Wednesday 31 July 2013

On Whether Martial Arts Are Sports

A question that's come up a few times, both in my SCA experience and my previous martial arts training, is whether martial arts can be considered as sports.

The debate is often phrased disparagingly and aimed at other martial arts, to differentiate your own, clearly superior form from theirs. In the Taekwon-Do school of which I was a member, it was used to differentiate their own, "pure" form of the art from the other, clearly lesser, sporting forms. In the SCA, there are occasional flare-ups on both sides of the debate, between those who see tournaments as competetive sporting activities and those who see tournaments as almost moving meditation.

The first matter in establishing a position on this is defining what we mean by sport. The OED defines sport thusly: "4. a. An activity involving physical exertion and skill, esp. (particularly in modern use) one regulated by set rules or customs in which an individual or team competes against another or others." Given this definition, competition is implied, but not strictly required.

So, for the Taekwon-Do school mentioned, its activities do involve physical exertion and skill, but given the near-fanatical objection to any entry into tournaments (sometimes even phrased as entering tournaments being a road to expulsion from the school), it is the competition implied that's objected to. However, I'd argue that there is great competition within the school, as reaching a belt sooner gives seniority, which in the hierarchical ranking present in the school, can be quite important to those of a competetive bent.

Within the SCA's martial activities, the matter is somewhat more clear. There is physical exertion to a great degree, skill beyond what I can even comprehend some days, and open and exciting competition. For the most part of the participants, it's therefore a sport under this definition.

There will always be exceptions to the competetive side, such as those who choose not to enter tournaments, and focus instead on bettering themselves and others. However, even in their case, the exertion and skill is clearly present.

Despite what your own focus within the martial art of your choice may be, whether it is tournament play, melees and war fighting, or just improving your own coordination and skill, I believe that it is a sport.

Please note, I do not include any of the denigrating meanings of sport. I use my fencing as moving meditation, and sometimes to my cost. When I fight, my mind clears completely, reactions and training take over and I find myself filling a gap in my opponent's defence before I've consciously seen it.

Saturday 27 July 2013

On Buying vs Making

When it comes to garb, armour, toys, tools, and any of the other items of the material culture of our lives in the SCA, there are generally two ways to go about acquiring things. You can throw money at the problem, or throw time at the problem.

Throwing money at a problem is the easiest way to do it, and in a lot of ways, more period, though it doesn't work for everything, and there's a tradeoff. For the nobles and gentles of varying ranks which we represent in the SCA, they wouldn't be expected to be the artisans of the land, making every item of clothing and piece of armour that they wore. Even among those in the artisan classes in period, they would generally specialise in a particular craft, and trade the fruit of their labour for the fruit of others' labour.

The tradeoff in this, of course, is that there are greatly limited suppliers of the varying things which you may wish to acquire, who charge commensurately high prices for their skilled crafts. Also, those suppliers you can find will often be spread all over the Known World, meaning that items which require direct contact, such as garments and armour to be fitted, can be harder or impossible to achieve.

That is not to say that throwing time at a problem is the solution either. The materials will still require some investment for most projects, and the time taken to learn the skills, and then craft each item, will also be a factor.

One of the places where this debate comes up most prominently is when older, experienced members of the SCA, who are established in the workplace and earning a relatively high salary, give advice to newer members of the SCA, usually university students. There is an understandable difference of perspective here. The older members are paid a fine coin for their time, and usually know the dollar value of their time to reasonable precision, and thus to throw time at a problem IS to throw money at it, so they quite reasonably choose to cut out the middle-man and save themselves the effort. For the younger members, however, their time is often valued much lower, if valued at all in an economic sense, therefore it makes sense for them to spend some labour on the craft, rather than spend their labour in a dreary environment to gain the money to throw at the problem. In both cases, the elimination of the middle-man is the goal, but with opposite results.

I hold a somewhat middle-ground perspective on this. For most of my work, I prefer to put my time into the effort, especially in the production of clothing (with the assistance of my good Lady). However, there are several things, such as our upcoming acquisition of a much larger pavillion, where we have decided that the increased price is worth the coin: we would be unlikely to get the task right on our first attempt, and after buying more material to repair the mistakes, and spending the amount of time to learn the art of tent-making and apply it to our canvas, we can honestly consider the purchase a bargain compared to the "saving" of doing it ourselves.

Wednesday 24 July 2013

On the Care and Feeding of Colleges

A subject that is quite close to me right now is the ways in which Colleges, those university-based branches of the SCA, are like and unalike the other branches of the SCA. This is the first in a series of posts on the matter of Colleges, as there is far too much for one post.

I joined the SCA through the College of St Aldhelm, and also had the variable pleasure of leading that group for something more than two years. I'm currently still a member, and having to resist the urge to keep leading the group despite having passed the key to my successor.

Most of my experience is with a fairly small, old College. Membership tends to wax and wane, getting as low as 2 or 3 over the summer some years, and getting as high as a dozen or more after some good firm recruitment.

All Colleges operate under a parent group, be that a Barony, Canton, Shire, or any such geographic group. The relationship can, at times, be a tense one, with the goodwill of both sides being stretched by competing needs of the two groups. Ideally, a College should act as a feed-in system for membership in the geographic group of which they are part, and if done well, this can be a benefit both to the College and its parent group.

In my experience with the College, those new members who only get involved in College activities tend to drop out of the SCA as soon as they graduate, or sometimes as soon as the exam period hits, where those members who find at least one activity outside of the College to participate in, whether it's archery, fencing or heavy combat training, the group's A&S activities, or even being an officer in the parent group, tend to continue in the SCA for longer.

However, when encouraging College members to join the wider parent group, it's important that they not be encouraged so hard that they stop attending College activities entirely, because to bring in new members, a College has to have a reasonably-sized and friendly group of existing members, regularly attending the College's activities, otherwise you're left with a group of new people who don't know anyone in the SCA, which makes it hard for them to become part of the SCA.

One of the important things for keeping College members attending College meetings is there being regular, and interesting, activities at them, which is somewhat complicated to arrange at times, and shall be the subject of another post.

Saturday 20 July 2013

On the Beginning of Period

The ending point of the SCA's period is fairly easy to define, within a range of about fifty years (and on a strict reading, down to a range of three years). The beginning of period, however, is somewhat trickier to define to any accuracy.

The SCA governing documents define period as
"The era used by the Society as the base for its re-creation activities. The Society is based on the life and culture of the landed nobility of pre-17th Century Western Europe, focusing on the Middle Ages and the Renaissance."

Later on, in "A Brief Introduction to the Society for Creative Anachonism", it continues with this:
"For Society members, most of the world, and all of the centuries prior to the 17th, can serve as a source for personal research. However, the further you go from the core of Medieval and Renaissance Europe, the less the environment we offer will resemble what someone of your time and country would find natural or homelike. For example, you can be an Asian or African guest at a European court, but you cannot expect others to share your special interests - like any long-term visitor in a foreign land, you are the one who will have to adapt to the customs you find around you. Since members have free choice of what areas they will explore, it follows that Society branches cannot decide to specialize in a specific time and place, since that would make it hard for members there to pursue their own interests in other times and places."
From these, we can see that there is no hard "earliest" mark for period. However, in all of the definitions, there is a focus on medieval and renaissance Europe. For example, the Roman Republic or Empire is European, and clearly pre-17th century, but I would also argue that it is also not compatible with a medieval setting, as it was the Frankish and Gothic barbarians who overthrew Rome who have become the cultures of our period. Going even further, so little was known of the ancient Egyptian culture (until the discovery of the Rosetta Stone in 1799) that having one of them present in a medieval court would be confusingly obtrusive at best.

There are various numbers thrown about, from 600 (which gives a nice even thousand-year period), or similar arbitrary numbers.

While I cannot offer a definitive answer, I can definitively say that there is no definitive answer, nor is there likely to be one. For my own judgements, I place the mark at 476 AD, when Romulus Augustulus, the last Emperor of the Western Roman Empire, was deposed. This is one of the common markers of the start of the middle ages and end of the classical period.

Please, no bunny fur cave-man bikinis.

Wednesday 17 July 2013

On Why I Fence


The subject of why people do the various things in the SCA that they do comes up now and then, and the particular one lately that I have seen is "why do we fence?" It's an interesting question, and I've been thinking about it, and as best as I can tell, here are my reasons.

The only sports I've ever enjoyed participating in have been martial arts (the question of whether martial arts are sports or not is a complicated one which I won't answer right now). I started in Taekwon-Do, where I spent five years in a non-tourney based school. I was feeling rather dissatisfied with the school's politics when I joined the SCA, and after one fencing lesson, I found myself not bothering to go back to Taekwon-Do training, and haven't since.

I enjoy the confidence building and sense of individual achievement that comes with participating in some form of martial arts. As a physical activity in general, my personal fitness has also improved, along with co-ordination and concentration.

There is some attraction in the grading system present in many martial arts, including the belt ranking hierarchy of Taekwon-Do or the Guild of Defence ranks of fencing, though it wasn't a conscious part of my decision to participate in either activity.

Why fencing, instead of heavy combat? Partially, it's based on my period of interest, which is mainly the 16th century, when the combat of war was becoming pike and musket, and gentlemen with rapiers roamed the taverns and alleys. Partially, it's the lack of armour and increased mobility. After five years bouncing around a Taekwon-Do hall in pyjamas, clanking about in plate wasn't as appealing. Partially, I must admit some influence from swashbuckling movies and the like. I had also previously planned to take up modern fencing (before joining the SCA), but never got around to it.

Initially, I had planned to do both heavy combat and rapier equally. But, when the expense of starting two different combat forms at once loomed over me, and I had to pick between them for which to start first, the deicision basically boiled down to which one I had more fun doing. In the days before the formal beginner's course for heavy combat, I was already approaching full speed fencing combat, and there was... some basic pell work in heavy combat. I chose the one that let me fight sooner.

Eventually, I plan to take up heavy fighting, but gear is expensive, and it's a big time commitment, so energy has been hard to come by.

Thursday 11 July 2013

On Being a Court Herald

One of my favourite activities in the SCA is acting as a court herald, whether a small Baronial court with maybe ten people, or a Royal court for Their Majesties and two hundred of their populace.

The main part of the work as court herald is fairly simple. You're the loudspeaker system, so that the Crown doesn't have to strain their voice all the time. You're the schedule-keeper, so that the Crown doesn't have to hide behind paper to check things every time. And finally, you're there to add some pomp and fanciness to court.

There are occasions when court needs a little less pomp, and a little more pump, to keep the populace engaged. In situations like these, I urge you... If there must be comedy, the herald should play the straight man.

There can be complexities when acting as court herald, which is where a good herald can show their skill to make things flow smoothly. And flow is the operative word: Court should flow from one item to the next, without great pauses to let the populace feel bored in.

If someone is far from court when they're called in? Perhaps move to the next item, and get back to it. If someone brings up extra business as you're trying to close court? Too late, perhaps next time.

In all of this, however, remember that the Crown are the centre of attention, not the herald (no matter how much it feels like it sometimes). If the Crown want to wait for someone, or allow last-minute business, or even engage in some light capering? It's their show.

If you would like a more in-depth look at the life of a court herald, please see Court in the Act, an article I wrote which was published on the Florilegium.

Wednesday 10 July 2013

On the Blog Itself

Hi everyone, welcome to Fiat Vox.

My name is Alexander a la Fontayne, and I shall be attempting to provide weekly posts about a number of topics as concern the Society for Creative Anachronism based on my own experiences, including heraldry, fencing, running groups, stewarding events, and a plethora of things as take my fancy. I may also provide information on the various projects I'm working on.

The blog title is my personal heraldic motto, a sort of play on Fiat Lux, "Let there be light" (or "Let light be made" if you prefer the Wycliffe version) and Vox (Latin for "voice"). I'm reasonably sure it's grammatically sound, but I am not a Latin scholar.

In general, I will be assuming that my readers are familiar with the SCA, but in case you aren't, the SCA is one of the largest medieval and renaissance re-creation groups, with a time period reaching forward to the year 1600, and as far back... well, some say 600, some say further, it's a point of some debate that will probably be the subject of a post at some stage or another.

All opinions contained herein are my own (unless stated otherwise).