PSEUDONYMING (COMES A TIME)

There was a time (a long time ago) when I thought of renaming myself for artistic and literary purposes “Claire Obscure.”

That idea was either supplanted or supplemented (I can’t exactly remember which; it was a long time ago) by another nom-de-plume, “Dottore Chiaroscuro.”  I remember exactly where I was when that idea came to me.  I was walking past a mysterious doorway in Rome during my only visit there.

But “Carlos Danger”?   Never ever.

Neil Young -- Comes A Time (Link)

WHEN IN ROME, 1788

Often a new procession increases the general crush.  A dozen Pulcinelle, for example, assemble, elect a king, crown him, put a sceptre in his hand, seat him in a decorated carriage, and accompany him along the Corso, with music and loud cheers.  Now one perceives that each of them is wearing his own individual variation of this commonest kind of fancy dress.  One wears a wig; another a bonnet, and another a birdcage on his head instead of a cap, in which a pair of birds, dressed up as an abbate and as a lady, are hopping about on their perches. 
  
  

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Italian Journey (1786-1788), translated by W.H. Auden and Elizabeth Mayer, New York, Pantheon Press, 1962.

Roma Aeterna

The sun
Is warm to-day,
O Romulus, and on
Thine olden Palatine the birds
Still sing.