Reflecting on Pennsic 50

It’s a little over a week that we’re home from Pennsic 50. As usual, I’ve needed some time to process my thoughts. Here we go.

This was our first full Pennsic since before the pandemic. We did just Peace Week from a hotel room last year, which gave us a taste, but it wasn’t the same as really being there. Most of it was fear of Covid, and we managed to avoid it. (We managed not to get sick this year too, which was better than a number of our friends. We may be “done” with Covid, but it really isn’t done with us.) It was good to really be back, to be set up fully with our pavilion and moved in and living onsite, and not needing to head out every evening just as the night life was getting started.

The thing I wasn’t particularly looking forward to, was the “50” part. I still love the SCA (despite those feelings getting more complicated lately), but I’m just not a fan of big self-congratulatory milestone events. They’re too big, too people-y, too noisy for us at this point in our lives, all else being equal. And Pennsic is massive and overwhelming at the best of times, even in a less-populous year. (Ultimately, the predictions of attendance levels between 13 and 15 thousand were, once again, overblown, and we had a much more normal 11k+ attendance.)

The TL/DR of my Pennsic (buried too late in the fourth paragraph) is: It was joyous and overwhelming and complicated and sad in places. Which makes it like most of my Pennsics, but much more so, between how long it had been since we’d actually camped there and the big anniversary.

Highlights:

• Being back at Pennsic with Jess. Having our home away from home set up, and getting to share it with my wife, is a unique experience I had deeply missed. Shopping together, sharing space with treasured friends, just snuggling. Seems obvious, but never something to take for granted.
• I felt more at home in our camp, McGuire’s Marauders, than ever before. I put in some focused effort to be a good campmate, and my fellow Marauders made it clear that they noticed and appreciated it.
• Chocolate Bardic. I have complicated feelings about the Peace Thursday bardic/party my camp has been hosting for over a decade. (It’s very popular, so we do a signup sheet, which is rare at Pennsic, and pretty demanding) I know a lot of people at Pennsic look forward to it, and as the most active bard currently in camp, I served as the full MC this year start to finish to a degree I hadn’t before. I was glad to hear people felt I had hosted it well (and if people didn’t, well, it hasn’t gotten back to me yet…this is the SCA after all). There were so many delightful performances, and it was great to see so many of my good friends and favorite bards shine.
• Duchess Caoifhionn’s bardic invitational at VDK. It’s always an honor to be invited to perform there, among so many exceptional and moving performers. I shared “Homecoming”, which is still relevant but will be performed less often after this war.
• (EDIT: Bonus Duchess! On my way to VDK, I once again asked people at Avelina’s camp if this was the right street. And once again, they offered the information, but it would cost me. I would have to entertain them. Twist my arm! The new filk (see below) absolutely killed. Filking for that camp is one of the hidden gems of my Pennsic when I get the chance.)
• Time spent hanging and rehearsing with my concert partners this year. Silence de Cherbourg, Bird the Bard, Colette la trouvere, Robbin Bowring, and Eadaoin Ruadh are incredible, deeply talented people. The willingness to find time to rehearse, and to put focus into getting our performances right without getting stressed out. All of you are amazing, and time in your company was tonic. (Silence in particular has become a bestie of mine, and hanging together was just wonderful.)
• The private concert for my friend Amanda de Spencer held at Artemisia Royal on middle Sunday. There was a swell of shared emotional energy that came together under that shade tent, that will stay with me for a long time.
• The Tuesday night concert. I’m going to be honest, that was a challenging set. The Performing Arts tent is a very large space. Thanks to the crowded act schedule, I went on an hour early than I have in the last few years, and it turned out East Kingdom court has moved to Tuesday nights, which meant there were people who wanted to come and weren’t able to. (Also, there was some kind of storytelling class going on in a nearby tent, where the participants were being encouraged to cheer and boo loudly enough to carry over into our space. Starting a set cold and hearing a booing crowd in my first couple of songs was really disconcerting. You can hear it on the YouTube for the first two songs.) All that said, that audience had made time in their Pennsic to come see our show, and we gave it everything we had. And my voice held up comfortably from start to finish.
• I didn’t have a new original song this year, but I did have a new filk. I wasn’t sure how a filk of “Putting It Together” would play in front of live audiences–it’s not a song most people are familiar with, and a lot of what makes a filk work is recognizing how the original song is being reworked. But it’s a Stephen Sondheim patter song about uncomfortable truths, and I brought mine. They were recognizable to audiences, and the pattern and energy of the song communicated itself. The song went over really well and I had a ton of fun performing it.
• Teaching classes. Teaching is one of my favorite things to do at Pennsic, and I love connecting and sharing knowledge with students, both giving and receiving. Pennsic University is one of the best things the SCA has to offer.
• Getting to connect, however briefly, with a number of people I’ve gotten to know online the last four years but hadn’t met in person. You all know who you are. They were just wonderful sparking moments, getting to be in actual meat space with all these amazing people.
• Getting time with friends we had not seen in years. (You all know who you are.) It wasn’t everyone we hoped to see, and there were folks I was really sorry to miss, but it was a busy war, and the time we got was irreplaceable.

So there you have it. The biggest Pennsic that ever Pennsic’d has come and gone. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything, and it’s really good to be home.