Mi Contra Fa

Blah

It is extremely difficult to find the motivation to write up class notes when one's experience with holding classes at any non-University event is about even odds to get either zero or one student.

Making Period Performance Fun

1. Translate things so people understand them.  You might have to tinker with the original rhyme or  meter.

2. Select pieces with modern appeal.

3. It's okay to massage a humorous piece so that it's funnier.

4. There's a spectrum:

Original -> Translated -> Excerpted -> Summarized -> Change verse form and/or variations to music -> Period material, period form, period music, new composition -> Period material, period form, modern music, new composition -> Period material, modern form, modern music, new composition

It's okay to not be at the far left of the spectrum.

Ba-dum-bum *pisssh*

Wild Goose Flies

Yee-es.  It's been a while, hasn't it?  I discovered video games.  It's been great fun but absorbing.

But we've got Baronial Birthday this weekend and their Excellencies need a departing poem.  I've written one for Johanna and one for Sean and Elizabeth, so I mean to do one for Rorik and Janina.  What with the "goose thing" they have, a goose motif presents itself. 

I mean, geese.  They fly away.  It works for leave-taking.

This was a first draft, written Friday night on an airplane:

A flock of geese gladdens summer days
Harmonious honking heralds them
Bills are bright in gorse-grey faces

But autumn arrives early this year
Geese all gather; goslings have fledged
Soon they take flight, fast-beating wings
Southward they travel, seeking warm weather
Wise are the geese! who go in the fall,
Return in the spring - soon they come back
No long parting this - the patterns of life

I left a blank space after the "bills are bright" line, thinking there needed to be some kind of bridge and yeah, there really does.

Welcome in croft to craft their nests
Raise their goslings at river's edge
Dwell with us - abide a while

Aahh. That's better.

This was... overall better than I thought it was when I wrote it.  It may just do.