I was driving down a country lane today when a giant 4x4 came screaming round a blind corner and almost rammed me off the road. The arrogance people show when they feel safe and secure in their own little personal cocoon never ceases to amaze me.
It got me to thinking about an interesting discussion going on at Swordforum at the moment.
God I feel dirty just saying that.
But its true. Something interesting is happening at Swordforum.
Nope, it doesn't get nicer for saying it twice.
It's enjoyably antagonistic and there are clearly two separate camps. Those who feel tournaments are a good thing, and those who don't.
The main gist of it seems to be that one side feels that fighting in tournaments make you a better fighter, the other side feels that tournament fighting makes you a worse fighter.
Just look at the videos, they show double kills all the time. To quote the ineffable Greg Mele it is simply “replicating bad historical fencing”.
I had to think about this for a while before I realised why it was just as much fresh steaming bullcrap.
The fact that almost no-one can do what the manuals say in a tournament fight does not mean that tournaments are crap, it means we are. Every single one of us, even the best fighter out there, is not a patch on the Masters who created the systems we all study.
The manuals we use as the basis for our systems were written by trained experienced swordsmen, we are neither, and never will be. We can't put ourselves in the same category as people such as Fiore however much me might want to. We can't even put ourselves in the same category as the shittest student ever to study under the least skilled swordmaster. To even consider for a moment that we, in our pathetic renn-faire costumes and badly fitting armour might know more about fighting than these people who lived or died by their level of skill is arrogance of the highest level. Higher even than the orange woman who nearly killed my in her Porsche Cayenne.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not coming down in the camp of the Starship Troopers in their bastardized hockey armour with their oversized toy swords, but I'm gonna keep following the lovely chaps over at Swordforum for the time being and just enjoy the ride. Whether I'll end up in a car crash with an arrogant idiot who can't see beyond the comfort of their own little world remains to be seen.
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7 comments:
There's a third camp: those who think that tournaments are insignificant and don't contribute meaningfully to training (beyond what any other sparring match would).
Ah yes, how could I have failed to take them into account. I don't know how I'll sleep at night from now on. ;o)
Good to have you back. :-)
Michael, if you think a tournament is exactly the same as any sparring match you cannot possibly ever have been in a serious tournament (that you were taking seriously). Or you're being facetious.
Insignificant or not, it's definitely a whole different kettle of fish. For good or bad.
I'm tempted to say that when it comes to tourneys, all too often: those that can, do, those that cannot, complain.
For my own part I'm crap in competition...I know it and it ain't the tourney's fault...it's just another area that needs improvement.
I don't know how you've slept at night until now. :P
Or could it be that fact that folks on "both sides" of the argument don't even know what the argument is over?
At this point I'm pretty sure I understand what the miscommunication is, but at this point who cares about the truth of the matter.
I think we are all the same side of the coin.
If people can't replicate what is shown in the treatises under competitive conditions, that could also mean that the treatises sometimes show idealized scenarios and techniques that work best under strictly controlled academic conditions.
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