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Event report: Winter Nights (Concordia of the Snows)
The people down here in Concordia of the Snows (aka Albany) have been trying to get me down to Winter Nights for years. This year, the stars finally aligned and I was able to come.
The short version: I didn't win, but I had lots of fun. Also, my allergies were affected by something at the site and now I'm all congested and asthmatic.
I left Montreal early to avoid the construction on the Champlain Bridge and the long-weekend rush-hour traffic, and arrived and Grim and Isabelle's house in the mid-afternoon. Isabelle and I had tea while we waited for Grim to come home (and oh, the tea collection! -- truly these are people after my own heart). Eventually, he did, and then the three of us went out for dinner before arriving at the site to help with set-up.
I must give them credit, the site for Winter Nights is lovely. Wood-paneled walls, and almost everything else was well-covered. The area where the bardic competition was taking place was extremely well done up, so that suspension of disbelief was easy, especially at night when it was candle-lit.
Anyway. Set-up with the Vestfell people took us until around 10 or so, at which point we had a very short bardic workshop. Mhari (pronounced "Vari," a girl doomed to never have her name pronounced right in court, ever) performed a song, Rebecca did a very funny story (the punchline being a repetition of: "That's wonderful/terrible news!" "No, 'tisn't!"), and I performed "The Jolly Butcher" by Great Big Sea, because I'd promised Toki at Pennsic that I'd memorize it for him. The various bards there suggested that I could possibly even perform it at the competition or at a circle, but I suspect I won't, unless it's the sort of circle where we're also pulling out Stan Rogers.
Came back to Grim and Isabelle's place and promptly fell asleep on their air mattress, not to be awakened until the next morning.
Saturday morning dawned and Grim and I eventually made our way out of the house for breakfast. Isabelle had already left, because she had a work shift all day and would only be arriving on-site towards feast time. We arrived at the site around 9-ish, ate our breakfast, and helped get the last-minute set-up done.
The bardic competition -- the main focus of the event -- started around 10:00 or 10:30. At that time, we had about nine competitors, most in the expert category. There were only two intermediates -- me and Lorita -- and we decided for the sake of variety to "challenge up." (i.e. Compete against the experts in exchange for an extra point each time we performed, win or lose.) By the end of the day, I think there were twenty competitors, and everyone had performed twice, which is quite the feat.
The first time I performed was against Lady Judith the Uncertain. She performed a story about a man trying to show his wife who's boss and winding up with a pot of soup on his head, so I followed that up with Ken Theriot's "The Feast Song." It went over better than I was expecting, with lots of laughter, and I won that round.
Later in the day (*much* later in the day), I performed again. This time, I was called to go head to head with Zoph, former (current?) bardic of the Midrealm. I knew when I heard her name that I was going to lose that round. I have never heard Zoph do anything less than amazing. I went out with Lisa Theriot's "Seek the Reaper," did decently well, but Zoph did indeed win that round. (She actually won both the expert category and the entire competition, so I don't mind losing to her.)
The last round of the day before the winners were tallied was between Master Grim and Master Christian. It was, in fact, a "by," meaning that Christian was the only one who hadn't performed twice that day, so Grim wasn't competing for points. Grim came out with a stunningly good story intermixed with Norse-style verse. I thought for sure he was a shoe-in. Then Christian came out with a filk he'd written only hours previously about something that had happened at the competition (Lucien using a bucket as a bodhran), and I really, really, REALLY didn't envy the judges.
There was a tie-breaker for first place in both the intermediate and advanced categories. In the intermediate it was Katrusha (who performed a great Baba Yaga piece and won the intermediate category) versus... I want to say Lucien, but I may be wrong. In the expert category was William (performing a great story about Prometheus and Epimetheus) and Zoph (performing the "What will do you when your king calls" story that she performed at the East-Mid circle at Pennsic). The winner in the novice category was Rebecca.
The competition wrapped up around 4, and we formed a small (though it rapidly grew larger) "pick, pass, or play" circle. No points, no pressure. I performed my Latin "Wheels on the Bus," just because it seemed appropriate at the time, and then I did the "Love and Madness" story I stole from Hobbes (aka "The Emotions' Hide and Seek"), which went over quite well. I was taking notes all day, and now have a list of new songs I want to learn. Yay!
Feast, around 6, was a rare beast in the SCA: only a single remove. (Plus a sideboard dessert, but that doesn't count.) I ate as though it were a multiple-course feast, i.e. much too fast, but everything was great. There was bread with multiple types of butters and sauces, a chicken dish, carrots (surprisingly tasty), vegetables with bacon, and a very yummy stew. Dessert was some absolutely delicious apple tarts and a hot drink made with honey and spices. (Non-alcoholic; the site was dry.)
After dinner we all settled down to another bardic circle. (Yes, another one. Yay, bardic!) Actually, I listened to a single song, then got inspired. Master Christian was sitting next to me, trying to come up with a Norse-style version of "I'm a Little Tea Pot" (don't ask), and I got inspired by the brazier in front of me. It was one of those portable fire-pits, but instead of being filled with logs, there was a tray of tea-lights on it. So I excused myself from the hall, spent fifteen minutes or so zenning a few verses about the candle-fire, and then came back to perform it. It's a silly little piece that I'll probably never perform again and probably won't even bother putting into my bard book, but I'll post it online for those who are interested. (Look for it in a few days.)
At that circle I also did "No Longer Seventeen" (because we'd been speaking about it at dinner, and there were a number of other young-looking attendees at the event) and "The Baron and the Troubadour," which I stole from Cariadoc of the Bow and is all about why you shouldn't cheat your performers.
Around 9:30, the circle ended for Concordia court, where Baron Angus thanked Aoife for being his baronial bard for the past year (as well as the royal bard) and invited Lady Jacquline to be his new baronial bard. Vivat for her! She looked so shocked when her name was announced! But it's well deserved: over the course of the day she had been really, really wonderful, performing on violin and guitar, singing, and just generally being awesome.
In fact, pretty much everyone was awesome. It was a great collection of performers, and my jaw was on the floor for most of the day. Vivant to everyone who stepped up their game for the event! You guys are amazing. I'll have some thoughts a little later on the format of the competition in general (an "ox-hide" tournament, where competitors are paired off against each other), but that'll be for a different post. For now, I'm just amazed and tickled at everyone who came out to perform.
I should probably mention at this point that my asthma started to kick in around 3 o'clock. I'd been told that the site sets off mould allergies, and I'm hit or miss on those. So around 3, I took my inhaler. And then again around 8:30. And then again at 10:30, after Isabelle and I had left the site to get some very strong tea. It was at the stage of being annoying but not anything too serious, so we went over to the post-revel at Aoife's house.
The post-revel was great. There were a few serious performances (Zoph doing "We Are One" comes immediately to mind), but mostly it was "No Sh*t, there I was" stories and the occasional "No Sh*t, there HE was" stories. I got to retell some of my favourite Hrothgar stories that I learned from John McGuire, and it was just generally a very nice, light-hearted atmosphere. (Note for anyone wishing to preserve their sanity: If Toki ever asks you if you like "Manwiches," just say no. Trust me on this one.)
The post-revel closed out around 1:30, and Grim drove me home. And here started my ordeal of trying to go to sleep. Between the very strong tea I'd drunk at 11, the residual emotions from the day, and (most importantly) my asthma, I tossed and turned and turned and tossed for a long time. In the end, I had to pull out one of my very oldest tricks: an hour-long nature sounds CD that I used as falling-asleep music when I was a teenager. Pretty much, any white noise would have done: I just needed something to cover up the sound of my very slight wheeze. Thankfully, between that and the box of kleenex I'd stolen from the side room, I got to sleep sometime before the CD ended, so sometime between 2:30 and 3:30.
I was up this morning around 8 or so. The sun shines directly onto my bed, and besides, the congestion and asthma had caught up with me again. A half-hour later, I conceded defeat and got up to take a shower. Then I sat down to find my computer's battery had completely drained (I had to unplug it to play the CD, and was hoping it would go to sleep afterwards, but apparently it didn't). Plugged it back in, did some writing, wished desperately that Grim and Isabelle had wi-fi (funny, no amount of wishing manifested a wireless router, so I had to make do with offline), and just generally let my breathing go back to normal.
After everyone had woken up (for whatever value of "woken up" you use before coffee), I had breakfast with Grim, Isabelle, Aoife, Toki, and Zoph. It was very nice: good food, good conversation, and we even helped Zoph with some of the details of a story she's working on.
And then, at 12:45, it was back on the road to Montreal. An uneventful trip back, with a fast and painless border crossing (thanks, border gods!), and not even the construction I was dreading on the Champlain Bridge. The drive was four hours almost to the minute. Put some stuff away, took a shower, and now I've got 20 minutes before people come over for gaming. Oh, the busy life I lead.
The short version: I didn't win, but I had lots of fun. Also, my allergies were affected by something at the site and now I'm all congested and asthmatic.
I left Montreal early to avoid the construction on the Champlain Bridge and the long-weekend rush-hour traffic, and arrived and Grim and Isabelle's house in the mid-afternoon. Isabelle and I had tea while we waited for Grim to come home (and oh, the tea collection! -- truly these are people after my own heart). Eventually, he did, and then the three of us went out for dinner before arriving at the site to help with set-up.
I must give them credit, the site for Winter Nights is lovely. Wood-paneled walls, and almost everything else was well-covered. The area where the bardic competition was taking place was extremely well done up, so that suspension of disbelief was easy, especially at night when it was candle-lit.
Anyway. Set-up with the Vestfell people took us until around 10 or so, at which point we had a very short bardic workshop. Mhari (pronounced "Vari," a girl doomed to never have her name pronounced right in court, ever) performed a song, Rebecca did a very funny story (the punchline being a repetition of: "That's wonderful/terrible news!" "No, 'tisn't!"), and I performed "The Jolly Butcher" by Great Big Sea, because I'd promised Toki at Pennsic that I'd memorize it for him. The various bards there suggested that I could possibly even perform it at the competition or at a circle, but I suspect I won't, unless it's the sort of circle where we're also pulling out Stan Rogers.
Came back to Grim and Isabelle's place and promptly fell asleep on their air mattress, not to be awakened until the next morning.
Saturday morning dawned and Grim and I eventually made our way out of the house for breakfast. Isabelle had already left, because she had a work shift all day and would only be arriving on-site towards feast time. We arrived at the site around 9-ish, ate our breakfast, and helped get the last-minute set-up done.
The bardic competition -- the main focus of the event -- started around 10:00 or 10:30. At that time, we had about nine competitors, most in the expert category. There were only two intermediates -- me and Lorita -- and we decided for the sake of variety to "challenge up." (i.e. Compete against the experts in exchange for an extra point each time we performed, win or lose.) By the end of the day, I think there were twenty competitors, and everyone had performed twice, which is quite the feat.
The first time I performed was against Lady Judith the Uncertain. She performed a story about a man trying to show his wife who's boss and winding up with a pot of soup on his head, so I followed that up with Ken Theriot's "The Feast Song." It went over better than I was expecting, with lots of laughter, and I won that round.
Later in the day (*much* later in the day), I performed again. This time, I was called to go head to head with Zoph, former (current?) bardic of the Midrealm. I knew when I heard her name that I was going to lose that round. I have never heard Zoph do anything less than amazing. I went out with Lisa Theriot's "Seek the Reaper," did decently well, but Zoph did indeed win that round. (She actually won both the expert category and the entire competition, so I don't mind losing to her.)
The last round of the day before the winners were tallied was between Master Grim and Master Christian. It was, in fact, a "by," meaning that Christian was the only one who hadn't performed twice that day, so Grim wasn't competing for points. Grim came out with a stunningly good story intermixed with Norse-style verse. I thought for sure he was a shoe-in. Then Christian came out with a filk he'd written only hours previously about something that had happened at the competition (Lucien using a bucket as a bodhran), and I really, really, REALLY didn't envy the judges.
There was a tie-breaker for first place in both the intermediate and advanced categories. In the intermediate it was Katrusha (who performed a great Baba Yaga piece and won the intermediate category) versus... I want to say Lucien, but I may be wrong. In the expert category was William (performing a great story about Prometheus and Epimetheus) and Zoph (performing the "What will do you when your king calls" story that she performed at the East-Mid circle at Pennsic). The winner in the novice category was Rebecca.
The competition wrapped up around 4, and we formed a small (though it rapidly grew larger) "pick, pass, or play" circle. No points, no pressure. I performed my Latin "Wheels on the Bus," just because it seemed appropriate at the time, and then I did the "Love and Madness" story I stole from Hobbes (aka "The Emotions' Hide and Seek"), which went over quite well. I was taking notes all day, and now have a list of new songs I want to learn. Yay!
Feast, around 6, was a rare beast in the SCA: only a single remove. (Plus a sideboard dessert, but that doesn't count.) I ate as though it were a multiple-course feast, i.e. much too fast, but everything was great. There was bread with multiple types of butters and sauces, a chicken dish, carrots (surprisingly tasty), vegetables with bacon, and a very yummy stew. Dessert was some absolutely delicious apple tarts and a hot drink made with honey and spices. (Non-alcoholic; the site was dry.)
After dinner we all settled down to another bardic circle. (Yes, another one. Yay, bardic!) Actually, I listened to a single song, then got inspired. Master Christian was sitting next to me, trying to come up with a Norse-style version of "I'm a Little Tea Pot" (don't ask), and I got inspired by the brazier in front of me. It was one of those portable fire-pits, but instead of being filled with logs, there was a tray of tea-lights on it. So I excused myself from the hall, spent fifteen minutes or so zenning a few verses about the candle-fire, and then came back to perform it. It's a silly little piece that I'll probably never perform again and probably won't even bother putting into my bard book, but I'll post it online for those who are interested. (Look for it in a few days.)
At that circle I also did "No Longer Seventeen" (because we'd been speaking about it at dinner, and there were a number of other young-looking attendees at the event) and "The Baron and the Troubadour," which I stole from Cariadoc of the Bow and is all about why you shouldn't cheat your performers.
Around 9:30, the circle ended for Concordia court, where Baron Angus thanked Aoife for being his baronial bard for the past year (as well as the royal bard) and invited Lady Jacquline to be his new baronial bard. Vivat for her! She looked so shocked when her name was announced! But it's well deserved: over the course of the day she had been really, really wonderful, performing on violin and guitar, singing, and just generally being awesome.
In fact, pretty much everyone was awesome. It was a great collection of performers, and my jaw was on the floor for most of the day. Vivant to everyone who stepped up their game for the event! You guys are amazing. I'll have some thoughts a little later on the format of the competition in general (an "ox-hide" tournament, where competitors are paired off against each other), but that'll be for a different post. For now, I'm just amazed and tickled at everyone who came out to perform.
I should probably mention at this point that my asthma started to kick in around 3 o'clock. I'd been told that the site sets off mould allergies, and I'm hit or miss on those. So around 3, I took my inhaler. And then again around 8:30. And then again at 10:30, after Isabelle and I had left the site to get some very strong tea. It was at the stage of being annoying but not anything too serious, so we went over to the post-revel at Aoife's house.
The post-revel was great. There were a few serious performances (Zoph doing "We Are One" comes immediately to mind), but mostly it was "No Sh*t, there I was" stories and the occasional "No Sh*t, there HE was" stories. I got to retell some of my favourite Hrothgar stories that I learned from John McGuire, and it was just generally a very nice, light-hearted atmosphere. (Note for anyone wishing to preserve their sanity: If Toki ever asks you if you like "Manwiches," just say no. Trust me on this one.)
The post-revel closed out around 1:30, and Grim drove me home. And here started my ordeal of trying to go to sleep. Between the very strong tea I'd drunk at 11, the residual emotions from the day, and (most importantly) my asthma, I tossed and turned and turned and tossed for a long time. In the end, I had to pull out one of my very oldest tricks: an hour-long nature sounds CD that I used as falling-asleep music when I was a teenager. Pretty much, any white noise would have done: I just needed something to cover up the sound of my very slight wheeze. Thankfully, between that and the box of kleenex I'd stolen from the side room, I got to sleep sometime before the CD ended, so sometime between 2:30 and 3:30.
I was up this morning around 8 or so. The sun shines directly onto my bed, and besides, the congestion and asthma had caught up with me again. A half-hour later, I conceded defeat and got up to take a shower. Then I sat down to find my computer's battery had completely drained (I had to unplug it to play the CD, and was hoping it would go to sleep afterwards, but apparently it didn't). Plugged it back in, did some writing, wished desperately that Grim and Isabelle had wi-fi (funny, no amount of wishing manifested a wireless router, so I had to make do with offline), and just generally let my breathing go back to normal.
After everyone had woken up (for whatever value of "woken up" you use before coffee), I had breakfast with Grim, Isabelle, Aoife, Toki, and Zoph. It was very nice: good food, good conversation, and we even helped Zoph with some of the details of a story she's working on.
And then, at 12:45, it was back on the road to Montreal. An uneventful trip back, with a fast and painless border crossing (thanks, border gods!), and not even the construction I was dreading on the Champlain Bridge. The drive was four hours almost to the minute. Put some stuff away, took a shower, and now I've got 20 minutes before people come over for gaming. Oh, the busy life I lead.