[Sca-cooks] Jugglers: Was: Feast Ambience

[Laura C. Minnick]

At 09:38 AM 7/31/02 -0500, you wrote:
>'Lanie wrote:
>>I know One. Master Xavier- he got his Laurel in juggling in the
>Middle, I
>>think. Lived in Artemisia for awhile (Silverkeep) and was in AnTir
>for grad
>>school. He's in... Ohio? Indiana? I forget.
>
>Nope, not Laureled for juggling here.  However, the Middle hosts
>Master Henry Best (aka Fashoo the Fool) who is a Pelican from
>Atlantia and who has masterminded Coxcomb Academy which has a
>website, if you all are interested.  One of their folk has just
>joined the Karamazov Brothers, jugglers extraordinaires.
>
>Alys Katharine

Hmm. May have been Calontir. I'm pretty sure he was Laurelled before he
went to Bozeman. But this would have been more than ten years ago, long
before he showed up in AnTir.

At any rate, one of the things that impresses me most about him, and about
other performers that I like to have at feast, is not only skill- they need
to be good- but a relaxed air about it. A performer who is sharing with us
their *joy* in their art- be it juggling, song, or turning out a remarkably
edible feast is far more worth than someone who is there to be admired, if
you know what I mean. The woman who once stopped in the middle of the
performance and berated the hall for not being quiet and listening
attentively (and she swore while doing so) was not asked back. The woman
who threw her head back and laughed duringing a folksong, because she was
enjoying herself- she was asked back.

Some of it is taste, I will admit. I will gag if I hear one more harpist
play a song they wrote about the fairies. And I'm not crazy about hearing
badly-sung 19th century 'Celtic' folk tunes passed off as period. i _did_
enojoy however the quiet-spoken gentleman who got up with a small stringed
instrument (a gittern, perhaps? I forget) and played and sang a song by
Peter Abelard (in Latin- I recognized it as the one with the English
refrain 'sealed with a kiss, sealed with a kiss...'). I thought it was so
cool- after the polite applause died down, I got up (seated near the high
table, so I was visible) and raised my glass in a toast, stating for the
hall that he had managed to bring me back to younger days, listening to the
students stagger around at night in the Montmartre, singing bawdy songs and
looking for cheap women. Nothing quite like a student at Notre Dame for
bawdy songs. Not that *I* would know, of course, being a woman I can't go
anywhere near the classes, but...

At any rate, I did like hearing somethign with thought put into it. And the
gentleman wasn't so much performing as sharing- and that I appreciate.

my two deniers,

'Lainie
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