Identity,
             my concept of identity has always been loose, I perform with twenty five different characters each having there own unique take on life. A talk I went to a few nights ago likened it to a web with "me" at the center. Today another Derek Carpenter posted a picture on Facebook, this is someone I have never met but who contacted me through Facebook to become my friend, so If you can't be friends with like named friends who can you be friends with, the picture posted was not one I would have connected with nor published so I was a little miffed, my own sister thought I had posted it, so a case of mistaken Identity. I looked up Derek Carpenter on Facebook ( that's just a name right) and there appears to be hundreds of us!! It gets worse, I chose to be called Derek Carpenter!!!!! Not my birth parents, the Williams but me . I became an actor at an early age 13, at 16 Equity, the actors union, told me if I wanted to join I would have to change my name as there were four Derek Williams in Equity already and there couldn't be a fifth. So Derek Carpenter was reborn, I say reborn because" I "already existed. Carpenter because I was playing a Carpenter in a TV play, and to some degree my Grandfather had been a Carpenter, and all the stars of the day appeared to have trade names Gardner, Baker Taylor ecetera, I didn't change the Derek bit because that was me, even though I did not like the name, I wanted to be Jim, like my best friend and it was also my Dads nick name his real name Roland! Are you still following all this? I did it all legally too so I could build my career on a sound foundation, Deed poll at Sommerset House even my Passport.
               All to no avail it seems, there are Hundreds of me out there and all like me multi-faceted do I care? not any more, to quote Prevert "I  am as I am I'm made that way"
Bo.