Mythcon

[calimac]

(peers around)

Is it over? Am I home yet?

I guess so. Mythcon was, as always, great fun. It also kept with Mythcon tradition by being remarkably cool for August, almost drizzly. But the coldest winter Mark Twain ever spent was a summer in San Francisco, and Berkeley is right across the Bay, so that wasn't much of a surprise.

I missed most of the programming, much to my regret but again not to any surprise, for I was the chairman, and that is what convention chairs do: they miss programming because they are busy doing other things. I'm still musing on my thoughts about this job, but in lieu of a con report, here's the part that several people told me went best: the flow of the evening programming.

Mythcon evenings tend to be rather diverse plenary sessions. Good and appropriate entertainment and a sense of wholeness to it all are priorities, and I spent a lot of time pre-con thinking about what we were going to do and how it would be structured. I'm very happy that it turned out to be worth the effort.

We broke with tradition by moving the Saturday morning Procession & Opening Ceremonies to Friday night, for several reaons: one was to better integrate Friday into the Mythcon flow; another was that we were not having a Guest of Honor speech as part of Opening Ceremonies, so there was more time to play with. My original suggestion that GoHs ellen_kushner and deliasherman do a joint reading of their joint work had mutated into a dramatized reading of the scene of Dr. Tortua's lecture from The Fall of the Kings, so we did that on Friday, to give readers a taste of their work. Delia narrated. sartorias, who can impersonate cranky and decrepit old men better than anyone else I know, was Dr. Tortua. I cast myself as Roger Crabbe; a self-important pedant who's usually wrong is so me.

Saturday evening began with the silly stuff and moved to the serious. I had been nervous about that: would it seem like eating dessert before dinner? But I thought that after some sufficiently ornate clowning, Ellen's engrossing one-woman performance of her Thomas the Rhymer (with music) would feel more like clearing the air after a storm. And it did; it was enrapturing, and sent everyone off to the late-night conversations in a joyful but serious mood, which is the best sort of mood.

And the ornate clowning? A troupe of intrepid and fearless musicians including ellen_denham performed "Lord of the Ringos", the songs the Beatles ought to have written for their proposed Tolkien film. Most of it was hilarous, especially when unchanged original Beatles lines serve as zingers for altered premises, so if you knew the original you laughed before the punchline, but it was interesting to note how little alternation some mid-period Beatles songs need to be repurposed for the One Ring. ("I'm Looking Through You"? "You Won't See Me"?) Followed by the traditional Not Ready for Mythcon Players, who performed a Harry Potter parody in which he collects the items on the Enchanted Grocery List. The highlight of this came when a noted Elvish scholar, playing a wizard, cast a spell by ad-libbing "Fakeus Latinus!"

After the Sunday banquet, we held various ceremonials and Delia's Guest of Honor Speech in the banquet hall before moving back to the main programming theatre for a concert by our local favorite band, a hit at previous Mythcons also, Broceliande, who interleaved their Tolkien poetry settings with their other Celtic and early music repertoire. Delectable as always.

I'll write later about two other awesome events that occurred on Sunday evening.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

That was brilliant planning, actually. The flow of events all three nights was really splendid--it really was a wonderful con.

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

It sounds like the adjusted schedule worked very well indeed.

I cast myself as Roger Crabbe; a self-important pedant who's usually wrong is so me.
Acting, schmacting then, eh?

[wild-patience.livejournal.com]

Someone suggested a reprisal of you as Mr. Peabody, especially since we had the Sherman there as well.

[ellen-denham.livejournal.com]

Thanks for a great Mythcon! I'm glad to be thought of as "intrepid and fearless" because there are certainly other interpretations for being willing to get up, barely rehearsed, and make a fool of one's self. :)

I thought your analysis of the Tolkien-related music was spot-on. I'd probably add Monteverdi (especially his Vespers) and Palestrina to your list of music that reminds me of the Ainulindale.