John Burridge

I'm not entirely sure what has happened, but a bunch of my routines have fallen apart.  Actually, I'm pretty sure that between school starting, fighting off a September cold, and the Shrewsbury Faire, my routines have fallen apart.  I haven't been to the gym in almost twelve days, although I have done some free-weight work at home; and my writing has been sporadic.

The Pearwood Pipers, the recorder ensemble and madrigal group I used to sing with, let me guard their pavilion while they played a gig.  

One of the props that they have is a large wooden chess set.  I set that up in front of me.  Then I pulled out a hidden bottle of soda, poured it into a ceramic goblet, and sipped it while I strummed my harp.  Under the pavilion's shade, I felt like an errant squire in an Arthurian adventure.

I was surprised at how many folks came up to learn chess or about the harp.  I played a game of Queen and Pawns with a five-year-old, and I taught a twenty-something the other pieces.  What felt like a home-school family came up and spoke with me about the harp and its tuning.

Then the Pearwoods came back with some other musician friends and began a jam session.

Shrewsbury was fun this year.  One of the acts there was a group from Washington called "The Hangman's Acre," who put folks into gaol cells on trumped-up charges.  After some theatrical taunting, the accused could get out if they did something silly (some folks had to sing "I'm a little teapot," one young boy had to dance like a pretty ballerina).

The Child decided he wanted to be locked up--mostly, I think, for the experience of being able to bribe his way out of jail--so he took his money, marched up to the gaolers, and began to tell them he wanted to be locked up.   This was outside their script, and some slightly confused gaolers shook their heads to clear them, then looked around for the parents.

We laughed and I walked up and came up with the charges of "belching at the breakfast table and extreme flatulence" while Mark and The Child wandered off to be caught.  Once the paperwork was done, the Chief Gaoler and I were off to clap the miscreant into the clink.

Apparently, near the jousting area,  The Child was having some second thoughts.  "Here, Mark," he said, "You take my cloak and wear it; that way they won't know who I am."  But we found them.

The Chief Gaoler made sure The Child wasn't too freaked out, and then went into theatrics, reading the warrant, and then marching him off the the gaol, with many cries of "Make way for a most terrible criminal!"  Mark and I followed, with cries of "Baby-sitting!" which were quickly denied by the Chief Gaoler.

The Child was put into a cell--it didn't really lock, I think it closed magnetically--the charges against him were read and then spiked to the front of the cell.

He was encouraged to use the soap in the cell, and the Chief Gaoler did some more Gaol-Theatre.   I caught The Child's eyes and patted my pockets significantly, and he remembered that he had a bribe to give the Gaoler.

"Wait!" The Gaoler said, "The charges have been dropped.  This child is pure as the driven snow!"

We protested and argued a little with him, but The Child was freed.

The Gaoler leaned forward and said, "Congratulations, my boy; you'll go far in life."

In November of 2012, we got a cat, Smokey.  Insert stories of the cat grooming us here.

January 2013.  After reading about the productivity of other writers who Arise Early, I started getting up at 5:30 to write during unprotected time.   Two weeks later I got sick.  And vacationed in New York.  The rest of the year was a battle to get up and write, which I won from about April to about October.


February 2013.  In a conscious effort to cut back my swearing at other drivers, I started saying, "bless you," instead of "damn you all to hell!"  This joins "Come on, Dover," and "Driver, why have we stopped?"   Although there's a visceral pleasure in muttering (usually) expletives, every now and I then it strikes me how ugly it makes me -- and shouldn't we all be spreading blessings to each other?  Even if they are said ironically?  Oh, who am I kidding; I still invent new circles of hell in which to condemn the people I'm forced to share the road with.


March 2013.  My short story, "The Gear Master's Wife" was chosen for publication by On the Premises.  I lucked out on this one.  The Wordo's Holiday story for December was a good match for the theme On the Premises was looking for, "Holiday."   Based on these sales, I'd say that a good relationship / married couple story does well there.

Machine cut paper projects continued.


April 2013.  I managed to start writing in the mornings again.  The sun was rising earlier, and I wrote outside so as not to wake the family with keyboard clicking.

Later in the month, I took a train to Seattle for a Clarion Mini Workshop on writing characters.  I'd say writing characters is my weakest quality as a writer (my strongest is cool ideas and world building).  There were some good pointers -- and I felt like the stupidest, slowest (and oldest) writer there (I wasn't having the best Sunday morning).  Everyone else managed to pump out short-story bits as if they were Zeus giving birth to Athena.  I felt like Peter Shaffer's Antonio Salieri in a room full of Mozarts.

Sometimes I wish I could take the full, immersive, six-week long, Clarion writing workshop.  Although it's expensive, I could apply for a scholarship.  But A) it's in Seattle, B) I'd have have to leave my job, C) I'd have to leave my family, and D) I have a feeling I'd never get any sleep.  OK, and E) I can imagine being surrounded by twenty-something Mozarts popping out Athenas while I'm bogged down in world-building in the hope that I will get a handle on the characters in the process would do wonders for my self-esteem.   Still, it seems like one of those Gateway Moments in Writing similar to Writers of the Future, where the words, "I attended the Clarion West Workshop" becomes the "open sesame!" of publishing (yes, I know it isn't).

It's times like this when my writing feels like The Seven of Pentacles from the tarot:  lots of work with no immediate gain and some fretting about the future.  And yes, I have time management issues.  And there's this sense that I'm starting writing way too late.


July 2013.  We put a deck on our house.  This is a big deal because it means we can get to the back yard more easily, and we have a sunny spot on the south side of the house that level and not too squishy after a rain.


August 2013.  After two years as a part time, temporary employee of the Psychology Department, I applied for and was accepted back into my old job with the English Department.   I was "The New Old John."  It was great to be back with the English Department team.


September 2013.  I didn't participate in the Shrewsbury Renaissance Faire.  When I first started harping there, it had been magical.  I'd felt like I'd slipped into another time.   But lately, the fair felt more and more like someone's private costume party.  Our group would dance the Abbot's Bromely Horn Dance, which I loved; but I wanted it to be a time-travelling, world-crossing ritual, and I was dancing it with folks who were doing a re-enactment, and dragging them, unknowingly, into a ritual felt increasingly wrong and difficult.

And it became more and more a thing that I did without Mark and The Child.

I didn't miss sleeping on the cold open field (along with the raggle-taggle gypsies), but I did wonder a little bit, if I was having some problem with group activities no longer giving me the enjoyment they once had, and if this were indicative of an age-thing or depression or something.


October 2013.    Late in the month, I attended a Women in Science Fiction convention at the University of Oregon.   Ursula Le Guin and Kate Wilhelm were there.  Much of the conversations were about what it was like as a woman to write, especially in the 1960's and 1970's.  The conversations about gender and orientation and writing gave me a lot to think about in terms of what I want to write.   It also reminded me of the Joanna Russ collection at the university's special collection.


November 2013.  The summer light went away, and suddenly, getting up at 5:00 to write outside (or inside) became monumentally harder.  And I wanted to stay up until 1:00 AM writing.  And it became easier for me to think in icons and design stuff than to think lexically and write.  So I made a Twelve Days of Christmas card set.

---

When I think about 2013, it was about trying to make things work.

The first third of the year felt like I was getting somewhere with my writing, and then I hit a plateau.  One difficulty I have with "writing professionally" balancing the reality of writing as a business (with its attendant time management and product-product-product) and writing as art that sustains me.

In terms of what I'd call "Maker Art," I was going gang-busters with a Silhouette Cutter-Plotter.  So, while it wasn't writing, at least I was being creative.

In terms of The Day Jobbe, the move to English was a good one.  And it was weird discovering materials and notes I'd written in 2003.

Project:  OTP Challenge (OMG, I can't believe this almost slipped under the radar.)

One of the difficulties in open air Renaissance Faire performance is that the players can often be heard quite a distance. This can be an impossible situation if you're, say, a harper trying to busk in the same county as a bag piper.

The Pearwood Pipers joined all of the madrigal singers at Shrewsbury on the main stage for a giant madrigal-fest. There's nothing quite like singing bass in the company of seven or so other accomplished bass singers.

However, several rounds of fa-la-la-la-la-ing later, the belly dancer dumbec ensemble fired up.

Let's just say Fair Philomena loses out to Fatima.

So as we prepared to sing Strike It Up Tabor, I said, "Hey, can't we sing this to the time of the belly dancers?"

And, uh, I just happened to have a tambour in my hand.

So the next thing I knew, I was shimmying in the center of the World's Fastest Rendition of Thomas Weelkes' little song.

In retrospect, I'm pretty sure that Thomas Weelkes was not born in the wagon of a traveling show. Which is too bad.

One part of the Pearwood Pipers' routine is an acted out version of "The Oyster Girl" song. One of my friends says that I play The Oyster Girl all too well. I think it's the way I hold the basket.

For this particular performance (Sunday, 10:30 AM), the Pearwoods had moved into the hay bale seating, about halfway into the house of the main stage, in order to attract more guests to our show. So my back stage changing area was a little farther than it usually is.

The previous song, "New Oysters" is about twenty bars; plenty of time for me to hurry backstage, fling a white chemise over my Renaissance garb, replace my nice hat with a rattier one sporting a mop for a wig, and stuff detachable green sleeves into my chest to create instant bosoms.

Then comes the tricky part: running off a stage, vaulting several hay bales, snagging a basket full of oysters from a fellow Pearwood Piper, and propping myself up against the central canopy pole.

In four bars.

Just in time to be "a pretty little oyster girl." (PS: "oyster girl" is Elizabethan for exactly what you think it is.)

Luckily, I did not break a leg.

The Shrewsbury management kindly allows me to organize and lead parades. One of these is the Opening Parade. Making the Opening Parade happen involves running around the Faire with deer antlers on a staff, giving three curtain calls to about one hundred people (this includes frightening the merchants who are still setting up their stalls), then leading them in parade and song at the appointed hour through the faire grounds and out through the opening gate to greet our first guests.

After we were through the gate and facing a queue of guests, there was improvisation and singing. And then I flung my arms wide and proclaimed, "...Our Faire is open!"

I looked at the ticket booth built in on the right side of the main gate.

It wasn't open.

Ergo, no guests have paid admission.

Ergo, they can't enter our Fine Faire (which is Now Open To All).

And I've just run out of pre-planned improvisational lines. I very cleverly said the first thing that came into my head, "...and the gate's closed."

Leaping like an over-caffeinated MC with a band and an audience but no stage, I pretty much assaulted the ticket booth. Pounding on the wooden windows frames and shutters with my fists, I shouted, "Open! (pound!) Open the gates! (pound!) In the name (pound!)of the Virgin Queen (pound!), open the gates!"

And they did. It was a Capricorn's Dream Come True.

Huzzah!

(PS: About five minutes later I realized that possibly the ticket takers and change makers might not have appreciated a frenzied actor turning their booth into a percussion instrument, but I asked and they apparently thought it was great.)

During the Shrewsbury after-hours show, I got to lead all the Faire players in a sing-along of "Hey Ho, Nobody Home" as a ground underneath Lady Gaga's "Telephone."

It didn't quite work out the way that I expected it to because there were tempo problems. I attribute this to

1. me not leading tempo very well,
2. people not singing because they're listening to what melody I'm going to sing, and
3. the whole thing falling apart because people were laughing too hard.

The next morning someone asked me to sing it again -- so I have pretty good proof that not only am I the funniest person I know, I'm the funniest person some other folks know.

The 2010 Shrewsbury Faire was a lot of fun. Over the next few posts, I'll relate some of the bright spots.


Dancing the Abotts Bromley Horn Dance.

The Bromley is a folk processional danced in England on Wakes Monday (usually around Labor Day). It is one of the few (if not the only) processionals to survive both the Reformation and Cromwell. The procession we do has regional differences from the way the folks in Britain dance it.

This year we had so many dancers who knew what they were doing, and we had an extra contingent of drummers and recorders to fill out the processional tune. This abundance and the hypnotic melody enabled me to very briefly lose myself in the procession. I know that it's going well when I can perform the hey formation and then just glide right into the horn clacking section.
I was speaking about the Bromley. I found myself comparing the Shrewsbury Bromley to the Southern Fair and British Bromleys and saying, "... so, at Shrewsbury we perform the Bromley the way that... Leslie... Engle... taught it to me." Which was weird, cool, terrifying, and aging all at the same time because

1. it makes me A Living Link to Leslie Engle,
2. it's fun to use a faux-English accent and say "Living Link", but
3. I'm to young to be a Living Link.

"Now is the month of Maying / When merry lads are playing / fa la la la la / Each with his bonnie lass / upon the greeny grass / fa la -- "


Hey! Where did all these pirates, Elves, and chicks in chain-mail come from ?

It is with the greatest of sadness that we announce the passing of Leslie Engle, the owner and guiding light of Shrewsbury Renaissance Faire, early this morning (Oct 16, 2009). Leslie started the Shrewsbury Renaissance Faire nearly 15 years ago with her husband Ken (who died three years ago). Quite simply, Leslie was The Shrew. There will be a memorial service on Saturday, October 24th (2009). Details will be posted on the Shrewsbury website, http://www.shrewfaire.com.


Leslie once told me that she was born in an airplane flying in the air during (I believe) the Blitz of London. This made it difficult for officials filling out her birth certificate. Somehow the circumstances of her birth seem appropriate for someone who became the founder of the Shrewsbury Renaissance Faire.

The first time I met Leslie was at her home -- the Shrew Box -- before the very first Shrewsbury Faire. I'd been encouraged to play the harp for the Faire, and I was nervously showing her my Society of Creative Anachronism costume. I'd been to a Renaissance Faire in Minneapolis, and I was anxious that I wasn't really up to her theatre standards. Leslie was wreathed in cigarette smoke, grace, and calm -- I've been busking and harping ever since the first Faire.

In the early years of the Faire, Leslie (and Ken) put up with my latex velociraptor puppet side-kick, Vaal -- eventually allowing Vaal to facilitate Shrewsbury business meetings. Leslie appreciated the puppetry involved, and gave me tips for roaming a faire with one (Vaal got some outfits to be more "period.")

Somehow, Leslie decided that Shrewsbury needed an Abbots Bromley Horn Dance. I remember she and Ken taught a bunch of us the dance -- a procession with deer horns on poles -- in a park. That was the only time I've ever seen Leslie relax her Deeply Ingrained English Sense of Privacy to engage in a hippy/mystic/woo-woo moment. She leaned her back against a park redwood in front of a stick of burning cedar incense. Seeing her so as we learned the Bromley struck a chord of illumination within me. It was a magic moment.

Making the magic happen. Leslie always spoke about making the magic happen at Faire, whether it was drawing a guest into a short moment of theatre with a "Good morrow, and how fare you?" as they entered; or drawing them into a simple dance; or (in my case) simply believing strongly enough as I harped that I really was from another time and place and that my harp could return us there -- at least until a cell phone (or a bag pipe) interrupted.

Leslie was a kind of den mother to the Shrewsbury players, and I think she always was where ever she went. She believed in the power of chocolate and tea. I remember sharing a good laugh with her about the time she was helping some poor (probably very drunk twenty-something) waif who had called her, stranded, for a ride. Leslie was reduced to enunciating the following command: "Look. Around. You. What. Do. You. See?" I was in tech support at the time, and the parallels were hilarious.

But sometimes I think she let herself get worn out -- and this was always evident after the Faire. And each year it seemed she got more and more wrung out after the Herculean effort of willing the Faire into existence.

We loved her for allowing us to play in her faire. Slowly, it became our faire, and Leslie became our Elizabeth I, our Virgin Mary, our Lady of the Lake, our patron saint working miracles behind the scenes. And although she was very shy, and it tired her, she would appear on the days of Shrewsbury Faire -- in later days on her electric horse Malaprop -- to be our luck-piece, our rallying point, our example of working the magic. I learned the best thing to do when I saw her during Faire was to keep walking, wave a secret wave, and not try to give her anything.

I loved her humor. I loved her wit. I admired her devotion and perseverance for making her dreams come true. I will miss her mentoring -- she was a wonderful listener with thoughtful and encouraging insights. She helped me deal with being newly gay, thirty-something, and single in Corvallis, and she always made a little time when I would call her and say, "I just had this dream and when I woke up I had a feeling I should tell it to you."

I'd like to think that if Leslie were here right now she'd somehow catch our collective gaze. She'd smile, and then she'd say, "Look around." We'd look at each other and she'd add, "Look at the magic around you. Now go play faire."

I will. But I think I need to re-read O'Shaughnessy's Ode a few more times.

Good-bye, Leslie, and safe journey.





Delenn: "Strange. The galaxy seems somehow smaller now that all the First Ones are gone forever."

Sheridan: "It feels like the magic's gone now."

Delenn: "No, not gone. Now we make our own magic. Now we create our own legends. Now we build the future."

Here are some of us from the Pearwood Pipers singing at Shrewsbury Faire main stage. I'm guessing that we're singing "Of Beare."... no, we'd have ale mugs. Maybe we're singing "Ah Robin," and about to swap girlfriend stories. No... looks like we're singing different parts. Oh well, we had fun.

I just got back from the faire and most everything is unpacked.

Most of the lows involved me discovering the limitations of my shoulder -- the most serious being that I can not do all the hand motions to The Shark Song.

The highs:

• Dancing the Bromley at 7:45AM in the fog Sunday Morning (and freaking someone out who thought they'd slept through the fair opening). Probably the best moment was at the end, when I turned around, the Bromley was winding up, and the seeing sunbeams through the trees and fog.
• Finding the (unfortunately $300) crown and being encouraged to model it. Sometimes being a Capricorn is enough of an excuse to wear one.
• Discovering (the morning after) that The Shark Song has somehow become a Shrewsbury Tradition.
• Singing madrigals, both with the Pearwood Pipers and with a Mob of Willamette Valley madrigal singers.
• Although I couldn't dance the Bromley properly this year, there was something satisfying about seeing a look of je ne sais pas on a guest's face and flitting over to them with a Bromley Flyer just as they were turning to a neighbor to ask "What are they dancing?"
• Shouting instructions during the various opening and closing parades along the lines of "SMILE!" or "BE HAPPY!" or "WAVE!" or "THIS IS FUN!" while walking (and in some cases, skipping, backward).
• Seeing many friends I only see once a year.
• Seeing the bright constellations early this morning (mostly Orion, but also Cassiopeia, Canis Major, Canis Minor, Monoceros, and Taurus).

Whew. Off to sleep.