silent Saturn dreams (@silentsaturndreams) | Cara - Artist Social & Portfolio Platform

You’ve probably noticed, this year is off to a rather slow start for me. I am not in any way equipped to speak about the current state of the world- rather, my country of residence in particular- but suffice it to say, it’s been rough. But I have been recharging, reading, even drawing (I just don’t have anything ready to show yet) and, most importantly, I’ve been brainstorming a change in branding. With each passing year, I have felt a growing disdain for my screen name and have wanted to change it, but never figured out something I liked. Sure, I could just use my real name, but I am getting more and more paranoid about widespread use of my name on the internet with the way things are going. It is out there, but I’d still like to keep personal and internet lives separate to a degree. You've probably known me as “goemonsama.” This goes way back to the deviantArt days, and even a bit before. The thing is, I never intended that name to be associated with me for such a long period of time. I never even would've thought it would be seen by anyone other than a few friends in real life. It just so happened I wound up using dA for things other than trolling my friends and somehow gained a small audience that actually liked my art. Whoops! And when it came time to try other platforms, it seemed like a good idea to keep the same name in case anyone from dA wanted to find me. Only this almost never happened. I’ve pretty much had to rebuild an audience from scratch every new platform. Every. Single. Time. So like it or not, the name stuck. It has dawned on me over the years how that screen name is really a form of cultural appropriation. I was quite young when I decided to use that name and as a stupid teen, fascinated with the growing exposure to Japanese culture many of us in the United States were experiencing at the time, was ignorant to the concept of cultural appropriation. The name wasn’t supposed to be serious in any way, just a little reference to a game I liked (though a cringe-worthy surface level understanding of Japanese honorifics is painfully apparent). This is problematic in a lot of ways I won’t get into here, and even though no one ever directly protested my screen name, it still started to feel icky. That and, as my work has grown, and I myself have grown, the shoe just didn’t fit anymore. After all, I don’t believe I’m the same person as I was back then; really, who is the same person they were as a teen? I like to think I’ve gotten more worldly with age, as much as someone who hardly travels can be, but at the very least I feel I lean more towards cultural *appreciation* instead of appropriation. Surely, if you look at my work now you’ll see no remnants of that foolish teenager mindlessly copying the style of Rumiko Takahashi. Hopefully, you’ll see a wide range of influences form an ultimately unique style. So here we are: new year, new name. What does this new word-salad name mean exactly? Well, it’s still a bit of a cheeky video game reference: The Sega Saturn is one of my favorite unsung consoles, and NiGHTS into Dreams… is one of my favorite games. But Saturn can also evoke Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son, one of my all time favorite paintings. Or just the cool planet with the rad rings. Whether mythological, artistic, or scientific, what’s not to like? Silent, because despite having regrettably built the dubious reputation of being an opinionated gremlin on the internet (something I’m also trying to work on...), I am actually pretty shy and reserved in real life. I keep to myself. I think a lot of my art has a silent quality to it, as well. I also love silent movies and am very inspired by them. And of course, dreams have been a consistent inspiration for my favorite art throughout history, from Fuseli’s The Nightmare to the comic strips of Winsor McCay and the cartoons of the Fleischer Bros. I’ve made multiple comics myself with dream sequences and excursions into fantasy worlds, and will likely continue to do so. If the shoe fits... I don't imagine anyone would actually read through all of this, but writing this down and collecting my thoughts feels pretty good.