How To Disappear Completely

In which I convey the impression that I am cool AND smart

I think my thesis topic is becoming my alter ego. People ask me what what I am writing on and once I let drop the words "Velvet Underground," their eyes light up and gasps of approval issue forth. And I find that this reaction is very similar to what often (but not always) happens when classical/popular fields overlap. The subject matter is popular enough to be deemed hip, relavent, interesting (to use a Bourdieau-ian term, full of cultural capital...and perhaps economic capital), but treated with all the marks of rigourous intellectualism (full of symbolic capital). So one gains some sort of merged love and respect from these sorts of topics, simply because the topic itself carries all of those connotations.

And so I wonder:
I am what I write?
Or I write what I am?

And somewhere in the distance I hear the mad hatter and the march hare having a tea party...

PS Here's a site that is fun, courtesy of one of the 23 Damien Howards in existance. Apparently there are ten of me. And some of them are published. I know because I've looked. It's a hard name to live up to, I tell you.