Roses
“What's in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other word would smell as sweet.” Juliet says, in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. And sure, the rose would still smell lovely, but in a world of busyness, big ideas, constant streams and broadcasts, flashing lights, loneliness, doubt and ambitions… isn’t it lovely, helpful, and comforting to know that a rose is indeed a rose, and that a rose can be specifically sought-out then appreciated by calling it what it is?
What do we call things, people, groups, feelings that perhaps haven’t been overly celebrated or sought-out by others in a community, and in fact, often left out, looked over or disregarded? What about ideas and people that have not been perceived as personally desired? Perhaps you can relate to this feeling in your own way, somehow. Maybe you make art in a method that is hard to explain; perhaps you’d like your public identification and internal emotions to match each other more, maybe you’ve struggled to establish your own cultural or creative identity.
My birth name was Rheanna, but my artist name is caedance. The expansion initially started as me trying to redo my Instagram handle, as I was tired of my dayjob colleagues finding me online, haha. But the quest soon became a more intimate journey to connect with not only who I was, but who I saw myself as as an artist, and who I wanted to be, in future. ‘caedance’ emerged as a word that I created in 2015 to encapsulate various parts of myself as a creator– a dancer, and also a wordsmith of various kinds (poet, rapper, singer, songwriter.) I wanted one word, something unique, simple, easy to recognize and remember. I chose all lower case as a reminder to myself to stay humble. *Humble transition, ha* I had no idea of the mouths that would be saying this name now 8 years later… Grammy & Juno-winning creators, international collaborators, and most importantly: me. caedance is a name I am proud of and feel connected to. Heck, Lauren is not even my legal last name; it’s my given middle name and I chose to adapt it years ago to better connect my legacies and work to name that I knew I would have forever, regardless of marriage.
If you’re tapped into the arts community in Calgary, perhaps in the past couple of years another made-up word you’ve heard floating around is ‘Queendemme.’Just like the unique experiences that many Black women artists in Calgary carry not only as individual people, but as creatives, sometimes as a collective, and as brown-skinned creators in a predominantly white, oil-focussed city, I wanted to coin a term that could speak to as many facets as possible as to what it might feel like to move, shake, rest, and shine as a Black woman artist in YYC.
Queendemme, Ca is a 7-part experiential multimedia journal created by myself and other local legends, such as Alia Aluma, Misha Maseka, Sabrina Naz-Comanescu, and more, offering a snapshot into the stunning & expressive energy of Black millennial creative women in Calgary, Alberta. Featuring an intimate but diverse group of cherished locals, this project blended together written and multimedia to provide a lighthearted yet meaningful commentary on the existence of royalty in coffee-coloured skins in the prairies. We sought to joyfully and curiously celebrate a meld between natural and manufactured, created and imitated, foreign and familiar, that is a small slice of the Black Canadian life.
Like “kingdom,” the name Queendemme was adapted to cheekily hold space as women, in our ‘queendom’, inspired by the royals in Marvel’s afro-centric haven Wakanda. The pronunciation is a play on Caribbean slang, “gyal-dem,” which means a group of girls. These 2 meld a nod to the various cultures that exist in the diaspora of Blackness within so-called Canada, such as these Caribbean/African influences. As French is one of Canada’s national languages, the “emme” is a nod to the francophone word for women (‘femme.’) The “CA” in the original full-length title represents both Calgary and Canada, creating ‘Queendemme’ to be a place. Since the project, many community members have referred to themselves as ‘Queendemmes’, and we’ve often branded our releases by saying “Welcome to Queendemme, CA,” as we invited the broader city to celebrate who we are in a new project and medium!
While this one word can barely scratch the surface of representing the experiences of hundreds of human experiences, it was well-received with tears, hugs, smiles, and thanks from within our community, from the people I humbly attempted to spotlight in a new and meaningful way. This was an honour.
Growing up in a Westernised culture where we were taught that it was acceptable to anglicise someone else’s name pronunciation to make it easier for us to pronounce conditioned many of us to dismiss other’s beautifully complex and meaningful names. As a child, I wished that my name was Monica instead of Rheanna, and as I have many friends who shorten or simplify their African or Asian names to avoid the sometimes degrading hassle of Westerners poorly attempting to pronounce their non-English names. Unless sincerely chosen by the person, I believe that doing this removes respect and celebration of the name which may also be symbolic or meaningful to the named.
I’ve named other initiatives like People are Pearls, Areia Creative, and helped brands arrive at slogans and messaging for a few years now. What I have found is that while roses may indeed still smell like roses, names do matter, help us to better connect to the world around us, and to find folks of similar ambitions and aligned intentions in our communities. What I have also found, and want to affirm to anyone reading this, is that to want to create or connect with a new name, is not silly or strange, but valuable and sacred.
If you feel that your vision, something on the inside of you, or in your community needs to be understood in a new way, or acknowledged and digested in a different light, you have the power to rename and re-claim, to melt down, pour in, and reposition existing gold and information in new moulds for the world to meet! And if that name doesn’t exist, create one! No matter your age or how long you’ve been in the craft or the world, to refresh language around your vision for yourself or your art might even be not only a life-changing reset, but the start of an initiative for movement that can invite others into feeling seen, feeling heard, and celebrated too, like Queendemme did. It’s funny how when we are honouring our own needs, we can be of better service to our communities too.
So smell those roses and name them, or rip the flowers out, cross-pollinate seeds and start your own garden with intergalactic dirt, milky way irrigation, and star-crossed fertiliser. Then call it what your soul screams out and buckle up for a new ride into spaces you never could have imagined. It’s a pleasure to meet you.
