poltr1 | Feeling a bit down on myself lately.....

Some random thoughts while I try to fall asleep again.

almeda recently posted an interesting dissertation on the dynamics of filk circles. A lot of it rings true for me.

I remember my first filk circles. They were housefilks. We'd get together at someone's house, and play. They were chaos-style, and the host would often jump in, saying "I have to follow this", and proceed to sing one of their songs.

I'm normally a shy person, and I'd hate to interrupt when people were about to start, so I didn't get a lot of play time. Eventually I wrote a song, and performed it one night, and it became the theme of songs for the next half hour. I didn't know whether to feel complimented or ridiculed.

After that night, the housefilks stopped being fun for me. I soon got burnt out on them, and stopped attending. I haven't been back.

The type of post-con blues I'm feeling is a little different this year. I know OVFF has been, is, and will continue to be performer-centric, and with the size of the con, I usually don't get to play. It's tough to say hello to folks when there are about 100 or more people to meet and greet in the span of 1-2 days. I missed saying hi to several people, either because I didn't see them when we could talk, or they were otherwise engaged in conversations.

I don't get to play much anymore. Taking care of a household, my family, and my ongoing clutter issues have sucked up a lot of time. (I know: same-old same-old.) Because of that, I feel relegated to the "listener" class. But with my musical talents, I feel that I should be in the "player" class.

What would be my ideal filk circle? For me, it would be a small (6-8) circle of people, playing and offering constructive remarks to each other. (For those of you who are familiar with Toastmasters, it would have a similar format -- evaluation instead of critique; "I" statements instead of "You" statements.) It would be more of a musician's workshop than a strictly-for-performance circle.