learning diverse arts

[cellio]

At Pennsic I attended the vigil of Duncan Blackwater, who was elevated to the order of the Laurel (peerage for arts and sciences) for falconry. A vigil, at least in AEthelmearc, is a party surrounding opportunities for the candidate to speak with order members (and other people) privately. When I spoke with him he had one question for me: how do you evaluate candidates whose areas of work are so different from your own? That's a fair question, especially coming from someone being elevated for an obscure area. It's not a new question for me; I'm a music Laurel who doesn't necessarily grok embroidery, armor, and Elizabethan clothing, for instance. But I hadn't tried to articulate an answer before.

In order to become a Laurel you (generally) have to focus on a small number of areas. (Sometimes that number is one.) But once you're in the order, I think you have an obligation to broaden your scope, partly because you're now in a position to evaluate other candidates and partly because random members of the populace will come to you for help with all sorts of questions. Yes, in vigils I tell people that the correct response to "I have a question about [some art you know nothing about]" is to press your Laurel medallion to your forehead, concentrate, and then say "go ask $EXPERT", but that's only half true. Of course I should send people to the experts for most questions, but I also ought to be able to provide broad entry-level clues, too. I got the award for music, but the newcomer from another group just sees the medallion; it doesn't say "music" on it. If someone asks me how links in chainmail are held together, or which fabric colors could be produced by natural dyes, or whether counted cross-stitch is period, I ought to be able to give him something to start with.

(I write this fully aware that one of my readers recently asked me for documentation help that I haven't yet provided. I haven't forgotten you.)

So what does this mean? It means we need to learn at least a little bit about a lot of things. That's fine with me; I want to learn a little bit about a lot of things anyway (and a great deal about fewer things), so that fits my natural inclination. I think it fits the natural inclinations of many people in the order, and I don't think that's a coincidence.

How do you do it? You take classes. You read (not a hardship for most of us :-) ). You look at stuff in exhibits. You talk with people who are working in areas you don't know and you ask them to tell you about their work. People love to talk about their work. You can usually tell which ones have done their research, which ones are guessing and could use help, and which ones are BSing. I've learned a lot about miscellaneous arts in one-on-one conversations with people who didn't set out to teach me. It's pretty nifty.

And I think Laurels have an obligation to teach each other, too. When someone in the order tells me that so-and-so is doing Laurel-level work, I ask that person to tell me why. What makes that armor, beer, tablet-weaving, clothing, or jewelry well-crafted? What are the key sources in that art and is the candidate using them? What research, experimentation, and innovation is the person doing, and on what foundation is that work based? Why is this work Laurel-level?

I try to teach other members of the order about music. They teach me about other things. Our candidates teach us a lot, perhaps without knowing it. We all learn a little in the process, and if learning isn't the reason we're here, then what is?

Comments

[dagonell.livejournal.com]

You have The Clue(tm), so I don't need to use the Clue-By-Four on you. :) The CBF has The Clue(tm) calligraphed, engraved and woodburned into it. It reads "The Crown does NOT create Peers, it recognizes them." And yes, I know there have been entire articles and websites and pages of commentary written about the interpretation of TC(tm) regarding nobility, courtesy, personal behavior, etc. however as someone who has autocratted the Ice Dragon Pent five years running, I like to bring up a less discussed interpretation...

If Fred has a Laurel for brewing and Barney does not, the only definitive thing you can say about the difference in their skill levels is that somebody pointed Fred out to the royalty. Period. Knowledge does not come with recognition by the Crown. Knowledge comes from trial and error, observation, discussion and reading, in other words... learning. Fred is probably skilled enough to judge brewing at Ice Dragon. However, you CANNOT say that Barney ISN'T skilled enough. For all you know, Barney could be a mundane professional with twenty years experience who joined the SCA just last month.

Being autocrat of the Ice Dragon Pent means finding judges for nearly fifty categories. If I had a dollar for every time someone with more danglies than common sense 'informed' me that "$PERSON isn't qualified to judge $CATEGORY because they don't have $DANGLIE", I'd be a rich man today. I did not pull names out of a hat. My selections were made by intelligent choice.

"Dagonell! You can't have $PERSON judge embroidery, she only has an AoA! She doesn't even have a Maunch (East Kingdom Arts award), let alone a Laurel."
"Ever hear of something called the Embroiderers' Guild of America?"
"Yes, I've been a member for years."
"Check the masthead of your last newsletter, she's the National President of the Guild."

By the end of my tenure, I had things running exactly backwards! If I asked Barney to judge brewing, that was a wake-up call to the Royalty that they should be checking out Barney's own brewing. I took pride in the number of times that I asked someone to judge $CATEGORY *before* they got their Maunche in $CATEGORY. And I'm rambling in someone else's blog when I should be rambling in my own. The point I'm trying to make is that the SCA awards system should not be used to define "Expert". If you're not willing to learn from someone who has less rank than you, then you're not willing to learn.