Avatars I am Taking to India

I have already mentioned in my blog intent my plan to use different avatars of my personality to document my experience in a variety of ways.  This is a way that I generate a variety of material to offer a more holistic representation of my experience.  The name, I feel, is very suiting, especially since this time around I will actually be in India where the name originates.  However, I think it would be beneficial to explore my Ghana avatars a little bit more.  Since I am hoping to do more with the connect aim of my statement, I would like people to read this and know that Myra, Adela, and Virginia are all a part of me, so do not freak out if you see one of their signatures at the end of a blog post. 

My first avatar, Myra, is going to be the name I use for all of my photography.  I did a lot with this avatar during my field research in Ghana last year, and since it was so successful I decided to keep the name the same. 

My second avatar, Adela, will be the romantic anthropologist in me.  She is a variation off of Ava, another avatar I explored last year.  I decided to change her name to Adela for a number of reasons.  First, I think that she reminds me a lot of Adela from A Passage to India by E.M. Forster, a kind of thoughtful but also naïve character I think I resemble a lot in the “romantic anthropologist” state of mind.  Adela is also the name of a main character in La Dama Del Alba, a Spanish play that I just finished reading.  The character in this play was at an interesting point romantically where things were either going to go really well or pretty terrible.  I can also relate to this.

My third Avatar, Virginia, is going to be the postmodern travel writer in me.  She is a new and improved edition of Gipsy, another avatar from Ghana.  My more aesthetic writing will be under her.  Her name is Virginia because I am hoping to implement a more stream of conscious style, like Virginia Woolf, one of my favorite authors. 

Sometimes I will be all of them.  Sometimes none.  But every so often I will be just one, and exploring that mindset is always a beneficial experience for my kind of project.