At the suggestion of Austin legend Stephen Doster (the producer of Firefly), I attended the Austin Songwriter's Group symposium this past weekend here in Austin. There was some really magical stuff that happened, with the amazing Rodney Crowell giving the keynote address and lots of amazing music - and I actually learned stuff.
One of the DJ's at the event commented a couple of times about my name being interesting. I assume he meant that it's interesting because it has three parts, and some of the parts sound English and some of them sound foreign - not sure though since I didn't ask him.
Also at this conference, I was told once again, that it's important to Blog. Ergo . . .
No one has yet confronted me with why I have chosen to use all three of my given names, although a couple of folks have made passing snide comments about it.
The main reason I decided to use my middle name is because I wanted people to be aware that my song "Ringtail", is about someone who's related to me. He, Martin Parmer, was a signer of the Texas Independence and he changed the spelling of his name from Palmer to Parmer, probably because he was wanted in about four states for various charges, gunfighting, selling liquor to Indians, and maybe taking some property that didn't technically belong to him.
Ironically, the Republic of Texas ended up appointing him as the only legal agent who could go around stealing people's horses and guns for the Texas army.
So if Martin Parmer's offspring had decided to keep his name, I would have been George Parmer Macias. I read somewhere that "George" means "Farmer." So I could have been Farmer Parmer Macias.
Actually, my father's name was given to him because he was born on George Washington's birthday. Otherwise he would have been "Paul". So, I could have been Paul Palmer Macias.
As for my other name, "Macias", that also came from my father, who was born in Ybor City, Florida and whose ancestors spent a few generations on the island of Cuba. The most interesting "Macias" to date lived in the 14th century in Spain. He was known simply as "Macias."
Macias, called the "idol of lovers," was a poet who died tragically. Supposedly, a woman got thrown from a beautiful stallion into a beautiful river, and the "fearless" Macias dove in to save the beautiful woman. But it was not the river that killed Macias; it was the woman's husband, who apparently found the one-named senor poking around in the wrong casa.
So if I represent my name well in the course of my life, I will likely write a few poems, love a few women, do a bit of farming, get in a gunfight or two, and hopefully at the end, someone will erect a statue.
