Totem Figures

This past week I was in and out of the Orlando Fringe Festival sadly seeing only four shows. Not that remarkable. What is remarkable is the fact that I saw one of these shows twice...twice!
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Seeing a Fringe show twice in one week is a bit akin to reading an instructional manual twice over... albeit an entertaining instructional manual. The show that I saw twice, "Totem Figures" by TJ Dawe, was very much like that instructional manual: You knew it was going to take 90 minutes to get through it and you certainly didn't have high expectations of enjoying it. But somehow, possibly as if by divine intervention, you learned something from it. And it enlightened you. And you couldn't wait to tell your friends about it.
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This is where the second viewing comes in. I felt that Johnny and my friend Kelly needed to hear what TJ had to say so much so, that I queued right up for a second time, just to watch their expectations raise to an enlightened level. And I was right. Instruction manual put to good use, object built, knowledge dispersed.
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Totem Figures is all about the concept of identifying the items in your life that shape you, make you who you are today, and finding that system of patterns in the non-random choosing of your life's heroes...or totems. Totems can be people, places, things. But they all have one thing in common: They are pre-ordained to make you the person you are today and help create your own Totem Myth about yourself.
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Maybe this is why for years I have been going by the name BetaMike. This is my Totem Myth. I am no more or less a composite of all the things that have shaped me in the past. It is music that I have listened to, films that I have gravitated toward, and people that I have looked up to. TJ explains that all of us have a "Mt. Rushmore" and the faces that we carve onto that mythological structure are our totem figures.
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I have over the years found power in the number nine. How this number came into my life as a central figure I can't remember, but it has taken center stage for a while. My family moved when I was in the 9th grade, I was born in '72 (7 +2 + 9), this year I will be 36 (3 + 6 = 9). I do a lot of things based around the number nine and when I see this totem figure in my life, I tend to pay attention to it.
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This is of course just one example of how my life is shaped by the Totem Figures on my "Mt. Rushmore" but there are many others, some of which I have talked about here on the Skinny Tie Report. Who are yours? Why?
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Thank you to TJ Dawe and his brilliant 90 minute dialogue on this concept.
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