My Time Machine

As a reenactor and as a writer, I spend a lot of time delving into the past and exploring what life was like at various points in history. I've lived in the renaissance and written about WWII, Prohibition, the Great Library of Alexandria, and Shakespeare. And a question I often hear is "Do you feel like you were born at the wrong point in history?"

I believe that children are our future: So 

feed them well and use them to fuel our 

time machines...

(Frankly, I'm a little disappointed that since I wrote Howard Carter no one has asked whether I was born on the wrong planet.)

It annoys me at times, but I suppose it's a fair question.

Let's face it, I have a lot of skills that aren't of much use in the 21st century. And by the metric of the rest of the country, my childhood was more on like my dad's than it was like the rest of my peers. We didn't have a video game system or computer. Dad didn't believe in them. I learned to type on a typewriter (as is right and proper.)

I spent a lot of time at my grandparents' farm where I made a lot of my own toys. I built rafts. I sank them. I swam to shore and built new ones. I played with GI Joe while we listened to Fibber McGee & Molly on the radio. I watched Star Wars like every other kid of my age, but read voraciously from a library that was stocked mostly with books written over a half century before I was born.

My friends refer to this as a 'sheltered upbringing' but I'm not sure I'd agree.

My childhood was a Mark Twain novel ghostwritten by Ray Bradbury, filtered through an Archie comic.
The world that was shown to me on MTV seemed distant and somewhat surreal, simultaneously more modern and less than the world around me.

I still prefer hand tools to electric, my typewriter to my laptop. It probably also explains why I have no real attachment to those wonders of modern technology that the people around me can't live without. It's not inarguable that I really am a man out of my era and I wouldn't blame you if you thought that if given a time machine and license to use it that I'd be off like a shot.

I certainly used to think so.  Why, I may have been misplaced several centuries! I even said as much to my dad once. Dad looked at me and kind of snorted and said "Take off your glasses."

Touché, Dad. 


I have allergies and poor eyesight and I have an asthma inhaler in my pocket as I type this. Even when I join in a historical reenactment and try to sink into a past age, never far from my mind is the fact that I never would have survived childhood in these past worlds.

Books are my time machine. Then and now, they are my preferred method of time travel. If someone offered me a trip through time I might not take them up on it if I cannot close the cover and return to the modern era any time I wish.

And it's not at all about the asthma inhaler. The women around me are valued as highly as the men. My wife is an engineer. My boss is a woman.  I can see someone passing me on the street and talk to them without see more about them than just the color of their skin. I can say whatever I want here and as long as I don't libel anyone, no one can stop me.

Because honestly... the 'good old days' weren't that good.

So until the man in the Blue Box comes to escort me to the opening night of Hamlet and then safely home again... I like this time period just fine, thanks.

These Truths I Hold To Be Self-Evident... Redux

Since we began our journey back in October of 2005 (a bit earlier for me, but that's when you joined me on the road) my feelings on several aspects of this art & craft have changed. The five central tenets of my costuming mantra have not... let us review:

1. Good garb feels natural when you’re wearing it.
2. Good garb won’t kill you to wear in the August heat.
3. Good garb is clothing you won’t hate putting on in the morning.
4. Good garb is just as durable as the other clothes in your closet (or better).
5. Good garb weighs style against wearability and strikes a healthy balance.

Over the years, I've added a few addendae to support and expand-upon the central philosphy...

Nomenclature: I like the word "Garb" and use it in part to differentiate between my everyday street clothes and what I make for reenactment and/or faire. Another period-correct word offered up by the venerable OED is "Duds". I use both, but mostly I call it 'garb' or 'clothing'. I generally shy away from "costume" because I don't like the immediate association with Halloween despite its literal definition.

Handsewing: I made this doublet entirely by hand so it's not a question of ability it's a matter of the best-application of a finite resource: time. I actually like handsewing now that I've accustomed my hand to it. But I lack the time for such efforts. So I will use handsewing when it suits my whims or if it would be too obvious otherwise. Long or turned seams usually go under the frantic needle of the hotrod.

Period Perfection: All of the clothing I make is based upon historical paintings and patterns (where possible). Unlike many who perspire over handsewing and 100% period fabrics, I tend to focus more on the overall “feel” and the correct “look” of a garment. This makes me a heretic in some circles. I am comfortable with that.

Garb Engineering: My wife is an engineer. Certain terms have bled into my sewing vernacular, like "Prototype" and "Beta Test".

All of the clothing I make is Action Garb.

If I could have one overall effect on the historical costuming community, it would be this: The items we are making were the everyday clothing of the people in the historical era we are portraying. (That's tenets #1 & 4 if you're playing along at home.)

People lived in the stuff we're imitating here. The chased lovers (and were chased by lovers if they were lucky), coddled children, fenced, swung from chandeliers, quaffed ales, guffawed hearty guffaws and generally lived full active lives in their clothes... their garb. Sometimes I think we forget that in our blind pursuit of what we allege to be 'period perfection'. It is possible to "be period" and be comfortable at the same time. Even in nobles. What good is garb that looks fabulous, is made of expensive period materials, and is as uncomfortable as the Iron Maiden? If you can't feed yourself, looking pretty won't do you any good. (We lose more nobles that way)

The best advice I can think of is... Don't fret so damn much. This is supposed to be fun. Attain the look. Make it wearable. Make it comfortable. Don't stay up nights worrying about it.

A thousand “Garb Snarks” just began gnashing their teeth as I wrote that, but it’s how I truly feel. (And stop that. It's bad for your teeth!)

Scott

Years of a Clown

.

This is long and meandering. Consider yourself forewarned.

My home faire, the Washington Renaissance Fantasy Faire (WRFF) has been canceled. At least for this year. There was a battle with local commissioners over the new site. We lost. I've been absent from this blog because every spare moment has been spent flyering, marketing, leading parades, waving banners and finally getting in the middle of a multi-car, terrible, awful auto accident. Head injury, neck and back. Not conducive to sewing during recovery.. I was pushing my physical therapy, in fact, to get back up and running in time for the first weekend of August. No one wants a limping fool, after all.

There are many and varied "shutdown" events being planned to keep everyone together for the weekends in question...

I don’t really know what most people get out of faire. I assume that if you’re engaged in this enterprise at the level of a volunteer performing artist in for a for-profit enterprise, then on some level what you get out of it is more than the sum of its parts. We are unpaid actors entertaining a paying audience, after all.

There are several ideas being bandied about for reproducing the salient aspects of faire that most people will miss: period camping, campfire cooking, after hours at the alehouse, and even jousting. I don’t know what – if anything – will come of these ideas. All of these messages begin with the same message: “Find what you will miss about faire and we’ll figure out a way to reproduce it…”

I don’t think I can.


I will miss the camaraderie of my fellow actors, to be sure. I will miss the evenings of talking around a campfire (or lantern in the dry years), drinking with my friends in the Nunnery, and the low chatter of voices beyond the canvas walls of my tent as I surrender to sleep, the morning groggery, the first cup of coffee out of the French Press passed around, the dyspeptic grumble when people realize that if they want more they must grind their own beans and all I brought was a mortar and pestle.

I will miss those things and a hundred more. And I will attend as many of the shutdown weekends as I can make it to. Because all of those things that can be reproduced in a campground or the back forty of someone’s land. I will attend because we are friends first and Ren Faire Actors second.

But that’s not the sum of the pleasure I derive from those three weekends of August. What I get out of faire doesn’t happen after hours, in a camp (period or otherwise), an alehouse, or on a horse in the list.

I’ve told this story before. My ‘career’ with renaissance faire almost died the first day.

I started faire as a generic ‘Guy With A Sword’. Officially, I think the roster said I was a mercenary named James Wylde, but the mercenaries weren’t an organized guild and for all his historically-correct backstory, James wasn’t a character with a pulse. We didn’t gig or have anything assigned to us to do. There was a lot of time sitting in the guildyard. My wife was in the same boat, playing the ‘Pretty Girl in Noble Dress’ (on the roster she was Princess Claude de Valois) and the nobles didn’t do much that year either. They were hired outside players and snubbed the volunteers at every opportunity. If it wasn’t for Richard Curtain taking her under his wing, loaning her his two footmen to wait on her, I think she would have been even more upset than I was with that first day.

We tried to fit in, to find our niche, but it was for naught. I distinctly remember talking about not returning the second weekend.
Several things happened the night of that first disappointing Saturday of faire that brought us back. The first was that Mary found us. As the irrepressible Mistress Sophie, Mary was the heart and soul of The Hearth of St Brigid, as she had named our peasant guild. She led the wayward wenches and it was through her that we began to see not only that we had miscast ourselves as princess and pawn but that there was a *way* to do these things. The Tao of Renfaire. We also discovered that we had friends there. We met Zoe that night. Malakai fell asleep wrapped in my cloak. We sang songs we’d learned at the Kansas City Renfaire and found Charles when he and his group walked over and joined in the song. There was David, Mel, Holly, Denise… and many others who aren’t around anymore. And many, many more since. And where there are friends, there is a way.

When Saturday morning dawned, we gave it a second try. We had been attending ren faires forever, as patrons whose costuming made even the actors – and once the directors – think we were actual actors. We knew how to milk the life out of even the smallest faires and festivals. We spun away from our alleged guilds and walked together through the shops, Kristin played princess to every little girl who cooed over her gown, and we generally found our own faire… but we noticed that the people who were having all the fun were in Mary’s guild. They were the peasants. They climbed trees, tussled on the ground, quaffed ales in the alehouse… and they interacted with the patrons. The only guild that seemed to be doing that with any regularity.

That was when the last two things happened that rescued our faire experience and cemented forever what we would derive from faire – and I suppose what faire would get from us too.

Escorting Kristin through a booth, a leather mask caught my eye. It stood out among the flaming faces, fairies and green men and standard tissues of modernist whimsy. It was simple, yet distinct among the others. Dark reddish brown commedia-style leather, prominent nose, flaring nostrils and arching eyebrows… perhaps Pantalone without the bushy eyebrows, or a particularly disdainful Capitano had been in the mind of the maskmaker. Among the stonefaced bland masks surrounding it, this mask had character, cheeks drawn up in mischievous glee, one eyebrow arched in perpetual amusement.


I was entranced. I paid $85.00 for it. Today I can’t find any like it for less than $125 and they haven’t the quality and my mask is quality. And even though I can make my own now – and probably could have then – it was worth every penny paid for it. Last year, I spoke with that merchant and she told me she still occasionally got catalogues that had a mask like mine in it and decided not to order another one. Said she only knew one person who wanted one and he already had one. Then she winked at me.

All the following week, that mask sat on the shelf above my computer as I worked, drawing my eyes away from the screen. I turned it over and over in my hands, examining it from every angle. It was sturdily made from heavy leather, sealed inside and out. An elastic headband was attached… I put it on and stood in front of a mirror, frowning at my reflection. The mask looked manic, a pent-up id waiting to escape.

Saturday of second weekend dawned. Kristin dressed and got out of the tent as I sat staring at the mask, questions tumbling over themselves in my head. I hadn’t asked permission to change characters. I was in the mercenary guild. Could I just create a new character and slip away from my guild without getting in trouble? I should ask Amy, she’s the director. I didn’t care. Forgive me, Amy, but at that point I was fed up with my faire experience and needed to change or leave. I had nothing to lose. I needed a name. What was my name?

I put the mask on and stepped out of my little tent. Mel laughed when she saw me and I felt better. My mind still a-twirl with questions, I sketched an elaborate bow to Mel, waved to Kristin and the others and skipped away down the trail toward the faire site. I needed to be alone on the faire site. See if I could do this. What was my name? Who was the guy in the mask?

As I traversed Shadow Glen, Mary was standing talking to someone. As I stepped onto the troll bridge, still wondering if I was going to get into trouble, Mary hailed me.

“I KNOW YOU, MISCHIEF MAKER!”

It all clicked.

I whirled into a clumsy pirouette and favored her with an even more elaborate bow than the last.

“I am Calabash!” I called. And I was. In that moment, it happened. No longer a man in a mask, it was all of one, a character whole. Mary saw it happen, I think. She laughed. No one can laugh like Mary. There’s something about it. Something infectious. It should be studied. If you could distill it, reproduce it, we would have world peace (or maybe three billion Calabashes… who knows?) I stopped questioning and capered away across the bridge and up the hill onto the green for the morning meeting.

There have been years since where I didn’t get what I came for. I was captain of the Queen’s Guard once upon a time. I had fun, playing an actual historical role. Tromping around in my big boots and pumpkin pants, pike held high as I shouted for people to get out of the way. But that’s not really my thing. I didn’t get out of that role what I got from playing the fool, which is why I passed it on.

I have since led the reincarnation of The Hearth of St Brigid with Mary’s blessing and tried to honor the ideas she taught us, the atmosphere she created before she moved on to other things. At times – when I have been ill or it has been too hot to wear the mask – I have taken back the mantle of Seamus the Scrivener. An upstanding man of the village, an artist and natural scientist and I enjoy that role, derive great pleasure from the intellectual aspects and teaching children to write with a quill, or demonstrating period optics or whatever.

Always I come back to Calabash. The unbridled id. Fascinated by children. In turns, playing each role of the Commedia as well as some maniac cross between Bugs Bunny and Harpo Marx. It took me about eight hours to realize I needed to make the mask somehow less intimidating to smaller kids, and a favor from the Green Seattle Knights (who were our jousters at the time) went up one nostril to trail in the breeze as I capered and spun. These many boogers later, the mask looks naked without it.

I don’t know how others will distill their main pleasure from faire into something reproducible in the context of another event or private gathering. But it is through the lens of Calabash that I get from faire that which keeps me coming back. Children giggle when I chew on my booger, or pull it out and jump rope, or pull a coin out of their ears… or whatever. I lead processions in manacles and run away from the guards, trying to sell the manacles to patrons as I dance around them trying to get away from the guards. “May I interest m’lady in a nice matched-set of bracelets? Chained together so you cannot lose one…”

There’s an energy created by the interaction between actor and act, between the stage and the audience. It’s ever the more intense when there is no division between the recipient of the actor’s attention and the actor, no footlights to blind us to their presence. It cannot be quantified, or measured. Some tell me that it generates more light than heat, that it’s somehow beneath other forms of art… and I smile because they do not know. They cannot because they don’t have a Calabash.

How do you get from a private gathering what I get from the patrons as Calabash? I don’t think I can.

I will attend these shutdown events and I shall enjoy the presence of my friends and the camaraderie of the campfire. I will sleep in my tent and drink from my tankard, sing the songs we all know, and dance the dances forgotten by the world without. And it will be fun. I will enjoy myself thoroughly.

Calabash will sleep in his box, waiting for the next faire or parade or folklife event. The next gathering opportunity to emerge into the light of childrens’ smiles, and the incredulous stares of parents or gasps of teens as he slurps a meter and a half of booger out of his own nostril.

Doublet, Jerkin or Jack?

Here’s something interesting I didn’t know until I looked it up today… the word ‘Jerkin’, which causes so much confusion in period, is the newer of the two words. I have – to this point – always operated under the assumption that they were two regional words for roughly the same thing that eventually grew to such commonplace usage that they lived on to confuse future costumers.

From the Oxford English Dictionary… (In order of precedence by first appearance)

“Jack: A short and close-fitting upper garment of men & women; a jacket. […] Ultimate origin uncertain, but app. French: thought by some to be identical with the proper name Jacques, perhaps as originally worn by the peasantry.” First documented appearance: 1375

“Doublet: A close-fitting body-garment, with or without sleeves, worn by men from the 14^th to the 18^th centuries (rarely applied to a similar garment worn by women)” it goes on to say… “The doublet had many changes of fashion, being at one time with, at another time without, short skirts. In its various sleeved and sleeveless forms, it was the prototype of the modern coat, jacket and waistcoat.”

“Jerkin: A garment of the upper body worn by men in the 16^th and 17^th centuries; a close-fitting jacket, jersey or short coat often made of leather.” First documented appearance: 1519.

So… there you go then.

A jacket is a unisex item of utility, thought to denote a peasant garment of French extraction. The Doublet is a man’s garment, with or without sleeves. (Note that the women’s ‘Doublet’ bodice was apparently rarely referred to as such in period documents, but no citations noted.) And a Jerkin is a later appellation most often referring to a leather garment, though bandied about quite a bit to cover jerseys and just about anything else. One of the citations (from 1599 by Thynne notes: “A common garment dalye used such as we call a jerken or jacket without sleeves.” (emphasis added by me) so at least by 1599, in common parlance, the ‘jerken’ (sic) had become synonymous not with the doublet, but with the jacket as a utilitarian garment.

Action Garb!!

I said it a long time ago and I'll say it again... All garb should be action garb! Good garb doesn't impede what you want to do at your event. It doesn't get in the way any more than the laws of physics mandate and doesn't have to be stripped out of to do what you want to do at any given moment. Not even the buttoned-up noble garb needs to put that tight a constraint upon you. Even my wife's noble allows her to do whatever might strike her fancy.

So it is that I advocate putting it through its paces before you finalize the design, prototype and beta-test your costume! Can you dance? Quaff and ale? Prepare a meal? Eat a meal? Drag a fallen comrade to safety? Swing from a chandelier? Ride down a sail on the point of a dirk? Jump on a passing horse? Do a backflip? Catch a golden snitch? In short, can you really do all that you need to do in it?

Remember that these aren't Halloween costumes! People lived in this stuff. These were the clothes they wore as they danced, played, quaffed ales, wrote letters, cooked, fought duels, and even swung from the occasional chandelier when the situation warranted it.

Here are some pictures from last weekend of my new suit of clothes in action at WRFF this past weekend...

Penning a letter of protest 'gainst the tyranny of Henry, Lord Darnley "Does anyone know if 'doody head' is hyphenated?"

When I am not in my fool's motley, I play the character James Bynder, Bookbinder, Natural Philosopher, Anatomist. He writes letters and acts as a legal counsel for the unlettered villagers and takes a ghoulish interest in all manner of things, being especially interested in finding bodies to further his scientific research...

How would you like a nice career as an anatomist's skeleton?

Could I perhaps interest you in donating your body to science?

And here are some additional photos taken by Chris Yetter, a professional photographer who covers our faire. He got some good action shots of the sort of things I expect from my garb (and arrogantly think you should too). He has kindly given permission for our actors to use images of themselves for non-commercial blogs and so forth...

Staring pensively out over the approach hordes of... patrons!


Um, you know I can recommend a good poultice
that will take care of that rash on your leg...

Helping a fallen fighter back to his feet during the closing battle
against Lord Darnley and his mercenary army...

"Now get back in there and fight!"


Celebrating Darnley's demise outside the gate...
"Ding Dong, the tyrant's dead!"

These truths i hold to be self-evident

There are five essential truths that I adhere to when creating garb for faire...

1. Good garb feels natural when you’re wearing it.
2. Good garb won’t kill you to wear in the August heat.
3. Good garb is garb you won’t hate putting on in the morning.
4. Good garb is just as durable as the other clothes in your closet.
5. Good garb weighs style against wearability and strikes a healthy balance.

Unlike many who perspire over visible handsewing and 100% period fabrics, I tend to focus more on the overall “feel” and the correct “look” of a garment. I use handsewing when I need to (usually only if it will be visible) and the machine when I can get away with it. I'll use interfacing if I can and interline when it calls for it. My fabric choices tend to be about cost, breathability and texture (in that order) and the cut of my clothes accentuate the need to be comfortable and able to move in them.

In my opinion that’s a Good Thing.

I've won a number of awards in contests judged by people who are self-appointed "garb police". I attain good results with my five little rules. I arrogate that you can too.

OH! And the best advice I can think of... Don't fret so damn much. This is supposed to be fun.
I believe that it’s more important to get the look and fit right than it is to be 100% period correct in terms of construction techniques and materials. Get the look right, get the thing to be comfortable. What good is garb that looks fabulous, is made of expensive period materials, and is as uncomfortable as the Iron Maiden? If you can't feed yourself, looking pretty won't do you any good. (We lose more nobles that way)

People lived in the stuff we're imitating here. The chased lovers, coddled children, fenced, swung from chandeliers, quaffed ales, guffawed hearty guffaws... and generally lived active lives in thier clothes... their garb. Sometimes I think we forget that in our blind pursuit of alleged 'period perfection'.

Attain the look. Make it wearable. Make it comfortable. Don't stay up nights worrying about it.
A thousand “Garb Nazis” just began gnashing their teeth as I wrote that, but it’s how I truly feel.

Oh! And stop that. It's bad for your teeth!

Scott