Lobster – A short story of naming.

My grandfather Ira, died a year before I was born. He was a fisherman. Frequenting his boat and spent hours fishing in the bays of Jersey.

When I was born, my parents were supposed to call me Polly. I love that name, I feel like I could have been a Polly. It’s a name that makes room for a little girl and a woman. My mum was grieving, and struggling, anyone who has grieved or any one who has been pregnant will know, more than either is simply too much. While my mum gave birth, my grand father visited her, he appeared on a small cloud of grass, and said to my mother, I love you, you are ok, you will have a healthy daughter and I want you to call her Lulu.

It only seemed fitting that, when I gave birth and my son almost died as his lungs wouldn’t open, we closed the circle and named him Ira. I remember thinking, if people ask me what my son was called and he dies - it can’t be a name I associate with life. Ira is already dead, so it won’t be so painful. Thank the lord, Ira made it and his name now carries the most delicious life.

Names are a strange thing aren’t they. Recently a friend and I were talking about my work and it occurred to us how I’m interested in extremes. About finding space for nuance and after a lot of discussion, wondering if it was my 90’s unbringing, or being conditioned by fear if maybe it had more to do with my star sign, and after all that I decided it must be because of my name. Lulu, a name which repeats itself, a name that can be broken in two, turned around flipped and stretched. Another friend, let’s call her Hero, as she tells people on meeting how to prounounce her name, it’s like hero without the h. Hero told me that if she was to write my name in her native scripture, my name could be read as rain drop rain drop, or explosion explosion but she said after knowing me, she probable would read it as rain drop, explosion.

It is a good question if you become your name or your name becomes you. And is part of the reason why naming a child is so difficult. Men’s names were the hardest. I can’t call him that, I’ve slept with him, or I absolutely can’t call him that, I definitely didn’t sleep with him. Names sound pervy, and precious, and empty and full.

Ira, visited me once to in a dream. He sat at the end of my bed and said, I always wanted to meet you Lulu, and asked me if I wanted to see what he caught today. I of course did, and he pulled two lobsters out of his net and the lay, wet and lifeless on my duvet. That was it, he came all that way to show me his lobsters.

I began suffering with anxiety during the pandemic, though I’ve probably had it much longer. One of the best things I have done to help my anxiety is I’ve begun to fish. I sit on the riverbank, staring at the water. Hopeful yet realistic. Knowing a day without a catch isn’t necessarily a day where nothing happen. Instead is simply another day where I managed to make my explosion and rain drop.

Listen to Lulu here.

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Lulu MacDonald (b. 1991) is a fine artist and sculptor originally from Jersey in the Channel Islands.

Her work bridges the personal and the universal, often focusing on world building by intertwining storytelling with cutting-edge scientific discoveries. Her art grapples with the challenges of living on a damaged planet, creating spaces for connection, care, and even mourning for the world around us. Central to my practice are themes of sustainability, immigration, and ecology.