A sort of conflation of ideas whizzing about today.
A conversation about 17th century re-enactment over on Facebook – about being too authentic, becoming intimidating, becoming contemptuous of those who don’t count stitches, or who use wool-blend fabrics. Now for myself, as an author, I consider re-enactment as research for my writing and vice versa. Thomazine’s snapped stay-bone in Imperfect Enjoyment – I’ve done that. (I still have the scar, too: I had to wear the things for the rest of the day, and it didn’t half bleed.)
I haven’t belted anyone in the face with the guard of my sword, but I have considered it. I digress.
And I admit it: I’m one of the stitch-counters. And what I find is increasingly it fills me with a horrible inertia. I have linen to make s new jacket, but I need silks to embroider it. Embroidery silks aren’t good enough: I need silk thread. I need metal spangles. I need – I need – I need.
And till I have, I do nothing.
Actually, I made a conscious decision with my polychrome coif, and my spangled jacket – not to make them period-correct, but to make them touchable, holdable. Hundreds of pounds worth of metal spangles on a jacket, and I’m going to let strangers pick it up, stroke it, hold it up, try it on? Or keep washing my coif after a couple of hundred grubby little fingers have stroked the ladybird or opened the peapods? But that’s what they’re for – to be touched and delighted in, not just admired from a distance. That was what the originals were for: to be worn and used and to give pleasure to their wearer as well as the people who saw them.
It’s the same with my new wardrobe: I want wool, I want silk, I want…I want to not start till I have all the things, rather than to use things I have that are not quite right.
My first thought in the authenticity debate was that it’s necessary, because what’s it for, otherwise? But I’m not sure now. I think it’s more the desire of the moth for the star, than a desirable outcome. I think I could spend my whole life not wanting to do better, but wanting to do nothing. Waiting for the perfect set of circumstances – all the aces, metaphorically, in my hand – before the time is right to do anything at all.
And then you get to be dead, and all the time is used up, and it’s never happened. That book half-written in your head but never started, that jacket you loved…all gone.
Carpe diem.
A Sweet Disorder 
So I’ve been there too. I have hit people with the basket hilt of my broadsword, and been the first through the gate when assaulting a castle. I’ve also changed guard at the Tower.
While there’s a need to do the best we can, it’s OK to compromise. In fact I’d go as far as saying that it’s necessary to compromise. We can never be proper authentic 17th century people, we look wrong, we think wrong and we talk wrong. We just know too much stuff about the world and think too little of religion. You can put us in organic hand picked, spun and woven linen and wool from C17 sheep using patterns reconstructed from museum pieces and we’d still look wrong.
Once you wrap your head around that compromise comes easy. You make things for the experience, and to be able to share that experience. You talk to people about it and let them touch and try things. You tell them where you’ve compromised, and why if they ask.
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I think it’s too tempting to think “I *would* be the best, if only I….” – and use it as an excuse to do nothing.
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Completely agree. In fact I think that’s where many/most people are.
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Now I just have to get my head round a visceral loathing of man-made fibre and the world is my oyster….:-D
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Oh, I don’t think you need to go that far….
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Au contraire, mon brave. In order to get out of the horrid style trap that is the Uncivil Service, one must fully embrace one’s inner rayon. I am unleashing my Inner Diva.
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