For space is wide and good friends are too few.
so I’ll see you across the water
still the one & still my daughter
still you grow
& your list is getting shorter
& it’s you who gave the order for you know
all men must die
“Across the Water,” a song for Arya Stark by Beth Kinderman & the Player Characters. I got to hear this live last year at a hotel room party (the way it’s meant to be heard), and let me tell you, the outro is a very good time if you’ve got a receptive audience.
Braw and bold, he went a-raiding;
stout and strong, he went to war.
Long his lady will be waiting;
Gilbert’s greatsword strikes no more.
Apparently, there was an SCA contest for best elegy, so Leigh Ann Hussey wrote a song for the “death” of a player in “Steal the Sheep” earlier that day, a game where teams compete to move a stuffed sheepskin across a field.
“Gilbert’s Greatsword,” or “Elegy for Gilbert de Langspee,” by Annwn. The percussion on this is tabla, played by Aditya Gurajada.
“Come away to the hills:
come away where the wine of life distills,
to the healing of your heart’s ills
come away, come away.”
“The Bard’s Exhortation to the Salaryman,” by Annwn, which sounds like a serious song, but apparently, the singer wrote this to make fun of banjo player, because he had a real job and she didn’t.
This album, for a long time only available from a website with low-quality downloads, is now back in print! It’s available on Spotify, YouTube, and iTunes, and all profits will go towards making more of Annwn’s music available.
I picked up some stones & then
I made myself a labyrinth
built the walls so high til I
could not see the stars
so tell your metamorphosis
that it is not invited here
those sounds you’re hearing now
are anything but minotaurs
“Refusal of the Call,” by Beth Kinderman, from her upcoming concept album The Hero’s Journey. The Bandcamp description includes this quote from Joseph Campbell, The Hero With A Thousand Faces:
“Refusal of the summons converts the adventure into its negative. Walled in boredom, hard work, or ‘culture,’ the subject loses the power of significant affirmative action and becomes a victim to be saved. His flowering world becomes a wasteland of dry stones and his life feels meaningless—even though, like King Minos, he may through titanic effort succeed in building an empire of renown. Whatever house he builds, it will be a house of death: a labyrinth of cyclopean walls to hide from him his minotaur. All he can do is create new problems for himself and await the gradual approach of his disintegration.
“At its best, the filk room is a special locus in space and time, created for and by the community, and is a safe, encouraging place for individual and group play, support and, most of all, co-creation and collaboration. At its core is a heightened group experience, created by active participation and immersive intensity with the goal of giving all participants a feeling of creative satisfaction and belonging…
In the filk room, and in other folk performance forms, co-created group experience arises from the manipulation and eradication of the performer/audience boundary.”
Long-time filker, professor, and ethnomusicologist, Sally Childs-Helton, recently published an excellent article about the nature of filk performance, with an examination of the differences between Millennials and older generations in fandom and what the future of filk might look like because of this. I highly recommend checking it out if you’re interested in The State of Filk or fandom history in general.
If you download the article from this link, it gives the author some digital brownie points, so definitely do that if you can!
And if you don’t have the time or inclination to read academic articles on fandom (why not??? I guess some people are like that), I’ll leave you with a quote from the end of the article, from an interview with someone who had worked as a professional folk musician for years but was attending her first filk session, because I think it’s inspiring:
“You’re sitting around, swapping songs, and everyone gets a chance to play. I’ve
been going to folk music conventions for years, but you people are actually doing folk music.”
I’m VERY glad, and because you have said this I am now going to get off my ass and queue some more things.
(honestly people saying nice things 100% keeps this blog running, since filk is such a small community I can’t rely on notes to see if people care, they gotta tell me – and EVERY time I am SO happy, it is so NICE gosh I love people)
We’re raucous, rude, and rowdy
And ask us if we care!
We have our boisterous buddies
And food that we don’t share
We’re foremost at a party
And rearmost in a fight
And if you think you’re tougher
We’ll just say that you are right
A tribute to crows, the birds with the best life philosophy. “Raucous, Rude, and Rowdy,” lyrics by Mercedes Lackey, sung by Paul Espinoza (I think)
Never think a servant cannot
Have his own free will
Never think that those who serve
Do not know how to kill
Owlflight: Song Of The Hertasi Water Killers – Mercedes LackeyDamn, I loved these books. And the hertasi were flipping awesome.
This manipulation buries my twisted truth
This modification carries my future youth
So I shall be what I’ve become
Femme fatale
“Femme Fatale,” from Leslie Hudson’s concept album about fictional redheads. I picked one of the better-known characters to post; this one is about Black Widow.
The Oracle
You think I have been beaten
You think he took the sky from me
You think I have been trapped here
Yet I’ve never been more freeI am the hero of my own story
I am the knight tearing towers down
I am the dragon within the fortress
I am the queen forging her own crownI am not a footnote
I am not a sacrifice
I am not your martyr
I’m not yours to sanctifyI am the voice that lights the shadows
I see the structure of strife and storms
I call the lightning to strike the shades
I am the sybil amidst the swarmsYou think I have been beaten
You think he took the sky from me
Well I was never vanquished
I’m stronger than he’ll ever be