiritual name, Satyaki, which is Sanskrit for “devotion to truth” (satya = truth, -ki meaning “daughter of” or “devotion to”). Using it for fictional work creates an interesting dichotomy between “truth” and “fiction,” but more significantly, the name isn’t all that relatable or easily parsed by anyone unfamiliar with Sanskrit, which means most Westerners.
Case in point: most people want to pronounce the name like a Japanese noodle dish, that is, Sat-YAHK-ee-SO-ba, when it’s more properly pronounced without any accent (or, if you must, accent the first syllable), and the tya combination is often incorrectly pronounced like tcha.
There you have it!