My name is nobody. That line seems to read sadly doesn’t it? It is far from it. It is in fact an important part of my life. It’s a line that empowered me. It offered me hope and it became a way of life for me.

When I was a mere boy of 14 I was in search of my identity like most early teens. While some boys were established jocks, some boys had scholastic skills that seemed unfair, and others had charisma, I had none of these at the exceptional level in which I felt I knew what I’d do with my life.

At best I had a love for music and sang in my bed at night. That is another story.

From an early age I admired men of mystery. Men that said little, or if they spoke, their words protected them. Two types of men that fit this mold where spies and detectives. Spies would always speak in public with words meant to communicate yet protect their agenda and identity. Little of their life was open on the surface. A spy lived a sad life however because those that loved them most, may never know them, including perhaps a wife. With detectives, they saw life through a different prism, and like spies their senses were sharpened to what they saw in day-to-day life, let alone situations that required finely tuned instincts. Spies had secret lives and lexicons, while detectives read secrets. These people made sense to me. I have always been drawn to those skills. These type of men lived a life where they were essentially unseen, could blend in and saw the world around them in a way other people took for granted. I admired spies and detectives because they were strong and comfortable with being, nobody. They live around us invisibly. They are nobody.

One day I stumbled across a movie on a cable channel. The story had already started. I had no idea how much I missed. I watched it anyway. I watched it and it do NOT have a profound effect on me that first time I saw it. Yet I liked it. A few weeks later it aired again and I still missed the beginning. I didn’t know the name. I watched again but this time I began learning from it. I saw importance in symbolism and stories being told and played out within the story. There were countless things for me to learn from this strange semi-dramatic, semi-comedic spaghetti western.

Now I’m no fan of westerns, on a whole I think they are one dimensional and westerns on a whole tell the same story over and over again. This western was different. It offered me many lessons and insights on life. I learned that “If the risk is little, the reward is little.” From this I later wrote a song for my band at the age of 25 named…. “The Risk”.

So this could be love
After all this time
The risk resulted in reward
We’ve nowhere to go but forward
Still don’t just hold the moment
Identity what we feel
If you ever once believed in love
Your risk’s not risk
That’s what you’ll feel

There was a fun and unrealistic side to this guy Nobody which was purely entertaining. For instance, one thing I learned, and it wasn’t a message as much as it was an observation was that because the main character was a guy without a name. He would come into town, apply his own righteous intentions by his own ability and frankly raise hell in a good way. What was best was that no one knew his name, he was …Nobody. If you think about it, when you don’t have a name, who is to blame for the things you do? You come into town, raise hell and leave it clean. I mean you roll on into another town with a clean name. You have no way of being labeled the reason for anything that happened in your past.

Watching this story a few times I realized I had to know the name of this movie. It was of course, My Name is Nobody with Terrance Hill and Henry Fonda.

The story itself was a story I admired.

It was as story about a young man (Nobody) that had a gun slinging idol named Jack Beauregard.

Jack Beauregard was an aging lawman that made a name for himself as a great gun-fighter. When Nobody was a boy he grew up idolizing Jack Beauregard. Now his is grown up, he wants Jack Beauregard to become a legend. Jack Beauregard is retiring though. He has one goal in mind, exodus. He is travelling to New Orleans to catch a ship out to Spain. He wants to be one of the few that lived to tell about his days as a gun-slinger. Nobody was all grown up now, and he finds his hero making this escape. He establishes himself as an ally and waxes poetic in his desire to see his hero become a legend. How that is to come be is a question you the viewer easily piece together by obvious clues. The journey to this end game is a fun ride. Nobody has the talent to take out his master, and while he confuses Jack Beauregard from time to time, he never betrays his trust and in the end, Jack accepts the challenge Nobody forces upon him.

NEXT PART TWO - My Name is Nobody