Why I wrote "Kay's Song"
It is odd, the things that can wander through your mind while you are doing an essentially mindless task such as cleaning the kitchen. Today's reflections led me to thinking about how I've always had a very good memory--for song lyrics, for events, for dates, for things I've read. The latter led me to an example.
At some point in the 1980s, John Steinbeck's "The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights" was published in kind of a big-deal edition. It was a trade paperback with a nice cover. We bought a copy, and I read it. I enjoyed it, but of course he left it unfinished, which caused it to be usatisfying to a large degree. I read it once, put it aside, and didn't think about it again for probably a decade or more.
Fast-forward to when I was Calontir's kingdom seneschal. While I can't remember precisely when, in that 2 1/2 year period, I did this, I believe it was probably the summer of 1998. I was a little more than halfway through my tenure at that time, and it was a "festive" summer...there was a particularly knotty problem going on which ultimately resulted in a Board sanction of a member of the kingdom, and which the Crown of the time were trying to use to hang a kingdom officer they didn't like, while seemingly avoiding assigning responsibility to the person who committed the offense. I was having to walk a very, very fine line, as the Crown harbored no terribly friendly feelings toward me, either, and appeared to resent the fact that the Society level had, in the time since they'd reigned before, had changed some of the procedures for offenses of this nature. Then another kingdom official, who was my ally in trying to keep the Crown from unjustly hanging someone, decided to go bleeding-heart on the actual offender...in short it was a mess, and I felt I was being compelled to act in a way that I knew was contrary to what the Board would expect. Not the most rewarding point in what was, overall, a very rewarding tenure.
During this time, something popped into my head from the Steinbeck book...one particular scene, not even a major scene, and I went looking for it in the book. I remember finding the book in our highly disorganized library, and standing in the library skimming for quite awhile until I found the scene. In this scene, two of Arthur's knights (Lancelot and maybe Gawaine, I don't remember the second one for sure) encounter Sir Kay as they are going on some sort of adventure. The three fall to talking, and Lancelot and the other knight basically ask Kay what has happened to him. The gist of the conversation has the other two saying, "You used to be one of the top knights of the round table, and now you don't do anything except petty bureaucratic things, why is that?" (Not by any means an exact quote here!) Kay replies that since becoming Arthur's seneschal, he's had to focus on those things, and that while they may seem petty, in fact he has to figure out how to pay for Arthur's quests, how to keep the kingdom running smoothly while his fellow knights go off on their adventures, et cetera.
Now, Kay is usually portrayed pretty unsympathetically in Arthuriana. He's seen as haughty, overbearing, vindictive...and little attention is paid to anything regarding his position as Arthur's seneschal. The above portrayal must have struck me when I first read it because it was so unusual, and when I needed to find it, it came back to me and rang very true. At some point after reading it, I started writing the poem that eventually became "Kay's Song", the only song I've ever actually written. It took me about three years to finish it, coming back to it every now and then. Erich wrote a tune and debuted it for Fernando and Andrixos when the four of us were sitting around at a Crystal Ball, singing together in a corner while the ball was going on (or maybe just after fighting was over, memory fails). When he sang it, Drx said, "That's a pelican song," and Fernando said, "That's a seneschal song." Both were right.
And that's where free association took me this morning.
At some point in the 1980s, John Steinbeck's "The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights" was published in kind of a big-deal edition. It was a trade paperback with a nice cover. We bought a copy, and I read it. I enjoyed it, but of course he left it unfinished, which caused it to be usatisfying to a large degree. I read it once, put it aside, and didn't think about it again for probably a decade or more.
Fast-forward to when I was Calontir's kingdom seneschal. While I can't remember precisely when, in that 2 1/2 year period, I did this, I believe it was probably the summer of 1998. I was a little more than halfway through my tenure at that time, and it was a "festive" summer...there was a particularly knotty problem going on which ultimately resulted in a Board sanction of a member of the kingdom, and which the Crown of the time were trying to use to hang a kingdom officer they didn't like, while seemingly avoiding assigning responsibility to the person who committed the offense. I was having to walk a very, very fine line, as the Crown harbored no terribly friendly feelings toward me, either, and appeared to resent the fact that the Society level had, in the time since they'd reigned before, had changed some of the procedures for offenses of this nature. Then another kingdom official, who was my ally in trying to keep the Crown from unjustly hanging someone, decided to go bleeding-heart on the actual offender...in short it was a mess, and I felt I was being compelled to act in a way that I knew was contrary to what the Board would expect. Not the most rewarding point in what was, overall, a very rewarding tenure.
During this time, something popped into my head from the Steinbeck book...one particular scene, not even a major scene, and I went looking for it in the book. I remember finding the book in our highly disorganized library, and standing in the library skimming for quite awhile until I found the scene. In this scene, two of Arthur's knights (Lancelot and maybe Gawaine, I don't remember the second one for sure) encounter Sir Kay as they are going on some sort of adventure. The three fall to talking, and Lancelot and the other knight basically ask Kay what has happened to him. The gist of the conversation has the other two saying, "You used to be one of the top knights of the round table, and now you don't do anything except petty bureaucratic things, why is that?" (Not by any means an exact quote here!) Kay replies that since becoming Arthur's seneschal, he's had to focus on those things, and that while they may seem petty, in fact he has to figure out how to pay for Arthur's quests, how to keep the kingdom running smoothly while his fellow knights go off on their adventures, et cetera.
Now, Kay is usually portrayed pretty unsympathetically in Arthuriana. He's seen as haughty, overbearing, vindictive...and little attention is paid to anything regarding his position as Arthur's seneschal. The above portrayal must have struck me when I first read it because it was so unusual, and when I needed to find it, it came back to me and rang very true. At some point after reading it, I started writing the poem that eventually became "Kay's Song", the only song I've ever actually written. It took me about three years to finish it, coming back to it every now and then. Erich wrote a tune and debuted it for Fernando and Andrixos when the four of us were sitting around at a Crystal Ball, singing together in a corner while the ball was going on (or maybe just after fighting was over, memory fails). When he sang it, Drx said, "That's a pelican song," and Fernando said, "That's a seneschal song." Both were right.
And that's where free association took me this morning.