Years ago I used to have a long and successful route of reenactments where I entertained every weekend from labor day till thanksgiving. It extended over several states and locales, and I met and was seen by thousands and thousands of people. I even regularly traveled into Ontario. I even had stalkers!

In all my days I could never imagine such a thing ever happening to me. At home in Indiana, I couldn’t draw the attention of anyone. All my associates had some sort of substance abuse issue, even the best and kindest ones. None of them successful even on their own terms. To get a date from any one I knew or was likely to meet was an extremely low order of probability, and the pool from which I had to choose was murky at best.

Yet out on the road, I was a minor star of sideshow! Of daring do, courageous and desirable. There were women who would endanger their marriages and kid’s future for a chance to commit sins of the flesh with me! It was quite a boost to my fractured and fragile male ego.

To tell you the truth it didn’t make sense… it was too incongruent. Which was the aberrant reality? Of course it was me! The fans in other states admired my character on the bally stage. No one at home ever saw that.

Home. I would go home to Indiana after two and a half months of highly profitable roaming. Home to a family broken with age and alcoholism, busted dreams and seething viciousness. A home which I could not and never fit in with.

I would stay there from thanksgiving until after Christmas when I would travel to south Florida for my winter shows, and patent snow birding in the Airstream to avoid winter. All Alone.

Those six weeks at home waiting, booking shows, packing for a three or four month hop to south Florida, were done all holding my breath. Steeped in claustrophobic repressed republican paranoia and despotic drunkenness, while I planned and effected my escape from winter, and assholes. All done with no help aid, nor love. Some empty sex was added to the mix of my existence, as spicy and toxic as MSG. And with all the side effects one might expect.

Each year I would get through it. Somehow… I would watch the light change, the days shorten, and the temperature drop. My migratory instinct tug and tug damn hard.

Then I would get on the road and travel south, and savor the trip as long as I could. I would travel old US 41 from Indiana to Fort Myers, and reflect while being a complete Airstream Hobo on my way to my first winter show.

And yet in Florida, my loneliness was utter and complete. The sunshine state’s promises of fun and excess, provided neither. I never found love in Florida. I never found riches, was able to live to anything like excess, or descend into any sort of carnal or licentious indulgences despite the hype of the place.

All I really enjoyed was the weather and the sunlight. Mild spring light times of weather and real sunshine! All tossing my circadian rhythms towards romance and love, all cheated and frustrated. Florida would break my heart each year, and yet I knew it was the best I could do.

But out there on the other side the of the Alleghenies I did find my true love and now we are setting Florida aside for this season. The golden light of the South which beckons me to migrate comes with the most amazing partner. And I need not seek a place to find answers, or love or even excess. I have found them already with the Most Dangerous Beauty Alive™

There are so many things I could say about this particular advert, and the related one with our heroes singing about working in a pirate themed restaurant. I suppose I should begin by saying that I am not at all offended by either of them, so that will not be the crux of this post.

What I am is very disturbed.

Befre you go the route of thinking I’m making a mountain out of a molehill, consider the following. It has been well documented throughout the years that television has been a force on the planet that most (not all, mind you) people who partake of it on regular basis will accept what is presented through it as fact, no questions asked, no further skepticism or inquiry needed. So it stands to reason that people seeing the ad above will now “know” that all of us who work Ren Faires do so because we are forced to by bad credit. That it is a parody makes no difference in this case. This has been established in many, many communication studies. Bad credit, television tells us, is due to irresponsibility and therefore this ad by context tells us that Ren Fair employees are irresponsible. They have no one to blame but themselves for their “predicament”.

Really? Which Faires would these be that employ these people? Not the ones we work. The last event we worked, the Greater St. Louis Renaissance Faire, is a 501c3 with dedicated education days, to which school age kids from HOURS away are bussed so they can learn a few things in an environment that’s fun and interactive.  The acts we work with at this event, and many others, are high caliber entertainers, world record holders, some internationally known. These are acts that support families with what they do, and I don’t mean check-to-check, just-getting-by. The are raising and educating children and doing a darn fine job of it. And I could go on for hours about the dedication of those who cook food for us and the public, work the lanes as characters, take tickets and provide information, and the parking attendants who see that everyone who makes the drive gets to come and play.

I don’t think any of us described above see ourselves in this ad. We laugh about it a bit, but after that’s done, there’s the unsettling realization that for the majority of viewers, this is now their worldview on what sort of person works at the Renaissance Faire. It is sad to me that so little recognition is given to the validity of one the last vestiges of sideshow style entertainment outside of Coney Island. It is sad to me that the hard work of a volunteer staff goes unrecognized. It is sad to me that a tip in the hat of a performer might be given out of pity rather than appreciation.

It’s my hope that the last two statements will hold mostly untrue in this world, but I’m a realist about the power of television.

Never mind the fact that I worked on completing my second college degree while working Ren Faires, generating credit for my time spent working Ren Faires and graduating Magna Cum Laude with Ren Faire income helping to pay for it all. Never mind the fact that Alex works for many places on the Historical Register and is one of the most popular acts on the grant-driven Historical circuit for his attention to detail and accuracy for the time periods in which he performs. Never mind the fact that one of the acts we work with every year is one of the highest paid performers in his genre in the world. Never mind the fact that the children we know raised on the Ren Faire circuit are well-adjusted and well-behaved. Home schooled, you know … and perfectly well-socialized, thankyouverymuch.

We have mortgages, leases, vehicles to pay off and maintain, and we do so with the same struggles the rest of you out there have, I’m certain. While there are certainly some who fit the profile of the ad above, they do not comprise the majority. Look at any blue-collar trade and you’ll see very much the same dynamic at work.

And, unfortunately, the same prejudices.

Ask those of us at the Faire if we are working there because we have no other choice. Really. Ask us. The answers you get may just change your worldview.

It is my hope other performers and Ren Faire workers will chime in on this one. I’m just so completely sick of those of us who choose to work in the variety arts being vilified and mocked for what we choose to do for a living by those who have no understanding of what it entails. Listen to Chris McDaniel’s episode of NPC’s Conjurers, Carnies & Collectors for further exploration on the topic.

Okay. End of rant. Let the flaming commence. I just had to get this off my chest ….

Well HELLO! It’s been WAY too long since we’ve given an update here at the Swordswallowers corner of the Internet.

We are alive and well and happily working at the Greater Saint Louis Renaissance Faire, one of a tiny handful of Renaissance events we do on a regular basis. It is a wonderful event run by a 501c3 boasting one of the most dedicated volunteer staffs a fair could ever want. Crowds have been playful and large and our stage is once more shared by the fabulous Musical Blades and a new friend, Molotov the Gypsy. We were only able to commit to the middle two weekends of the event this year as we are making preparations to be more readily able to travel at a moment’s notice. We hope to add some more shows to our route in 2010 and are deciding who we will approach with which of our specific shows.

The tanager has not returned. The less said about that, the better, so I’ll end that thought here.

Last year saw us flooded out on Memorial Day with the Faire being forced to close. We were fortunate to have come through it unscathed but many on site didn’t fare as well, with one vendor of lovely delicate glass items suffering a total loss. This year, while slightly rainy, gave us nothing close to the epic amounts of rainfall that we saw in 2008. In general, 209 has been a much better year for us and for most of the performers and folks we know. Again, the less said about 2008, the better!

It is positively wonderful to be back on the road and planning for more road time with greater consistency. This is a life we respond to very very well and the simplicity of it makes it that much more desirable to pursue. We are among friends and fellow travelers and look forward to spending some social time out with a number of them before we all return to work on Saturday.

It is good to be home. Wherever that happens to be.

I had the extreme pleasure of working with Kate Guntermann (aka Sensoriel, aka “The Kate”) for the City of Roanoke’s Dickens of a Christmas Street Fair, held annually the first three Fridays in December in the historical district. Kate’s work with fire is astonishingly beautiful and her grace of movement stops people in the streets, a good quality when working amid said streets.

We worked in High Victorian attire, complete with straight skirts, high collars and yours truly in a corset. We looked marvelous together and decided to work the square in tandem, the advantages to this arrangement being twofold: One performer to watch the other’s props and one performer to watch the other’s back and maintain working space amid the crowds. We did twenty minute sets switching off every minute-thirty or so and then cleared the square for the remaining ten in the half-hour to allow the traffic to move among the vendors and other variety acts further along the way. This also kept us from having people stand still in the cold for more than fifteen to twenty minutes at a stretch, an important consideration given the high number of children in attendance.

When we finished four such sets over the course of our contracted two hours we were definitely feeling the cold but we returned to the hotel elated with how well the shows had gone and how naturally we had been able to work together and share the space. Once more I find myself not being able to say enough about how wonderful it is to work with adult professionals. We celebrated with a bit of room service hot chocolate before we began to really feel the effects of the evening’s activities.

It was a short jump from post-show energy to post-show fatigue and we were more than happy to curl up among the plethora of hotel pillows for a long sleep. Less than 24 hours later we are back home in our respective towns. I am still a bit mystified as to the sudden Christmas season popularity of sword swallowing, but I very much look forward to seeing it grow even more next year and I hope also to be a part of this event once again, sharing the space with Kate.

You rock, woman! Here’s some inspiration for our next meeting:

I’m Mister Green Christmas
I’m Mister Sun
I’m Mister Heat Blister
I’m Mister Hundred and One
They call me Heat Miser,
What ever I touch
Starts to melt in my clutch
I’m too much!

I’m Mister White Christmas
I’m Mister Snow
I’m Mister Icicle
I’m Mister Ten Below
Friends call me Snow Miser
What ever I touch
Turns to snow in my clutch
I’m too much!

We’re hooked up here at the Fairgrounds in Mobile, AL. The Mobile Renaissance Faire is being set up around us and the fence is decorated with flags and shields, the universal sign for “there is a Ren Fair being held here”.

There is also a Dog Show being held here. We drove in past several enormous rigs already parked and hooked up, all with makeshift pens binder-clipped together just outside their front doors. There were dogs of all shapes and sizes in the pens, each pen containing a single breed. With the exception of livestock in fields, it is quite surreal seeing many many animals of the same shape and size all in the same space, their coloring being the only obvious difference between them all. The breeds represented included Chihuahuas, Dalmatians, Fox Terriers, Papillons and, last but not least, Boxers.

The Boxers were right outside our back window. All night. It was a little loud at dinner time and again at breakfast time, but for the most part they slept through the night. This morning they packed up and moved inside the fairground to where the other dog show folks are camped. We’ll not miss them per se, but we were quite interested to get a peek into what another kind of life on the road must be like. It made us more grateful than ever for the comparative simplicity and minimalism of this one.

Yesterday the sunset was amazing. Today we go to the beach. I’m on the prowl for a good oyster bar.

Edit: Found one! You get to make your own cocktail sauce right there at the table. Fantastic.