BRING ON THE RENAISSANCE

When I was but a whee lad, my family co-owned an artisan’s shop at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival. Some extremely weird adventures working amongst the Renaissance people, and my Renaissance British accent is totally incredible. Ok, ok, ok, I admit it… I still walk around every day, wishing I lived in the Renaissance times…

“Pardon me my Lord, would you like to play, Catapulting Frogs?” 

When I turned 12 years old, I worked a game at the fair called, “Catapulting Frogs”. That’s right, shit just got real. This game was located in the northeast part of the fairgrounds where the landscape was cut in two by a large wooden carousel, flanked by artisan shops of all sorts. Now, this wooden carousel had pedals located at each seat which the patrons had to pedal themselves to make the ride go. See? No electricity in the Renaissance times. No electric motors. Gotta pedal. “You pay $5. You pedal 5 minutes.” And now that you’ve chugged 5 full mugs of wine out in the hot sun, pedaling in a circle at 170 BPM for 5 minutes straight can turn into a dizzy infinity. The Renaissance Festival patrons found this out the hard way. Lots of puking on that ride. 

And after the drunk carousel, usually, they would stumble my way…

The Catapulting Frogs game was second-to-last in a long line of shops at the bottom of a dirt and straw covered hill. On my left was a clearing with a small performance stage underneath a giant old tree, where audiences sat on bales of straw 10 rows deep. All day long, performers juggled clubs and knives and told bad Renaissance era jokes, and musical performers sang and played era appropriate songs with era appropriate instruments. “Hear ye, hear yeeeee! Dear Lords and Ladies, I’ve been coming to the Minnesota Renaissance Festival quite a lot lately! I volunteer here part-time as a jouster. Dare I say… I am a, free-lancer?” Crickets from the audience. I watched these performers go through their acts, a LOT. Where, pretell, do you think I got this kick-ass sense of humor??? Even the non-nerd among us may have found their performances entertaining. Really hard to say. I will admit to you though that during the downtime, I had also entirely mastered the Catapulting Frogs game. One might have even called me, “a marksman”. 

To gather a crowd and sell the game to the patrons, my sales pitch began to hinge upon this new found sniper level frog catapulting skill I had developed. The drunkest of all would quickly realize, “I am drunk, and this game sounds like an extremely good idea!”, and would step right up to investigate. After watching someone give it a go and miss, “Can’t be done!”, was always their declaration. “Inconceivable!”, I would yell, borrowing a line from the Princess Bride, and would jump up, grab a hard rubber mallet from my wooden bench, and place a small dark green block of wood with eyes, (“frog”) onto a real wooden catapult 24 inches long. It was very important then to look the drunkards directly in the eye, and without a word, WHACK the catapult with the hammer for max velocity frog launch. Rocketing through the air, the frog would make a violent crash-landing into a small wooden bucket on the other side of the structure, ricocheting off a wooden backboard shaped like a character from the 1400’s. As you might imagine, the drunker these patrons were, the more fun this whole scene became, and all of this could get quite rowdy.

I honestly enjoyed working the Renaissance Festival as much as the people enjoyed visiting it. But, it was after the festival closed for the night that the very most interesting adventures and experiences would occur. For better or for worse, back then if you were out to find a weird or illicit adventure, you could get into just about anything you wanted to on the fair grounds. And in the dark, I could hear the wind speaking to me as it whipped through the dirt and trees of this old Indian land. The darkness of the night was magical, and hypnotic, and I have never forgotten. The experiences I had there helped to shape me into the artist, and person I am today.

Flash forward 30 years. Present day. The algorithms I interacted with today felt fast and rigid. The popup ads on the screen are all things I am supposed to want to buy based on my internet browsing history, but I successfully ignored every single one of them (almost). It has taken years of practice to get this good. Most of my day is spent wearing headphones. Must…block out…the… robot…music, oozing from every open door. The singers’ voices sound more robot than human. Our computers have fundamentally changed the cost and ease of making and recording the new music we hear every day. You don’t need to rent a recording studio anymore. Now, anyone with a computer has the tools to create and record a song at home. It is, however, in acceptance of these new tools that we have unknowingly surrendered many of the important traditional tools which make music a true celebration of being Alive. The vacuum of their absence sits unrecognized, but does not go unnoticed. Listening to this new music can feel deeply unsatisfying. The interpretive tools of dynamics such as the push and pull of crescendo and decrescendo. The constant but nearly imperceptible stretching of tempo as a classical musician performs a piece, directly reflects the speeding and slowing of one’s own heartbeat as we bathe in the atmosphere evoked before us by the music. The musicians and audience become intertwined as these visceral experiences are shared, and the sophistication of harmonic motion and themes developed within a piece of music by a truly great composer, can take you on a trip to the stars if you are willing to let it.

In training to become a classical musician, we are taught to “shape” the feeling of the composer’s phrases using these tools, and that each phrase is fully alive. A servant, communicating this love note to the Universe, echoing through the annals of history. You, the singer. Your body, the instrument. Your emotions endlessly change the sound of your voice as you offer it. “Whyyyy did I go to bed so late last night?!”, I think to myself as my throat slowly tightens half-way through a performance. But steadfast within our musical creation we must be, draw strength and trust from the years of training and hard work in the practice room, reclaim our balance…the breath deepens, and electrify our body to go forward with painting color onto the musical canvas.

By contrast, in the popular music of today these vulnerable life-giving aspects of our singing are considered mistakes by most producers, and are regularly, “fixed” in the mixing studio by a person with a computer. “You may not bend the tempo in the phrase! We must lock every beat to timecode for editing!“, a producer said, admonishing me after my first take. “But, I am really feeling that I want to bend the phrase here, and slow the tempo down to build some tension. Then, push the tempo in this spot to push us through to the end.” The reply? “Sorry, can’t be done.”

I never believe it when someone says that to me. My ability to keep working until I overcome all of the concepts of, “no” I have ever encountered is the only way I have ever created anything that feels truly impactful. “Can’t be done” does not compute in my brain. Even if I am not personally able to accomplish my vision for a piece in a moment, my drive is always to take the music back into the practice room and work it out. To reinvent it and keep trying on new ideas until the magic arrives. This is the grind of working at our Art and the way an artist develops a personal, “language” of interpretation and communication; a style all our own. I believe one of the true responsibilities we hold as artists is to be able to lead our audience through an emotional hero’s journey in each part of our performance, which evokes deep real feelings within them. But, that we must first come to this understanding within ourselves if we wish for the audience to know it as Truth. Consider for a moment the possibility your audience doesn’t need to love every single thing you’ve given them during your performance. They will truly enjoy your performance more overall due to the depth and authenticity of your offering. True Art. That is, if you’ve actually stayed honest with them all the way through it. Your strength and vulnerability, tugging war with each other under the microscope of their attention. As a singer, striking this inner balance while walking through the musical storm of a performance is where a lot of the art resides for me. When I am at my best, it is a ballet more than a boxing match. The performance is rarely everything I want it to be. But I have found that the audience truly loved my performance most of all during the times I felt messiest on stage. The times my singing felt trashy. When, afterward the voices inside of my head won’t leave me alone. I came to realize this was happening because I was actually being the most honest and vulnerable with them that I could possibly be, and I did not stop to hide myself away, or apologize. In life, as in performance, the baring of one’s soul is appreciated. Even craved. If you are willing to be so open, in return the audience will bare their souls back to you, and when the commitment of everyone present maintains the frequency of this beauty, the theatrical experiences shared can be magic for everyone involved.

In closing, I can only say that the current production practice of, “air brushing” the Art has yielded a modern musical product devoid of the root forces of human life. The onslaught of this formulated robo music which gathers as much money as possible in as little production time necessary, is no longer serving us. Time is money, they say. But, please be warned my friends, listening to music with these critical life forces artificially removed from them, creates an emptiness where something should be. The result is an energetic vacuum that pulls these very life forces out of you instead to fill the void. The vampires are hungry, and your blood is delicious and makes them rich when you don’t question what you’re hearing.

In strange times like these, it is singers like the little girl below who burn like a towering inferno for me. In the present climate of lies and passive aggressive disenfranchisement permeating our culture, the purity of her offering in this performance stands as a metaphoric beacon of light for the collective reclamation of our true Voice. 

The spirit of Art and passion will never die.
Bring on the Renaissance.