January journal: Laurel-y thoughts

[ursula]

katerinfg asked for "Laurely thoughts that might be helpful to someone on the path."

Perhaps the most standard Laurel-y advice is "Do what you love and don't worry about becoming a Laurel." I hate this advice, but it's so common that it must be useful to somebody.

The most benign interpretation of the advice is "If thinking about Laurel politics is stressing you out, maybe you should try making something instead." The advantage of this re-interpretation is that it remains useful after one becomes a Laurel, when Laurel politics become more stressful, because people tell you it is your duty to care about them. The disadvantage is that a natural extrapolation is "Maybe you should try making something that has nothing to do with the SCA at all," which may lead to happiness (I've been enjoying this strategy myself, of late) but doesn't exactly increase the glory of the Society.

The least benign interpretation is "You shouldn't be interested in becoming a Laurel, only in loving art." The problem is that saying so doesn't stop people from wanting praise, acclamation, and the respect of the people around them. Instead, it just encourages people to lie about their motivations (to themselves and others). If you have never encountered someone freaking out about why they didn't win a competition while simultaneously insisting they're only in it for the love of their art, you haven't been involved with very many SCA competitions. We'd be better off creating more local norms for decorum (like, don't be a jerk if you get bad scores in an art contest), accepting that some people are ambitious, and trying to channel those ambitions toward good.

The thing that drives me up the wall about this advice personally, though, is that it implicitly assumes that "what you love" is obvious. I am someone who likes a lot of things, and whose baseline level of intellectual intensity is pretty high. But because I am someone who likes a lot of things, it's easy for me to imagine that I could be happy doing something completely different: I commit at the 65% level very fast, and at the 95% level very rarely. The things I love are actually patterns or ways of approaching things: I care about learning new things, about formal structures like grammar and mathematics, about repetitive or meditative ways of making things, about iterating toward something better. Sometimes I tell people that my Laurel is in research and languages (learning stuff and one kind of formal structure!), but really I just did enough more or less related things until enough people on the Laurel council thought it was cool.

That's my version of the standard advice: Laurels are human. Even if you're doing everything right, it will take them a while to notice. Do things you think are interesting, ask yourself whether they're medieval things, let other people know about your questions, and try not to stress too much about the timeline.

Comments

[stitchwhich]

Especially since as you increase in your knowledge and teaching, your art "renown" will also increase. After a while, if you are one of them who has slipped through the laurelly cracks, that will only be laughable because you are too busy helping others - who have come to you for aid - with their art. I've a friend who got herself blackballed from the laurelate by being single, beautiful, and talented. Jealousy and her suckups within the circle objected to her "PLQs" for years. Now she teaches her art wherever she goes, often at big Wars, and has been invited to teach at the Met in NYC. Someday the weight of her renown will overcome the jealousy of the naysayers - but while that will be personally satisfying in a small way, what she truly loves is contemplating how many people she has helped and how many non-SCA institutes are applying to her for her expertise.