A suburban acrobat steps onto the high wire

How do you summarize what your blog will be about in one catchy title?
How do you project yourself far enough into the future to know what you'll be writing about in blog form?
Why are you writing a blog in the first place? Don't you have enough digital distractions?

These are great questions. And the quick answers are: "I'm complicated and I don't know a quick and catchy way to summarize myself," "I have no idea what I'll be writing about and even less of an idea about who would possible read it," and "I don't know. Yes!"

Regardless, here I am, "stepping onto the high wire" of a new chapter in my life as "one who blogs," for whatever that's worth. And so, not knowing exactly what my purpose here will become and where to start, I'll begin Suburban Acrobat with an explanation of how I did-under the pressure of coming up with a title-settle on this and what it means.

My gut reaction when thinking of a title took me immediately to two things: the film Citizen Kane and the U2 song, "Acrobat."

Citizen Kane is a movie that I believe is rich in philosophy and gets at the core of human needs and relationships. It's about how people view each other in addition to being about the American Dream. And it's about newspapers and the media. In short, it encapsulates most of what interests me in life: film, stories, relationships and the media. I almost called this blog "Citizen Keith," and I wouldn't be surprised if I someday change it to this title from the far more esoteric, and, let's face it, clunky title I settled on.

But I kept going back to the U2 song, "Acrobat." Music is my other passion, and U2 is one of my top five favorite musical acts of all time (you'll hear more on music later, don't worry). And in addition to being a music lover and a U2 lover, I am a Christian. I love the song "Acrobat" (from Achtung Baby) because I think it poetically hints at the nature of the difficulty of maintaining a Christian identity and perspective in the world. As Bono writes and sings:
"And I must be an acrobat
To talk like this and act like that
And you can dream so dream out loud
And you can find your own way out...
And dreams begin responsibilities"
An analysis of the song on Wikipedia states that the song is very personal and addresses "personal weakness, contradiction and inadequacy." And I thought, well hey -- that's me. And thanks to the grace of God, I get a life better than what I deserve.

When you take the idea of an acrobat as a tight rope walker and ball it up with the U2 song, the idea of my life being a circus (read: chaotic, crazy) and even a film reference (to the fantastic documentary Man on Wire), you have a cryptic explanation of who I am. And you have "Suburban Acrobat: The View from a High Wire." I don't know why you are reading, but I thank you. And I know that I need to be writing. For someone. For myself.