Long time no post! The middle of my June has, indeed, been crazy (a friend’s FABULOUS wedding, and running around North America with another friend!), but the last few weeks have been quiet. I’ve done some research, but mostly I’ve been rediscovering time for myself. One thing that I’ve lost in the past few years, in my desperation to keep up with both my arts and academics, is that I don’t really give myself much ME time. Yes, I spend (far too much) time on the internet, reading webcomics etc., but that’s not ME time. However, for two weeks in the middle of this month my computer was getting repaired (oops), and so I had to find other ways to entertain myself than the endless streaming of digitized information. So, gleefully, I’ve been reading children and young adult fantasy novels, a guilty pleasure that I feel absolutely NO guilt about. I discovered Rick Riordan, first via his new book “The Red Pyramid” and then via his “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” series (OMG I just finished book 4 and haven’t bought the last book yet NEED NOW), which despite what I’ve heard about its related rubbishy movie has been really quite entertaining. I also went to see Knight and Day with a friend, and to my surprise it was quite awesome. Not fourteen flavours of awesome, but at least five. And I’ve gone SWIMMING. If it weren’t for my dislike of public pools, I’d go swimming all the time. I find it calming and restorative, and I do some of my best thinking underwater.

Representative of this whole rediscovery, however, is a craft project I began years ago. The yarn, pattern, crochet hook and beads were a store-created kit given to me by my parents, but as I rarely worked on gifts for myself, it was often put off until I went on holidays (or at least plane flights), because crochet hooks are OK on planes (knitting needles aren’t). But on this trip home, I’ve finally finished it.

It’s lovely, soft, and light. And its structure reminds me that I shouldn’t over-structure my life — leave time for the ME-time, and the arts and academia will follow.

Tags: art vs. academia,crochet,life
Categories: Academia, Arts, crochet
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So I should be going and having dinner as a reward for actually writing part of a chapter (2700 words!!), but instead I’m rewarding myself by writing a blog post. Yes, I’m rewarding writing with…writing. My ability to reward myself with the same thing that was my task never ceases to astonish me (seriously, I do this a lot).

That said, I thought I’d write a few notes on teaching. I received a couple e-mails from last semester’s students over the weekend (mostly panics about “will I violate exam rules if I do XYZ?” to which I tend to reply “better safe than sorry, so try not to do XYZ”), and I was surprised at how much this made me miss my students.

I really like teaching.

And I’ve started to have a few worries about whether I’m actually good at teaching. I haven’t looked at last semester’s student comments yet (I’m waiting until I rework my syllabus over the summer—I’d like some distance on the semester before I destroy my soul), but student comment sheets can only go so far. Mostly because people don’t know what makes a good teacher until either a) they’re teaching themselves, or b) they’ve been taught explicitly to do or learn something new. Unfortunately, most of the teaching I do is ephemeral critical thinking skills (that don’t involve a workbook like mine did in elementary school), which is a bit harder to measure. I remember the teachers that TOLD me that I needed to start using my brain (yes, this happened…twice), but I don’t remember how they TAUGHT me to. It just happened as we went along.

Which was why this weekend was really nice, because I got to teach something where both student and teacher could see results. A bunch of my country dance friends organized a knitting afternoon, and one friend asked me to teach her how to knit at said afternoon. By the end of the afternoon she was casting on exceptionally well (I wish my tension had been that good when I’d started!) and have several rows of knit-stitch finished. I kept having flashbacks when I taught a friend from home how to knit, and that she’d been successful in learning, too (I should ask her if she’s still knitting). And tonight, I’m going over to a third friend’s to watch Glee (DON’T JUDGE ME), and as she’s just recently gotten into knitting, I’ve been asked to show her how to increase and decrease stitches. And I’m really looking forward to it.

Goodness, knitting, teaching and friends—since when did I have a social life? You’re not supposed to have one of those when you’re writing chapters!

Ah well. Off to have that reward-dinner now. Lysse out!

Tags: academic,art vs. academia,knit,life
Categories: Academia, Arts, knit
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Apologies again for the radio silence; I was ill last week and not up to writing. Seems like I’ve been ill most of the academic year—which is pretty accurate; the only months that saw me completely well were February and March. But now with antibiotics and a lot of sleep, I’m feeling much better. I’ve also gotten much further along on my chess set, which I will write about later this week.

As I spend more time studying the use of clothing/costume in literature and art, I’m developing an increasingly greater urge—even need—to not simply study and record in text but to also create and recreate. This may simply be a throwback to my costuming/reenactment background, but after spending every day thinking about how medieval clothing went together, was made to hang and fit, were cut, recut and lined, I have the desire to work that out myself physically. Textiles are inherently tactile, made to be worn, touched, felt, experienced—not just examined from a distance. The sheer amount of labour and attention that went into the medieval items, the fine embroidery and ornamentation, only confirms this. Art involving textiles should be touched.

This is one reason I get annoyed by modern art. How dare they make such beautifully textured things that aren’t meant to be touched! Art that deprives me of a sense necessary to appreciate it is denying itself and the experience of it.

So what does this rather academic rant have to do with my art? Well, I’m considering investing in a sewing machine—I have one, but it lives in the States with my parents, and it’s become obnoxious over the years to go on holiday and spend my time sewing instead of being social. Otherwise, I’ll keep knitting and thinking on textiles. And I might (re)take up needlework—I used to needlepoint, and have thought of cross-stitching. But really, as I put together my doctorate, I just want to piece fabric together.

Tags: art vs. academia,costuming
Categories: Academia, Arts
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Here’s a hint: if you think about a blog post so long that you’re sure you’ve written it and posted it by the time you go to bed, double-check. You may very well be wrong.

Anyway, to continue from Friday! When I applied to colleges I found one that had a medieval reenactment group. Due to one thing and another, it’s also the college I attended. I almost didn’t join the group, though—I had second thoughts before signing up, and only attended my first meeting because I heard some of my friends were going. I was quickly sucked into both costuming and combat. Fast-forward four years, and I’d served in four of the ten positions on the committee (in order: tech, historian, chessboard, publicity).

That group was That Medieval Thing.

A banner I made in my last year, during a chessboard rehearsal, after our nice one was stolen.

Combined with my fabulous classes in medieval literature and culture, and I’d been hit—I needed to continue in my medieval studies. If it weren’t for TMT, I wouldn’t be in Scotland. It’s amazing that it took me until starting my PhD to realise what I wanted to write on. The late Middle Ages in England and France had been my focus the whole time I was in TMT—I’d convinced the committee more than once to set our festival or feasts there. The day-in-day-out of TMT revolved around costume and combat—if you went to one of those, you’d be sure to know everyone. Now my whole PhD is on costume, and one of my chapters is specifically on arms, armour and heraldry. How did it take me this long?

I’d thought I’d write more than this, but I find it difficult to write on something that held such meaning for me. I honestly don’t think I gave the group the best I could have, but I certainly got the best out of it (my career).

Yesterday was their twenty-fourth Medieval Festival, and it’s the second I’ve missed. I hope they did fabulously. Since I wasn’t able to visit, I wandered my Scottish home, into museums and other important places, reminding myself through artefacts what it was all about.

I ended up here.

A tourist spot now, but once it was alive, active, used for the purpose it was built for. Because it’s not about the objects. It’s about the people.

TMT 2007

Tags: art vs. academia,festival,life,reenactment
Categories: Academia, Arts
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So it’s nearly 4am and I’ve had FAR too much coffee today and can’t sleep, so what better time to write a blog post?

It’s Festival season here, which means that anyone interested in theatre, music, dance, comedy, etc. is going to have a hard time focusing on what they should be doing–in my case, research. I don’t feel too bad about it, as I just got back into town earlier in the week and am experiencing a wonderful (caffeine-aided) round of jetlag, but the guilt will certainly set in next week… when I’ll be fresh and ready to enjoy the Festival. There’s a steampunk version of Hamlet that looks interesting, and a Hawaiian legend I want to see. But there’s also a bibliography that needs a good cleaning, a study plan that needs scrutinizing, and supervisors that hopefully won’t give me too much coffee (as has happened before).

I don’t think this is a bad dilemma to be in, though. Bibliography-cleaning is a down-and-dirty job that I can do with music or a movie, and peering at my study plan will refocus me. And, as I will tell anyone who will stay still long enough, I adore my supervisors. They are the most supportive people I could ask for, I am honoured that they treat me like a young peer to be mentored, and I come out of every meeting with them feeling challenged AND competent. Managing to boost my confidence while pointing out my weakness? They obviously must be awesome.

But it was one of them that noted that research shouldn’t get in the way of having a life. The stuff I do outside the office is just as important as the stuff I do inside the office, and each reflect on one another — though it’s rather awkward when people start ranting about the “changes” made to the Arthurian legend in BBC’s Merlin, and I start going of about canonicity and legitimacy within the Arthurian corpus.

Art and academia should go together – after all, my chosen discipline is based in the arts. But how do they go together? Obviously, I’m still trying to work that out. I’ll keep working it out, be it while watching interesting interpretations of Shakespeare or while browbeating myself over which chapters I need to cut from my doctorate.

Until then, what are your thoughts? Comments? Questions? Citations?

Tags: art vs. academia,festival
Categories: uncategorized
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FACT: I have too many hobbies.

That is, I have enough hobbies, if I wanted to achieve excellence in one, I would have to sacrifice the rest. But I need these; I call them my sanity, because they each speak to a different, deeper, emotional part of me than my research does. Both my femininity and feminism are satisfied with bellydance, knitting, and crocheting, but bellydance also speaks to my soul, while knitting and crocheting satisfy my desire to create something useful and lovely. Scottish country dance fills my need for roots and culture and community. Music provides an outlet for emotions, and both it and cartooning provide me a release for when words fail me. Maille draws together my desire to create something physical, my love of jewelry, and my interest in the Middle Ages. Baking? I like to feed people. It makes me feel good. A primal pleasure, if you will. As for creative writing, that is my place where I can pour all of me, at once, into a story that can take me out of the present. But these are simply too many hobbies to obtain excellence in. I would be happy with “good” in any of these, but at times, I feel like even “mediocre” is a struggle.(1)

FACT: I am a full-time student, doing a doctorate by research.

This is another reason my hobbies struggle. Excellence should be a “must” for this, but more importantly, I want it to be excellent. I love my subject(2) and I love my research. As I also greatly admire my supervisors and adore everyone else who has supported me on this life-path (3), I owe it to them to achieve excellence. But being a PhD student isn’t just about research and writing—it’s also about developing a place in the academic community. This means attending seminars and conferences, and starting this next year it means teaching, too. Now, I love every bit of this—seminars and conferences remind me that I’m not alone in my “academic addiction”, and I am ridiculously excited to exposing undergrads to the wonderful world of thought that I live in. But with time spent on these… there goes hobby time.

QUESTION: Can my hobbies and my research ever be equally valued?

A few weeks back, I was at a lovely friend’s leaving ‘do, where I was chatting with a friend of hers that I hadn’t met. When said person discovered that I study literature, he asked, “So do you write?”

For the first time ever, this rather common question took me aback. I was baffled. I’ve been asked this before, but mostly in undergrad, when I was specifically an English major (and, yes, was double-minoring in Creative Writing and the closest I could get to Medieval Studies). But this time, I had specifically mentioned that I studied medieval literature.

I hesitantly responded, “Well, of course I write academically, but—”

“No, no, I mean like stories,” he clarified.

“Oh, well yes, I do that—in fact, I’m in charge of a writing group—”

And the conversation continued on, but my mind was elsewhere. I was surprised with myself. When I was in undergrad, I would have automatically assumed that he referred to fiction writing. But now, with research absorbing me day-in-day-out, with hanging out with my medievalists friends (which at times involves wonderfully long discussions on etymology), with considering myself a budding academic, I felt ignored, disregarded, and shamed. Wasn’t it enough that I wrote academically? Do I have to write fiction, too, to be interesting? Is the fiction writer interesting, but the study of their work boring?

I wish that Barthes’ Death of the Author was thicker, because I would feel less hyperbolic saying I wanted to beat someone with it.

FACT: My life feels like a constant war between art and academia.

That example above spawned this whole entry, and indeed a much-needed rebirth of LysseBird. I’ll be exploring the tug-of-war between all my arts and my research interests (which are as wide as the former, and are only temporarily narrowed by the focus of my doctorate).  I will try to abstain from being too theoretical or philosophical, though you’ve probably already noticed how “high” my language gets when I’m thinking academically. I’ll try not to get hoity-toity. I want this to be a grounded, insightful journey. However, knowing me, there’ll probably be a lot of squeeing along the way; I get ridiculously excited about my interests. What can I say? I’m enthusiastic. There will still be logs of completed craft projects, but now there will be whining about research difficulty. There will be glee about academic achievements and discoveries alongside frustrations over my arts. Hopefully, there may even eventually be some knitting or crochet patterns or bellydance videos—if I can rise to either of those goals, I’ve achieved my “good” in those areas. But I really don’t want to be pretentious. Verbally whack me if that starts to happen, OK?

So welcome to all newcomers who read this, and welcome back to those who have been around for the very shaky beginning this past year has been. I know what direction I want to take this blog in now.

Welcome to LysseBird: Arts vs. Academia.

(1)  However, I am notoriously hard on myself. I think my self-judgment has improved in the past few years to a level closer to what some folks call “reality”, but that remains to be seen.

(2) Medieval literature; more details forthcoming.

(3) It’s a looooong list.

Tags: art vs. academia
Categories: maintenance
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