keyboard_sass

Hey, my first post here ... talking about my name is probably as good an intro as any, right? My full given moniker is-- don't laugh now --Sascha Viviana Lenore Brockmann. Yeah, all right, you can giggle a little. My dad always said my name is longer than I am, and he's not far wrong.

I swear, people who hear my first name and the fact that I play keyboards in a rock band always assume that Sascha is a pseudonym, a flashy stage name I picked out. Sorry folks, but that name has sat on my birth certificate from day one. Mom picked it out because she liked it, and so do I. It's the German version of a Russian diminutive of Alexander or Alexandra, a little offbeat and unusual, borderline exotic. It suits me.

As for the middle names, there's a story there. Dad wanted my middle name to be Lenore to pass on his mother's name. Mom thought that Lenore was very pretty, but she insisted that if I was going to carry the same name as the dead lady in Poe's "The Raven", I would need something to balance it out. So she decided on Viviana, which of course comes from vivus, Latin for 'alive'. Cute, huh? That's my mom for you.

Brockmann I'm not as sure about. I know that Brock is an old English word for 'badger', and Mann of course means 'man'. Badger-man? Dad does rock the facial hair, but I don't think he's that furry, actually.

I don't really have too much in the way of nicknames, other than Sasch. Lop off one letter and all of a sudden you've got a single-syllable. My brother Jared used to call me princess. Sort of fifties, but ... I liked it. ~~And I kinda miss it.~~ Dave Rackley, Breaker Street's other keyboardist, he calls me Fingers sometimes. I'm pretty sure it's a compliment. If anyone else wants to come up with nicknames for me, I'll try them on, see if they fit.

Which brings me to my shiny new ElJay username,