Altavia Anniversary, 05/22/10

Oof.

Altavia Anniversary was lots of fun, but oh MAN, did I suck on the rapier front. It was confusing, it was annoying, it was frustrating, and it was discouraging. By the end of the day, I was so frustrated, I didn't want to fight anymore. I pretty much just wanted to dig a hole and sit in it for awhile. In short, I was sulking.

When I was in high school, I did a lot of performing. I sang in two choirs, did every school play, and the yearly musical. When I first started performing, I would spend most of my on-stage time making sure I was saying the right lines, doing the right dance steps, staying in tune, harmonizing correctly, and, when I remembered, being nervous. As the years passed, the stage fright and self-analysis faded, and it got to the point where I didn't even think anymore, I just did. The really good performances, I couldn't even remember once I got off stage. It wasn't that I was performing by rote or that I was bored--I became a vehicle for my technique.

I'm not at that point in my fencing game. I'm still in the first blush of learning new stuff, where a lot of my time on the field is preoccupied with thinking. I think about what I'm going to do, I think about my calibration and measure, I think about the person I'm fighting, I think about speed, I think about everything. This isn't necessarily at bad thing at the moment--as long as I'm not preoccupied with negative brain stuff, like nervousness or self-consciousness, it's okay. I'm supposed to be analyzing and applying my new skills and techniques, and if I have to think about them to do them right now, that's okay. For now. Eventually, it'll get to the point where I don't have to think about it (not one day too soon, in my opinion), but not today.

Well, yesterday, I wasn't thinking at all. I wasn't analyzing, planning, scheming, plotting, or concocting. By the end of the day, I wasn't even reacting. And it sucked.

That point, the part where I'm not thinking, I'm just doing, is the Zen I'm constantly harping on about. Sometimes I feel it--or, at least, feel it in the aftermath, because it sort of asserts itself without my noticing and I don't realize until it's gone that it was there at all. I know I won't have the Zen fencing every fight forever once I hit a certain point, but I'd like to have it regularly once I improve a little bit. For now, I'm stuck with my brain making noise most of the time.

I can't really remember any of my fights from yesterday. I can remember the fights from practice, I can remember the fights from Darach Anniversary last week, but I can't remember the fights from yesterday. I remember my first fight with Don Andre pretty well, because I was thinking and had a plan and all that good stuff, but everything after that was just awful.

As I think I've said before, I don't get annoyed when I lose, especially not when I lose to someone who's been fighting a lot longer and is a lot better than I am. I get annoyed when I lose and I can't figure out what I did wrong or how I got killed. That was my day all day yesterday.

Dons Andre and Alexander were kind enough to walk me through the fights afterward and, as always, Laertes was right there before and after to give me tips, pointers, suggestions, and encouragement. I'm lucky enough to be surrounded by very patient, encouraging, inspiring people who are willing to give their time and energy to help me improve my game, even when I'm being a bit of a brat about it.

I think this is the first hurdle Laertes mentioned I'd hit--where I'm getting a lot of new information and trying to implement it. He said the first little while of the studentship would be really frustrating because I wouldn't be improving, even though I had all these shiny new tricks and ideas to use. Quite possible.

Man, I wish I didn't get discouraged so easily. I've always been better at talking myself down than shoring myself up, and the more something matters to me, the harder I am on myself. I may not be a great fencer, but I have, like, a black belt in beating myself up.

This is something I notice in my personal life as well--the arsenal of things I have to make me feel good about myself is far outgunned by the arsenal of things I have to make myself feel worse. But that's a post for another day and another blog.

The solution to this, obviously, is more practice. Nate (Dylan, to those of you in the scene) suggested that maybe I was being too hard on myself and driving myself too hard to perform, but I think the opposite is true--I'm not practicing enough, or drilling enough. I know that results won't come overnight, but if I don't feel like I'm really doing my all, I have a reason to feel bad about my performance. If I feel like I'm working hard enough, I have no reason to beat up on myself. Slow and steady and all that.

I wasn't feeling great at the beginning of Darach practice today, and my first fight with Askell was terrible and very discouraging, but Don Alexander worked with me for entirely longer than he should have at playing with constraints (I've gotten how they worked just fine, it's the what to do after I get up in the face part I've had trouble with). After that I was back in the learning headspace and feeling a lot better.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends...

(Also, I have some new drills. More on those later.)

Fighter Practice, 01/27/2010

Fencing on Wed. was generally uneventful.

Did some slow work with Theo--got her to close the line, lunge properly, and guard her head with her dagger all at once, which was cool. She was just sort of jabbing at me with her arm and no body commitment, so I explained a little bit about calibration and how lunging properly can actually help protect you better than just being out of the way and poking with your arm while keeping your body as far back as possible. She seemed to get it.

I asked her after if it was okay that I was dumping all this information on her, and she said yes, so I guess I'm doing the right stuff. :)

After that I fenced with Elo. She's a fun fight--her primary offhand is cloak, so even though we were going with sword and baton, she had a lot of swirly motion in her body--like when she parried she would roll her whole offhand-shoulder forward like she was trying to foul my point with a nonexistent cloak. Of course, I realize this now, but at the time I was just sort of distracted. She used the foul-with-cloak-then-counterpunch technique really well, especially given that she was using a baton. :) I should have manipulated that more effectively--every time she did it, I either died or parried messily. If I'd had a dagger, I could have rushed in and ganked her, but didn't happen.

Good point control, though. I snaked in and tapped her all pretty on the chest a couple times, and I solved the baton problem by taking her hand. Over and over and over. Then I would give up my baton, she would take my primary hand, and we would start over. Not effective.


In other news, I love my baton. It's good that I don't fight with it very often, because it's totally a crutch, but I love it so much. It's like a huge, heavy dagger that I can beat up other people's swords with, distract them, or use as a windshield wiper. I don't need good defense as long as I have my baton, right? Right?

...Guys?

Fighter Practice, 01/13/2010

Not a great turnout at practice last night. I spent a lot of time with Theo, who is the 16-year-old daughter of Bruce Tiffney, the dean of the college at UCSB I graduated from. She's very sweet and very enthusiastic, but isn't very coordinated. It's like she's spent more time reading and studying than exercising--I imagine I must have been a lot like her when I first started fencing. I got to practice my single against her, which was my only goal for the day, and one of the benefits of fencing with someone so new is that I've got time to analyze my own technique and positioning as I'm doing it, rather than worrying about getting punked in the head and having to start over again.

I was giving her a lot of advice in (what I hope were) bite-sized chunks, and tried to be big on the positive reinforcement. One of the biggest hangups I have learning fencing stuff is that often when I learn something new I like to repeat it three or four times before I can really feel the motion, like it's imprinting itself in my muscle memory. I can understand the how and why of new concepts very quickly, but I need to repeat the motion a few times before I can really start to associate the sensation with "correctness" in my brain and try to make it instinctive. Although I guess if I'm *trying* to make something instinctive I'm sort of defeating myself. This Zen shit is hard! :)

Anyway, I got Theo performing basic lunges with the line closed at appropriate measure with good arm and body position and had her repeat each motion three or four times. I explained some basic tempo and physics stuff about why a lunge protects the attacker even when the opponent counterattacks, and she seemed to get that pretty well. Manda was watching the whole thing and I kept waiting for some additional commentary, but she didn't say anything, so I guess I was doing okay. She's is a fantastic teacher, in my opinion--not many people have the ability to look at someone's body and almost immediately see what's wrong and how to fix it, but I guess she's been watching people fence and learn to fence for so long it's pretty second nature for her. Maybe in three or four years I'll be there too.

I realized as Theo and I were fencing that I could explain what she needed to do in terms of body position and tempo pretty clearly (I think!) but when it came to explaining why I was killing her so often even when she was trying really hard to bat my sword around with all this slashy shit, my language got more vague. This is obviously an indicator of not understanding it as well as I think I do... but which aspects, exactly, I'm not understanding are still a little confusing. Oy.

Part of why she didn't kill me is because she wasn't putting any real force behind any of the slashy crap--there are guys in Isles who can get me with that stuff just because they wham their swords around like the goddamn Highlander and try to grapple with you and end up ganking you messily and too hard with their dagger, other sword, or baton... but that's neither here nor there. Theo did get me a couple times with some very pretty lunges that went in almost exactly the right place--when she was doing Italian stuff her kill/death ratio leveled out dramatically. I don't know if this was because we were both doing Italian or what. Anyway...

I guess this post isn't really about my game, but it's just as interesting for me to analyze someone else's (how apt or inept that analysis is, I can't say). I don't know how to improve my teaching, or if I'm even in a position to be teaching yet... you can't really get adequate feedback from newbies because they're so uncertain anyway, many of them aren't sure if they aren't understanding or if you aren't articulating clearly. In my opinion, the second is usually indicated by the first, but sometimes people have more trouble understanding one particular bit of information or they're like me and they think they get it until they start doing it and then they realize how hard it is. :) It's hard to tell if I was helping Theo last night or just confusing her more--she's so eager to please, I think she was afraid to ask questions.

I should ask Manda how I'm doing, she wouldn't hold any punches. :)

Hopefully I'll get a little bit more self-study in at Angels this weekend.