Event report: Cooks & Bards
Oct. 9th, 2006 03:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eveglassHow to describe the weekend in a single word? Phenomenal. I have rarely been to an event where I had so much fun. My thoughts going in to the event were, "I get to spend three and a half days doing bardic with people who love doing bardic and are good at it, and being fed by people who love cooking and are good at it... how can this possibly be bad?" I was not disappointed.
I arrived on-site at around 5:30, having left Montreal at 9 am. From Montreal to Oshawa took me until 2:30 pm, the rest of the time was spent getting across rush-hour Toronto traffic (on the Friday of a long weekend, no less) and getting lost a few times after leaving the highway. But make it I did, unpacked, got into garb, and settled in to the event.
That same night, Mistress Eleanor unveiled a new bardic card game she'd come up with, which group consensus promptly named "Cardic Madness." The rules morphed over the course of the evening as we play-tested it a half-dozen times, but the general idea is to use the cards as challenges to perform bardic pieces. It was lots and lots of fun, especially for people who have decent repertoires.
I also attended the "Boreal Master Symposium." Essentially, a bunch of SCAdian academics have decided to parody the form of academic writing by discussing a hithertofore never discovered (ie: completely fictional) epic poem called "The Lay of the Rowing Bench," about a man who must row with a splinter on his seat. The papers are hilariously funny if you're actually in academia, but much less so if you're not. I've unfortunately had "The Lay of the Rowing Bench" stuck in my head numerous times this weekend.
At some point during all of this, the cooks fed us homemade pizza, and at some point later I went to bed.
Saturday dawned with frost on the ground and a nip in the air, but the site was heated and breakfast was waiting. After a few cups of tea and some pancakes, I was ready to begin a days' worth of classes.
Over the course of the day, I took seven or eight classes, mostly based on performance and improving my performance. I did an improv class, got coached by Marion of Heatherdale (mka: Heather Dale) and Eleanor on my performance of "Wild Eastman Spam," listened at Brion's feet for pearls of storytelling wisdom, and learned some basic drumming from Garraed. It was a good day.
That evening was feast. When people stood up to toast the kings and queens, we discovered that the guests in the hall hailed from eight different kingdoms. It was impressive. Feast itself was also impressive, with course on course of stupendous food, and bards singing for the hall between removes. The names of the performers would likely not mean much to most of my readers, but believe me when I say that these were all big-name bards, the sort that I would happily travel eight hours to hear.
After feast, we had a small dishwashers' bardic (wherein we washed dishes and sang, of course) and readied the hall for the first of two formal bardic circles. Saturday's theme was "party pieces," ie: pieces that you know you do well and are crowd favourites. The circle started at 11 pm with about fifty people, and took about three hours to go around once. I performed "The Man with the Long Bow," forgot one of the verses, but it seemed to go over well anyway. I finally staggered into bed at around two in the morning.
Sunday dawned much as Saturday had, and my day began in much the same way, chatting with friends over tea and breakfast.
I did a few less classes than on Saturday, but the ones I did were excellent. Heather Dale taught two of them (one a practical class on vocal projection, one on tips and tricks to enhance your performance), a really interesting class on SCA Anthropology by Master Huiginn, and a nifty roundtable discussion on promoting bardic within our own groups by Master Cerian. Montreal SCAdians reading this: I've got some cool ideas for our next circle.
Sunday night had dinner, though no feast, but the food was yet again excellent. Due to the lack of formal removes, we were able to start the bardic circle much earlier, at around 9:30. It went around twice before I went to bed at 2:30. I performed twice, once with my new sonnet ("The Sonnet is the easiest of poems") and once with my newest song, "The Wild Eastman Spam." It got rousing applause. And, while I did not receive any rings, Cerian told me he was my biggest fan (and gave me a paper-and-plastic fan to prove it), and Brion gave me a tiny horn to use as a belt favour. I was truly gratified.
By the end of the circle, I had more songs on my list of things to learn and quite a number of them stuck in my head.
And so we reach Monday morning, the last day of the event. Half the people were in mundane clothes, but that didn't stop us from doing a tandem song-writing. Eleanor had a new song at the Sunday circle which needed a bit of tweaking, and the group of people "helping" grew and grew until there were nearly a dozen bards around the table. This is what happens when you get a group of bards together in a small space, I suppose. It was fun.
Finally, just before noon I gave my goodbye hugs to all my friends, both newfound and old, and headed out to return to the world of mundania. Final verdic: awesome event.
I arrived on-site at around 5:30, having left Montreal at 9 am. From Montreal to Oshawa took me until 2:30 pm, the rest of the time was spent getting across rush-hour Toronto traffic (on the Friday of a long weekend, no less) and getting lost a few times after leaving the highway. But make it I did, unpacked, got into garb, and settled in to the event.
That same night, Mistress Eleanor unveiled a new bardic card game she'd come up with, which group consensus promptly named "Cardic Madness." The rules morphed over the course of the evening as we play-tested it a half-dozen times, but the general idea is to use the cards as challenges to perform bardic pieces. It was lots and lots of fun, especially for people who have decent repertoires.
I also attended the "Boreal Master Symposium." Essentially, a bunch of SCAdian academics have decided to parody the form of academic writing by discussing a hithertofore never discovered (ie: completely fictional) epic poem called "The Lay of the Rowing Bench," about a man who must row with a splinter on his seat. The papers are hilariously funny if you're actually in academia, but much less so if you're not. I've unfortunately had "The Lay of the Rowing Bench" stuck in my head numerous times this weekend.
At some point during all of this, the cooks fed us homemade pizza, and at some point later I went to bed.
Saturday dawned with frost on the ground and a nip in the air, but the site was heated and breakfast was waiting. After a few cups of tea and some pancakes, I was ready to begin a days' worth of classes.
Over the course of the day, I took seven or eight classes, mostly based on performance and improving my performance. I did an improv class, got coached by Marion of Heatherdale (mka: Heather Dale) and Eleanor on my performance of "Wild Eastman Spam," listened at Brion's feet for pearls of storytelling wisdom, and learned some basic drumming from Garraed. It was a good day.
That evening was feast. When people stood up to toast the kings and queens, we discovered that the guests in the hall hailed from eight different kingdoms. It was impressive. Feast itself was also impressive, with course on course of stupendous food, and bards singing for the hall between removes. The names of the performers would likely not mean much to most of my readers, but believe me when I say that these were all big-name bards, the sort that I would happily travel eight hours to hear.
After feast, we had a small dishwashers' bardic (wherein we washed dishes and sang, of course) and readied the hall for the first of two formal bardic circles. Saturday's theme was "party pieces," ie: pieces that you know you do well and are crowd favourites. The circle started at 11 pm with about fifty people, and took about three hours to go around once. I performed "The Man with the Long Bow," forgot one of the verses, but it seemed to go over well anyway. I finally staggered into bed at around two in the morning.
Sunday dawned much as Saturday had, and my day began in much the same way, chatting with friends over tea and breakfast.
I did a few less classes than on Saturday, but the ones I did were excellent. Heather Dale taught two of them (one a practical class on vocal projection, one on tips and tricks to enhance your performance), a really interesting class on SCA Anthropology by Master Huiginn, and a nifty roundtable discussion on promoting bardic within our own groups by Master Cerian. Montreal SCAdians reading this: I've got some cool ideas for our next circle.
Sunday night had dinner, though no feast, but the food was yet again excellent. Due to the lack of formal removes, we were able to start the bardic circle much earlier, at around 9:30. It went around twice before I went to bed at 2:30. I performed twice, once with my new sonnet ("The Sonnet is the easiest of poems") and once with my newest song, "The Wild Eastman Spam." It got rousing applause. And, while I did not receive any rings, Cerian told me he was my biggest fan (and gave me a paper-and-plastic fan to prove it), and Brion gave me a tiny horn to use as a belt favour. I was truly gratified.
By the end of the circle, I had more songs on my list of things to learn and quite a number of them stuck in my head.
And so we reach Monday morning, the last day of the event. Half the people were in mundane clothes, but that didn't stop us from doing a tandem song-writing. Eleanor had a new song at the Sunday circle which needed a bit of tweaking, and the group of people "helping" grew and grew until there were nearly a dozen bards around the table. This is what happens when you get a group of bards together in a small space, I suppose. It was fun.
Finally, just before noon I gave my goodbye hugs to all my friends, both newfound and old, and headed out to return to the world of mundania. Final verdic: awesome event.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-10 11:50 pm (UTC)Wow
Date: 2006-10-12 04:31 am (UTC)- Michael Alewright
Re: Wow
Date: 2006-10-12 12:20 pm (UTC)Incidentally, "hi!"