That's My Story and I'm Sticking to It...

 

I’m always who I am because I can’t be anybody else.

But I’m not always all of who I am to everyone.

I show different aspects of myself depending on the circumstances.

Some parts I readily and often display.

Others I seldom reveal.

A few, never.

When I’m with my horse, I’m slightly different from the person I am when I’m hanging out with musicians. I show a different face when I’m fighting from the one I show when I’m teaching.  I’m like a chameleon: though my superficial appearance may change to suit the environment, my overall shape and internal workings remain the same.

I’ve done hard time on planet earth. Had adventures and misadventures. I’ve been a friend, a lover, and an enemy. I’ve broken hearts and had mine broken. I’ve been a hero, a coward, and a clown; a villain, a thief, and a fool. A dreamer and a cynic.  I’ve buried hopes and I’ve buried friends. I’ve been, like Frank says, a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn and a king. You name it.

And I’ve got miles to go before I sleep.

I tell stories.

People I’ve known, things I’ve seen.

Where I’ve been, what I’ve done, and what I learned --- usually by making mistakes.

Some stories belong to other people. But they can’t tell them any more so I do it for them.

Some stories are funny. Some are sad.

Some are funny one second, and sad a split second later.

A lot of that going around.

Sometimes the point of the story is obvious, sometimes it isn’t.

Sometimes the story seems like a random digression.

It never is.

The purpose of the story is always the same: to elicit an emotional response from my student.

To make them feel. 

Make them laugh.

Or cry. 

Or both.

To do that, I have to allow the emotional response in me. I have to allow them to see my joy, my pain, my fear, my anger. That’s how they know what the story means. I’m a tuning fork. They’re tuning forks. I vibrate at a certain pitch, and their vibrations entrain with mine.

Some stories are told and retold many times as part of my teaching “repertoire.” 

Yet each time I tell it, it has to feel spontaneous, as if I were telling it for the first time. To do that, I have to be willing to experience the feelings of the story myself, sometimes quite unpleasant feelings, over and over again for my students’ benefit.

It ain’t easy being a bodhisattva.

But I’m tough.

I can take it.

Every story has cost me something.

Every story will cost them something too: innocence.

They will not be the same person after the feelings elicited by the story, that they were before they heard the story. Their values, beliefs and attitudes may change. As a result, their behavior may change.  If it does, then I know they’ve actually learned something.

To become the person you can be, you must sacrifice the person you were.

 That’s the trade-off.   It’s the price everybody pays.

Ask Odin.

aac

When Past is Prolonged

A reader recently asked what I thought of the future of fencing.

Interesting question.

When I first learned fencing from David and Lucille Logan back in around 1970 or so,

there was no such thing as “classical fencing,” as distinguished from “Olympic fencing.”

That which we now call “classical fencing” was known simply as “good” or “correct” fencing.

That which we now call “olympic fencing” was known simply as “poor” or “incorrect” fencing.

Most all of what they do in the Olympics now, was done back then, too, but was witnessed with much dumbfounded shrugging of shoulders and disgusted shaking of heads.  We all knew what fencing was supposed to be and what it was supposed to look like, and , though our efforts may have been imperfect, we were always striving toward that ideal.

The perpetrators of poor fencing were admonished and weeded out by natural selection because they were not rewarded for their antics with victory. Today, they are.

So the main difference now is that poor, incorrect fencing has become our “standard.”

Incorrect is now correct. What was a fault is now a virtue.

Someone once said that the macrocosm is reflected in every microcosm. (DNA supports this suggestion.) It struck me that the changes in the nature of fencing and the changes in the nature of the United States (and its allies, clones and sycophants) have demonstrated a parallel decline over the last 25 or 30 years.

Before, there was corruption, fraud, bribery, torture and even murder committed by our government – but we at least had a sense that such conduct was immoral and illegal, and political hacks would avoid getting caught, and feign shame and remorse when they did get caught.

We all knew what “liberty and justice for all” was supposed to be and what it was supposed to look like, and, though our efforts may have been imperfect, we were always striving toward that ideal.

The main difference now is that corruption, fraud, bribery, torture and murder have become our “standard.”

What was immoral is now moral. What was illegal is now legal.

See the pattern?

What once was called “the land of the free and the home of the brave” is now a nation of depraved cowards and greedy psychopaths who claim a “right” to engage in torture and murder, who spy-and-tell on each other like a junior high hall monitor trying to make points with Teacher, who allow themselves to be treated like cattle, abused at airports, and exploited like the ignorant slaves they have become   -- and footing the bill for their own enslavement the way victims of the 3^rd Reich were made to dig their own graves before being murdered in them.

Similarly, what once was called “the sport of ladies and gentleman” by my teacher now seems to have devolved into a rude game of narcissism. And it is so far from the “frank and courteous encounter” it was intended to simulate with the highest possible degree of  verisimilitude allowable by the constraints of safety, that the participants might just as well be playing Frisbee.

The future?

If past is prologue, then fencing has no future.

Not, at least the living, breathing, version of fencing with a soul and a spirit and Truth and a noble purpose. That fencing died around 1980 and what we’ve seen since is the irrational, antithetical zombie-version running amok eating people’s brains.

And similarly, the United States, as defined and described in the founding documents of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, received a fatal head wound in Dallas in 1963, and what we have now is a nation gone completely mad, with a President who sees himself as a monarch with the authority to murder (or, rather, to have murdered –  for such men never do their own killing) any person any time, anywhere without charge or trial (what we used to call “due process of law”) and utterly without any oversight or accountability whatsoever.  Not since the writing of the Magna Carta in the 12^th century has any ruler so brazenly asserted such godlike power.  Even Hitler and Stalin, two of the greatest mass murderers in history, didn’t make such an outrageous assertion.

Can fencing be resurrected?

I doubt it. 

Fencing thrives on excellence, truthfulness, loyalty and benevolence.

It cannot be cultivated – or even understood -- by lazy, stupid, amoral, narcissistic people.

So fencing has taken its current Undead form because that form is consistent with the new values of the Undead United States and Friends.

Real fencing that was a celebration of self-discipline and honor, would be too antagonistic to the 4^th Reich where no suggestion of honesty, no show of integrity, no trace of personal liberty/autonomy must remain to contradict the mind-numbing propaganda so critical to the continuation of oppressive authoritarian parasitism that is the essence of a fascist government.

So my initial thought on it is that the future of fencing is --- among the very least of our concerns.

aac

So......

If you've been reading this blog awhile now, you know a little bit about what I do, how I do it and why I do it that way.  I could go prattling on indefinitely, hoping that eventually I'd address your specific questions -- the same way enough monkeys at enough typewriters would eventually type up a copy of Shakespeare's "Hamlet."

OR, I could just ask you, "What do you want to know?"
So I'm asking.

We've considered making short video-clips of techniques, training drills, and/or lesson exercises -- especially for those of you who, by accident or design, have undertaken an "instructor" role without the benefit of much training on exactly how to do that.

In a perfect world, I'd have you come here and train with me every day for a year or so.
As you may have noticed, the world is not perfect.
Most people can't uproot kit & kin and trek the yellow brick road here to the and of Oz, with no means of support, while they invest 1-3 years learning the swordmasters' craft.
And I think "week-end" workshops, without any on-going follow-up, are a waste of my time and your money.
So.
What can we do?

What can I offer you that would help you become a better fencer, fighter, teacher?
Tell me.
Brainstorm.
Don't be shy.
What do you want?  What do you think you need?


If I can help you with it, I will.


aac

Heart to Heart

One of the things I find challenging in teaching students who are "intellectually astute," is leading them to grasp there there is more than one way to "know" something. We have such an over-emphasis on the material, on logic, rationality, and analysis that we can come to believe that's all there is.
It isn't.
I quite often advise my students that feeling is more important than thinking. While most of the time I'm referring to tactile sensations, there's more to that.
Much more.

 There are countless ways that swordsmanship and horsemanship overlap or "cross over" to each other. Here's an excerpt from a lovely article by horseman Michael Bevilacqua in which he touches on one of them.

aac

From "The Human Masquerade"

by Michael Bevilacqua

November 2011

http://www.beyondthedreamhorse.ca

At workshops, in my book, on the DVDs, I mention intuition. That comes from being in the moment. That is why most children will have such magic moments with horses. Horses may do more for a child who is not trying to get anything done than for an educated adult with an agenda. Intuition is not something that is easily worked on or developed. However, it can be allowed to come forth depending on our attitude or state of mind about how we feel in our own life. It is by letting go and living the moment.

Everyone has experienced it at some time even when, on the surface, things seem to be really good or as we want them to be. Yet, there is a funny feeling in our gut, fluttering in the chest or sweaty palms or just some fleeting, hidden thought within us that we choose to ignore.

It was always believed that the heart responded to the information sent to it by the brain. Going back to Hippocrates there were those who believed that the heart served a much greater function. Certainly, that stress and different kinds of emotion affect the rest of the body in various ways. Dr. J. Andrew Armour of the University of Montreal discovered in 1991 that the heart has somewhat of a brain of its own. A network of about forty thousand neurons has been discovered within the heart muscle. It has its own memory and can act independently from the central nervous system. These send signals to the brain and can alter the state of the brain in its wave activity. It does this in four ways: neurologically (transmission of nerve impulses), biochemical (hormones and neurotransmitters), biophysically (through pressure waves) and energetically (through electromagnetic field interactions).

What is also intriguing is the continued work at the Institute of HeartMath located in Boulder Creek, California. The body has its own voltage and sends out info in a radius from the chest toward the skin and further that can be measured  (EKG pads that are placed on the torso, for example) The heart can pick up information from the external environment as well and send us signals that can commonly be described as intuition. A situation may appear to our eyes and brain as normal or good, yet, for some reason, there is a funny feeling inside of us that is telling us otherwise.

There were so many times, with horses, that I made a decision or understood something regarding the horse, without being able to explain it. It is important to note that intuition is best described as a sudden, unexplainable awareness rather than a feeling. It is not an emotion that suddenly floods us. If you have a feeling of fear, for example, that is not intuition. Rising emotions in us are linked to our thoughts. If intuition signals danger, that signal, of itself, is just something that suddenly occurs to us. It is then that fear can quickly follow due to our thoughts presenting conjecture based on that danger signal. With intuition, questions come after the answer.

Picture

Electromagnetic field from the heart extending about 2-3 feet

What is interesting is that the heart and the brain can tune into each other. Furthermore, the heart creates a magnetic field five thousand times greater than that of the brain that radiates out ‘sensing’ the environment and, likewise, can affect the rhythm and signals of someone else. Alternatively, someone can learn to tune in to someone else where the perception and communication can become much clearer. In other words, the heart rate of one person can have an influence on the brainwaves of another by bringing them into sync with each other. This communication is influenced by emotion and is most prominent when a person has feelings of caring, love and appreciation.

Electroencephalograph (EEG) and Electrocardiogram (ECG) will tend to match each other in rhythm patterns either within one person or between two people if they are in close proximity but more so when they touch. This tuning of rhythm between heart and head also results in improved cognitive performance. This exchange of energy into other living tissue also produces a strong theory about the practice of healing.

Intuition is not a training method, either. However, if you can be observant without any kind of preconceived notions about what your horse may or may not be doing, it could permit you to get a clear message. Or easily allow a solution to how to get one across to the horse in a different manner. Focusing on something that may normally come naturally can sometimes get a person quite confused.

Lao-Tzu, in the Tao Te Ching:

 

The centipede was happy, quite,

Until a toad in fun

Said, “Pray, which leg goes after which?”

This worked his mind to such a pitch,

He lay distracted in a ditch,

Considering how to run.

Hear No Evil, Cyrano Evil...

If I had to pick ONE scene to be my favorite, I think this might have to be it.
For me, Jose Ferrer is the definitive Cyrano.
The fight is brilliant.
And it has utterly NOTHING to do with the rapiers actually in use at that time. It is NOT historically correct.
Who cares?
I find it completely "believable," a requirement of fiction not shared by reality.
And it includes some exquisite fencing, indeed. Cyrano's unshakable poise is as inspirational as his unstoppable point.

Note the pauses and changes in rhythm and tempo.

Definitely one of the all-time great scenes.

aac

What's it all about, Archie...?

One of the things I believe in, because it’s worth believing in, is that there is a balance, symmetry and reciprocity to the universe.

Physicists say, “For every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction."

“As ye sow, so shall ye reap,” quoth Christian clerics.
Others call it “karma.”

“What goes around, comes around,” according to Manny, the ex-boxer who sold porn-lite at his news stand on the corner of Bad Luck and Trouble in my old neighborhood.

In the Rob Roy piece, the parties have agreed to “no quarter,” which means, “no mercy,” a duel to the death. 

Rob is highly motivated – Archie has raped Rob’s lady – and completely committed, though not highly confident.

Archie is not as highly motivated emotionally, but is supremely confident, convinced of his own superiority, not only technically, but culturally. Being defeated by a mere “Rob Roy,” is really unthinkable to him. For him it’s a game of cat-and-mouse, and Archie’s the one doing the purring.

Archie is in what would be the “longer/weaker position by virtue of his weapon and his speed/agility.

Rob is in the shorter/stronger position.

Archie’s best chance of victory is “defensive out-fighting.” Rob’s best chance is “offensive in-fighting,”  Archie should wear down his opponent with a “death of a thousand cuts” while staying out of range as much as possible, and moving out of line when he can’t stay out of range.  Rob should “cut off the ring” minimizing Archie’s mobility, and close distance to deliver a decisive blow.

It’s a classic confrontation. Ali-Frazier. Ali-Foreman. Douglas-Tyson.

And this is exactly what Hobbs (MY favorite choreographer, too) has them do.

As the fight progresses, Archie is having it all his own way.

He avoids trading blows with Rob, is continuously changing the angle, retreating immediately to his distance after each foray, and using the point to keep Rob at bay. He inflicts several wounds, each one successively more serious. When engaged, his focus is impeccable. He’s the predator.

Rob is completely frustrated. His blows are powerful, but predictable. He’s unable to close the distance, or corner the wily Archie. His assaults grow weaker and slower, and easier for Archie to deal with --- increasing Archie’s confidence each time.

Then comes the critical moment.

Rob is down.

What Archie should do now, is deliver the coup de grace and kill Rob, as they had agreed in the beginning: no quarter.

But he doesn’t do that.

His arrogance – founded in no small way in the cultural certainty of his superiority, but also alloyed with his personal vanity – allows him to assume he’s invincible and that his unsophisticated opponent is beaten.   

Instead of dispatching Rob quickly and cleanly, Archie pauses to indulge in a bit of unnecessary cruelty, taunting his opponent with a “you asked for it” reminder of their deadly agreement, and also taking the opportunity to posture for his benefactor.

This is the moment when what goes around, finally comes around.

Archie has closed the distance with Rob and stands preening – and immobile – before him. He shifts his focus away from his prey, like a cat now bored with an inert and no-longer-entertaining mouse.

Rob seizes this opportunity – and Archie’s blade. For a moment Archie is bewildered, doesn’t quite comprehend what is happening or what it means. And by the time he does understand it, it’s too late.

That universal reciprocity, that balance, that symmetry that I choose to believe in, finally sends Archie’s karmic pendulum hurtling back in his direction. His rigid conviction in his own class-superiority and personal superiority had caused him to believe he had license to do whatever he willed with complete impunity, but, in the end, the forces he himself set in motion were his undoing.

You might say Archie’s karma ran over his dogma.

It’s a good lesson.

And a timely one, too.

aac

Change for a Quarter

This clip is from ROB ROY.
I find it brilliantly choreographed and acted.
It is a wonderful interplay of strategic positions.

Here's a question I always ask my students about it:
What was it that cost "Archie" (Tim Roth) his life?
What's the lesson there?

Feel free to offer your ideas on it.
:)

aac