The Ephemera of Experience

I got to see Lämning again three weeks ago!

I know Ren faire season is over in this part of the country, but the local one decided to open up for three weekends to do a Yuletide faire. The last weekend just wrapped up, and it was cold. Luckily they were inside, and there were heaters chugging away.

After writing The Instinct of Collection, I’ve been thinking about the ideas that story engendered. Or maybe they were already there in my mind, under layers of stress and the mundanities of living? It’s certainly been a stressful year in many ways. I will focus on one thread of hope and determination, because I don’t feel like succumbing to the darkness just yet.

(And you really don’t want to listen to a soundtrack of thrash, full of lots of cursing, while I take a baseball bat and beat a cinder block in frustration. Entertaining? Yes. Exhausting? Also yes.)

It’s hard to focus. So much fear for the future. So, as always, I look to the past. For warning, for instruction, for insight.

There are those that would have me stop right now. I am their biggest threat – a woman with brains. They can go stuff it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8gNHWYug88

Es Warb tells the story of star-crossed lovers, who cannot marry because the King will not give permission for his daughter to marry a knight. The knight is banished, and as they depart forever, his anguished heart tells her to have hope, that they may meet again in another life down the path of time.

I’ve been thinking a lot about anguish, especially now. And what place a woman has in it all, when governments are telling me what I can and can’t do with my own body. They can get stuffed too.

I will think about one of the things I gained back this year, and how it relates to our deep desire to pin a fleeting experience to some more substantial substance – picture, souvenir, CD, something that makes fickle memory more real. More substantial than dreams.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAMm1pjeA9o

El Rey de Francia tells the story of a woman dreaming instead of doing her work, but she has a wonderful dream, and her mother offers to interpret it for her. She will marry a prince, but the prince’s brothers are a threat to her happiness. As one who is having many warning dreams about possible futures, I can very much relate to this mix of messages.

I’m sure you can recall those poor fans who went to a Taylor Swift concert, and don’t even remember being there. Mom gave me some of the most sage advice for my wedding: remember. Experience it, don’t fret about what goes wrong.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcS88F1jR4U

With every experience, I try to remember that. I try to remember.

So, while listening to the familiar songs of Lämning, and enjoying the awesome blend of voice and instruments, I did my best to be in the moment.

The cool across my neck, from a gap in the wall behind me. Contrasted to the propane heater doing its best to warm the room. Looking over the audience, and their varied reactions, guessing who were fans and who just wandered in. Kids bobbing along in time to the music, to Jeremy’s spouse jamming out in the back. To my own enjoyment of live music, and the dual voices, the beautiful mix of melody and harmony (Jeremy and Jordan are lyric tenors, and I just melt when it’s right. And with Lämning, it’s right. So I have a thing for lyric tenors; it’s one of the reasons I fell hard for my husband.) And Marshall on box drum and other sundry percussion. I’m persnickety about what music I like, and dang this just works for me. And it doesn’t help that Jordan is playing a nyckelharpa, and there are very few instruments as sexy as that. So pardon me if I swoon into a cloak-swaddled puddle in the corner, living in my ephemeral moment.

This was one of their performances this summer, with many friends joining them on stage. Jeremy has made many friends on the Ren faire circuit, and he is one of the few who can band them together into an amazing unit with little practice. It’s a full set, but worth the listen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1t7uGKEZeQ

Jeremy’s a deep thinker, and it shows in his original songs. I did send him a link to my previous story, and he was very kind in thanking me for the shout-out. We talked for a bit about life on the faire circuit, and this was one of my comments to him:

“I think the more ephemeral the experience, the harder it is to articulate in words. And words are slippery, even at the best of times. Maybe I'm wrong on this last part, because my own time in a drama troupe on the road was mumble years (lifetimes) ago, and the world has changed, but I think it comes down to the specific magic that life on the road brings. It's usually chasing fame, or chasing a muse. The first leaves a string of upset people after having been stepped on; the second leaves a string of real relationships that strengthen the chain of connection, but it's so much harder than chasing fame. The difference between performing, and sharing an experience. And you have seen that difference from the inside, I think. (Well, I'm certain you know, because it shows.) That's why I love coming to see you perform live, because the realness is felt. Not in a gushing fangirl way, I hope, but in an experience-sharing way. Touch, loop away like those chain links, loop back again.“

That got me thinking about other experiences I’ve had this year, portions of my life I’ve taken up again after lockdown, plague, politics, health damage, and death tried to take them away. I finally got to return to the SCA and teach glass beads again at two different events. It was so good to get out there and share my passion for beads! And watch people run off to show others what they’ve made, so excited at what they created out of glass rods and applied heat. It is an amazing feeling, an intoxicating feeling, to be a part of that journey. And one student, absorbing any information she could, so she could set up her own torch. Because the only thing her mostly nonverbal autistic kiddo ever showed excitement for, was fire. And I and the two other teachers gave all we had, and our contact information, because if I can be one of the agents of healing and communication, you’d better bet I’ll give it all in full measure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fngvQS_PmQ

It was also amazingly awesome to be at two events with two kings on the thrones. Funny, not a lot of nasty homophobic people were floating around. Seems they stayed home. What a shame. Moving on…

I got to experience four days at Ren faires, when I hadn’t set foot in one for years. (Well, I got to Maryland Ren faire last year, I tend to lump that experience in with this year. So, five…) I am also a great fan of Wolgemut, which why hubby and I went to both Maryland and New York’s Ren faires. There is nothing, and I mean nothing, like seeing performers live! The drums call you in, and the bagpipes join the dance, and then there’s sackbut and rauschpfeife… People talk about the skirling of the pipes like it’s a negative, a wailing or something. I don’t find it irritating, so I don’t understand. Again, the blend of music, with occasional lyrics, just works for me. I’ve been privileged to see them live since… oh, about fifteen years ago at Pennsic. I’ve said it before, the drummer calls the tune and is the heartbeat of the music, and if we are to dance, we dance to the tune set by that infectious beat. Whether it’s a call to action, or dance, or contemplative movement, it’s the drum that starts the path, and then ends it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0gPUzbCzm8

Especially now, we need to decide what type of music we listen to. Does it call us to action? Inaction? Ignorance? Intelligence? War? We will have to navigate our music choices, our purchases, our decisions very carefully these coming years if we are to survive, much less thrive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzZ1qmXZBuY

Both Poland and Ukraine claim this song as their own. I would say there is plenty of room in this world for both countries to claim it. Jeremy also does an original song to the health and strength of Ukraine, Sunflowers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqfFPYeBXu8

I find it interesting that one of the oldest tunes we have (in the Western tradition) is Ai Vis Lo Lop, an Occitan lullabye. But like all songs, it has changed over time, and once translated, it is an observance of those in power reveling in their dominance over the poor.

Some things don’t change.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yg8yctcGVXc

In the event that your action is a need to drink for a while, to forget, shockingly (and I say that with the greatest of layers of sarcasm), many Medieval tunes that survived are drinking songs. When this is sung in French, the chorus says something along the lines of “When I drink red wine, my head goes spinny spinny spinny. From now on I think I’ll stick to white wine. Friends, let’s make war on this bottle, sing and drink, my friends, sing and drink.”

Since I’m allergic to alcohol, I’ll let you to it, but I’ll help you eat some ham mentioned in the verses. But, hey, drinking song!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXKyfpsK2xQ

(You may have heard Lämning singing this in the set above. It is fun to sing along!)

And for those who are tired of the battles we have to fight, here’s one of my favorites. When the mercenaries come home, they have no money – it’s been spent in the bars. So hopefully some richer soul will pay a round? And if you listen closely, you’ll hear a new verse, one that was added for all those we’ve lost to the march of time. Owain Phyfe, you are sorely missed. Your music translations, keeping Medieval music alive and relevant, has left an indelible stamp on the musicians that have followed. I raise a glass to you, and the others we’ve lost, and I tear up every time that verse is sung. And now that your wife joined you last month, you’d better have an awesome bardic fire waiting for us on the far side, and I will bring the spiced cider to toast!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwfScvjHAs0

Ephemeral experiences. A touch, and we move on. We go home, hopefully taking the experience with us. Audiences can give the performers something that’s hard to describe: there is an exchange of appreciation. The audience knows how much practice, effort, and time that goes into perfecting the craft of public music, and in turn, the performers will give everything they have to give their audiences a good time. Something to take home with them besides pictures or even videos, a chance to see some excellent live music.

Jeremy’s original song Burning Day is on my mind a lot. I wake up from disturbing dreams most mornings, some with the scent of smoke still in my nostrils. I don’t like what I’m seeing. Burning Day isn’t a soothing balm against what may come, but it is a warning as well as encouragement. We’re going into a decade of turmoil, and we will see the disruption in the pattern of our lives. Will the Ren faire circuit survive? Will we, the audience? Time will tell. But for now, I am guided by the poignancy of flaming feathers:

I am burning to ash today

And I know it comes with pain

But I know I’ll come back to life

Reborn, restore my flight

And so may we all rise with the ephemeral phoenix.