I mentioned this in a previous post, but I decided to change my first name for art purposes. I’ve been thinking about this on and off for a year or so, and I felt like “Sean” wasn’t doing a great job representing my work, and decided to choose the name “Melos”, based on Melody/music, thinking about my lifetime of being around music-making, analysis, or creation, and its influence on my work/approach to making stuff.
(That and it has great SEO… heh heh heh. “When naming something, do it for the art, then for the SEO” – that’s a Melos Motto (“MM” for short.))
Pronouns are still he/him/his. Last name still Han-Tani (I added the hyphen though, on this round of Name Revisions). Ugh, I need to update so much stuff and my Twitter handle. I’ll do it eventually…
It’s pronounced with two syllables, the ‘me’ from ‘men’ and ‘los’, where ‘os’ is from the ‘oas’ of ‘roast’. It sounds like Meh-Loas.
Coincidentally it’s the name of a protagonist from an Osamu Dazai short story (“Run, Melos”, which I’ve never read), which gave its name to the Wednesday Campanella song “Melos” (which I don’t really like – though it’s a good band generally). But any first name is bound to be used elsewhere, and if there are any problems I can always use “Melos2”.Coincidentally I decided to do this BEFORE we got that IGF nom for Anodyne 2! But then we got nominated and they make you pick what name you want announced at the ceremony which kind of pushed me.This is more nervewracking than changing a last name, because like, you have to hear it in person a lot. I remember when changing my last name to Han-Tani and introducing myself in front of classes in 2016 when I started teaching… but then it stuck. But I’ll probably get used to that quickly. Also I was inspired by friends/writers/activists who have changed their names for various reasons, as well as some Japanese artists I’ve met who don’t use their birth names and just go by a single name.
Anyways that’s it! Happy new decade. We’re also changing Analgesic Productions to “M&M Productions” and pivoting into candy (just kidding (the joke is that Melos and Marina statr with M))
ambient-melodic 