I just spent my first full weekend ever at Collegium Caidis, Caid’s annual weekend of classes. I rarely miss the Saturday classes but generally go only one day. This was so much fun to really immerse myself in classes. Along those lines, my public thanks to THL Domhnall and THL Beathog of my wonderful household, Cliar cu Buidhe. They wined me and dined me and generally kept me in stitches. Oh, and I am now a recording star thanks to them.  ;>

As I am a first-time Bardic track regent for Collegium, I only took classes from my own track. This was not so much to check out the teachers I had gathered — I knew them all either personally or by reputation — but to avail myself of their outstanding expertise. I am so struck by the fact that no matter how good an individual might be in a segment of the bardic arts (I’m a pretty good storyteller, singer and writer), there is always SO MUCH MORE to learn. In fact, as I have learned the hard way in costuming – “the more you know, the more you know that you don’t know!”

So here is what I took away from the 5 classes I took:

• As dame Eilidh said, always keep staff paper with you and yes, you too can write songs — and here is how. Songwriting is not something I have attempted. With two classes now under my belt from Beathog, Domhnall and Eilidh, I am ready to finally try it. My personal persona challenge is to write songs that my persona (late 11th/early 12th c.) might have written.
• I naturally do tonal and emotional contrast in my short spoken pieces but I have trouble in my longer ones. Thanks to Don Lot, I now know better how to map the structure of my longer pieces. This will improve them quite a bit.
• I am an Anglophile so am mostly interested in medieval and Renaissance England. But I had so much fun at Lady Magdi’s excellent period drumming class, taught with her husband Randy’s help. I value being exposed to different period experiences and art forms.
• Lady Adelicia presented a great visual history of instruments, which was a huge eye opener for  me. I had no idea how many instruments went that far back. She also lugged out dozens of period instruments for us to try.
• Lady Mary had a terrific presentation and handout of period poetic forms. It is so helpful to have them all in one place, and I am anxious to write more poetry now. And she is incredibly entertaining to boot.
• I taught a class on dynamic storytelling and was so proud to hear my students’ tales. Storytelling is my favorite bardic artform and I am personally challenged to collect and tell many more stories than I have before.