The Artisan That Must Do Everything

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Lyrics

[CHORUS]
I am the artisan, that must do everything.
Check out this new craft, that I just found
And if you ask me, what is my specialty
I'll just tell you, I just do everything
[CHORUS]

Well I love to do coin making
And I’m not too bad at fencing
I had to learn to make my garb, because I’m pretty tall
I love to work with leather,
Cook, and weave with kumihimo
I even once brewed my own alcohol 
(Was it any good? Uhhh…)

[CHORUS]

There’s bookbinding, paper making,
Sashiko, and tablet weaving.
I’ve tried my hand at scribing, but I can’t write very small.
And I’ll tell you, woodwork’s tricky
When your workshop is a bedroom.
Don’t ask how I hurt my hand, I can’t recall.

[CHORUS]

Well my tub is full of fabric,
And my rug is full of sawdust,
And my stove is boiling walnuts that I collected last fall.
Plus I still need ten thousand rings
For my chainmail making demo. 
*Pause*
Wait…did I ever clear that with my seneschal?

[CHORUS]

Now, it’s not that I am fickle,
I just crave new information.
Just for fun I once read Midrealm’s book of royal protocol.
Wait, what’s that? What’s that you’re doing?
Yay! My next hyperfixation.
Did I sleep last night? *HA HA* No, not at all!

[CHORUS]

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Notes

Anyone who knows me knows that I have upwards of 30 hobbies, both in and out of the SCA. I’ve always been an obsessive crafter and creator, and when I rejoined the SCA in 2023 after a ~5 year hiatus I jumped headlong back into both rapier and all of the A&S I was intrigued by but had neither the space nor money to do in college. ADHD is a cruel mistress and the hyperfixations are always changing as I play a perpetual game of “follow the dopamine”. 

Having grown up watching too much Veggietales, the catchy tune of “The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything” has never left my head, and when I was once joking about my hobbies I said “You know the pirates that don’t do anything? I’m like…the opposite of that.” Thus the idea sparked.

The song was originally about twice as long as the finished version above, because I just kept coming up with clever rhymes to replace the line “I’ve never been to Boston in the fall”. 

When I performed this for the first time I was pretty apprehensive, I wasn’t sure if it was ready yet or not. Luckily it was a tremendous hit, and got a huge rouse out of the audience for my favorite rhyme word (seneschal). I also was humbled to get a personal praise from (oh no it’s) Dahrien Cordell, who said it was his favorite filk he’d heard of that song (including his own).