(no subject)

Hi,

        I'm going to have another try at sending a message here:

        Perhaps a lot of people do hate chaos; I don't know. I don't. When I was in the SCA locally (many long years ago, now) all the circles were chaos. I found it frustrating at first, but learned to find the strength within myself to step forward decisivly and say "hey, I've got a good one."

        Compared to sitting around for 4 hours at a time while the filkwhat crawled about a circle of 60-80 people, many wasting precious minutes flipping through filk books saying "oh, I think I have that one" while the rest of us sit in anguished non-singing silence, I find that option very attractive. At the very least, it forces people to be ready when their turn starts...

        A bardic style circle is kind of weird, but fine, okay, as long as the filkwhat (the turn to pick, or pass, or play) comes around in 2 hours or less, okay, I have no problem with it. I can see that it provides the faint of heart a better opportunity to get their ducks in a row and take a turn, and I remember what it was like to be faint of heart and frustrated.

        But I don't think it works worth a darn for the larger circles. Of course, large circles, while nice as evidence that interest in filk is growing, mean that there are fewer "performances per participant", no matter how you slice it. Since part of the draw of filk for many of us is the opportunity to perform, maybe simply switching to a different way of choosing how those performances are divvied up is window dressing, failing to address the real problem. Maybe we need to make circles smaller anyway.

        On the subject of smallifying circles so that bardic will work, I see three options. 1) do nothing. Circles will smallify as people become frustrated with not being able to sing, and the problem would take care of itself. 2) have more than one circle. Seed each circle with 3 or 4 veterans who know a lot of songs, and don't mind not hearing the other circle's veterans this time. 3) variant of 2-- have a sing-along circle and a "performances of new material" circle. For 2 and 3, give both circles equal publicity and make them equally findable, so that they get roughly equal numbers of chance drop ins.

        I don't have time to add more to this, so I'll just send it off now, and see what people think...

        Yours---Cat Faber Received on 05/10/96