(no subject)

[two_star]

Back from Conflikt 6. I had a bit of a realization about filk. On the one hand, I truly loathe badfilk, but at the same time, if it weren't around, I wouldn't get nearly as much out of the filk circle experience. The filk circle that closed the con contained an unusual number of Real Musicians™. I am a very good singer, and my songwriting has flashes of adequacy, but I don't yet play an instrument. The upshot is, in a typical circle, my contributions are better than the median, and I can feel that I am improving the experiences of people around me by contributing. But in a circle with really good performers my contributions would be considerably below the median, and not worth making. Since a major part of my enjoyment of filk is getting to sing my own songs, I can only get that enjoyment in a context where most of what is being performed is worse than what I'm doing. Which would be fine if most of that was only a little worse, but there tends to be a pretty big standard deviation, so I have to spend quite a lot of the time listening to performances that I find physically painful to listen to.

The answer to my conundrum is of course to make better performances that would be acceptable even in the context of Real Musician heavy circles. That would mean either learning guitar or making friends with people with guitars who either already attend cons or would be willing to start. However, learning instruments and making friends are both areas in which I have not heretofore displayed any skill, so don't hold your breath.