Being a songwriter and a poet is a journey. You are never “there” and yet, you are always “there”. Although it’s difficult, try not to measure yourself or your work by “success”. Your work may not have found the right audience, or you yourself might still be in the process of finding your voice, your style, your confidence. You might be having an off day, or week. Or month. Or year. We all get in these ruts from time to time. We’re all reaching, and often, falling short. But then, falling short is perception. We did as we did, no more, no less.

Performing can be hard. It can be downright scary. Songwriting? Writing poetry? They require skill, dedication, hard work. And because of the nature of songs and poems, sometimes we pull them from deep, deep inside ourselves, wrenching out our feelings, secrets, vulnerabilities, and putting them out there for others to hear or see. Sometimes our songs, poems, or performances don’t reach audiences in the way we’d hoped. They don’t meet our own exacting standards. When that happens, we often feel our work is bad, unworthy, terrible. Insert your favorite self-deprecatory words right here. We feel we’re not good writers, performers. Add to all of that the overarching societal sentiment that monetization = success = quality and it’s a recipe for a downward spiral.

Be kind to yourself.

When you start doubting yourself, when you start telling yourself how awful you are, your work is, be kind. When you start telling yourself you’re not as good as <insert name here>, be kind to yourself. It might be true, you might not be as “good” as someone at something. But you don’t know that person’s story, their experience, their training. Maybe you’re not as “good” as them, but they’ve been doing this twenty years longer than you have. Maybe you’re not as good at X, but you don’t realize you surpass them at Y.

Be kind to yourself.

Let yourself explore. Let yourself make mistakes. Let yourself write something awful just for the sake of writing the worst thing you can imagine, for fun. Let yourself try something new, explore something different, hop outside of your box and out of your comfort zone. Improvise. Play. Set aside those worries about how “good” you are and just be. Create. Do. Love yourself and love your works. Practice that. Remember that even the least skillful thing you create is a lesson to yourself, and that it has intrinsic value. You have intrinsic value.

You are worthy. Remember this.

So here we are, three years (give or take) from the last time I’ve written here. Since then, I have gotten a new job, then lost that job. I had cancer. Boo! I had the cancer removed and am currently cancer-free. Yay! I have written songs. I have written poetry. I remembered I wrote a different blog for two whole years filled with haiku. I may go back and write more. I have become involved in local politics. I have continued being involved in community activism. I am in the middle of planning a Pride Walk. So it’s been a busy three years. The pandemic kind of rearranged all my plans. So this it the reboot of the reboot of the reboot. Welcome (back) to the Bardic Project.

Sometimes you just have to write. Sometimes the words burn in you, pour out, demand to be heard. Sometimes that’s all there is between you and screaming.

She spoke
When they demanded her silence
She fought
When they pressed her to give up
She persevered
When all was stacked against her
She rose
She rose
She rose
And she stood for us all
Spoke for us all
Until
Death enfolded her
In velvet wings
Silent, still
But in the stillness
The silence
Stand
Stand
Rise up
RISE UP
Raise up
Your voice to fill
the stillness
the silence with
Fierce songs
Resilience
Persistence
Hope

-Pamela A. Wolff, 18 September 2020

All right, writing about random bits of fluff may seem pretty random, but inspiration can be pretty random. Songs and stories and poems don’t usually come out of nowhere. They come out of the random bits of stuff that our brains grab hold of out of our everyday lives. I call it fluff, because it just sort of drifts in and out of consciousness like dandelion fluff, and now and again it takes root and then won’t go away. This happens to everyone, doesn’t it? Sometimes it’s as bad as having the “Ballad of Sharknado” stuck in your head, and sometimes it’s just the recurring thought that foxes are the color of autumn leaves.

That’s all well and good, of course, but how does this help us? What if I forget what I was thinking of? What if the idea just vanishes? And how do I use these bits of fluff anyway? Well, there’s no one right way of using it. There’s no one right way to write a song, a poem. There’s no one single right way to create. So the very first thing is to understand that. The first thing is knowing that, if one way of doing things doesn’t work for you, there are other ways.

Me, I write lists.

I mean, I do other things too, but I write lists. Lists like:

• pitter-patter of hopping frogs
• fox-color = fall leaves
• dust curling like a kitten
• chocolate
• wind dancing
• thunderstorms
• flashlight tag
• walking barefoot through dewy grass.

I keep these in notebooks – physical and virtual – and read them over now and again, whenever I feel in need of inspiration. And sometimes I lose these notebooks, and then find them months to years later. Sometimes that is even better, because then I am reading these words and phrases with fresh eyes and without the anticipation of what those words were attached to.

So, sometimes inspiration comes out of a single word on lists like these, and sometimes inspiration comes out of a group of them. Sometimes inspiration doesn’t come at all, and that’s okay too. Sometimes ideas need to percolate a while, and having lists like this can help to re-start the creative process.

Or at least they can confuse the heck out of your family and friends.

Welcome to the Bardic Project! Actually, welcome to the Bardic Project Reboot!

Right, I know, what is the Bardic Project?

Simply put, it is a blog about being a bard, being a singer-songwriter, performer, being a poet, a storyteller, a weaver of words. That sort of thing. It’s primarily about doing all of this in the Society For Creative Anachronism (SCA), but applies elsewhere. It’s a blog about creating songs and music, poetry, stories, and about performing them. It’s about advice and tips and questions and answers and random bardic things floating about in my head. It will likely contain class notes and other things. Bits of brain-fluff and slices of pizza. And chocolate. I originally began this blog in 2015, but due to a number of reasons, it just kind of fizzled out. However, like many of my songs, it has been percolating in my subconscious for a while and now I think it’s a good time for me to reboot it.

And why “bardic”?

The “source material” I am referencing here is primarily my experience as a bard in the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA), and “bard” is the general term used for people like me — like us — who create and perform songs and poems and stories. It’s also fewer keystrokes than “singer-songwriter”. (There is a whole discussion about the specific meaning of “bard” in the SCA, but my definition above is what I will be referencing here.)

Anyway, aside from my experience in the SCA as a bard, I’ll include my experiences in a library songwriters’ group, my lifelong love for writing poetry and music, my experience in school theatre productions, and other random bits of stuff I’ve picked up here and there. In the future, I may get guest writers to add their own posts.

Oh, and I suppose that I should introduce myself. I’m Hilla Stormbringer, and I’m a bard in the Midlands region of the Midrealm. I have been singing since before I can remember, and I can’t even remember when I started writing music, poetry, and songs. Before I was ten, that much I know. I still have songs written down from 1990, and it was 1998 when I decided to make the craft a serious part of my life and also when I became a bard in the SCA. I think that’s enough for now to go on.

And for those of you who are not familiar with the SCA, I will provide links for your convenience and exploration. In brief, it is a not-for-profit educational medieval re-creation group, though a lot more fun than the description.

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