taliesin...meImyself......NAME [3]

Moé -- pronounced more like the champagne Moët & Chandon than the western men's name of the same spelling -- was the name I used in 88-92 while I was still in college. It, like my previous name, came from a japanese girls' manga (comic book) character. The other major influence in my life during this period was also derived from another manga character: The person looked like the character and the character was probably based on the person. In fact, I chose this name partly because its meaning -- to sprout or the color of sprout -- relates to the name of this person, Green Gartside a.k.a. Scritti Politti.

I was obsessed with/idolized Scritti Politti at the time, and read up on Mr. Gartside. To what extent was I obsessed? I structured my college courses according to what the articles on Mr. Gartside claimed he was interested in...including Marxism, even though my childhood was spent in anti-communist Taiwan.

Eventually, other influences broke the spell. I gave up the name Moé for various reasons, the most traumatic of which was that the head of my department at college, who was the professor of a seminar I took, called me MO for almost an entire semester.