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Medieval wrestling and Liechtenauer expert Jessica Finley will be familiar to many of you from her two previous appearances on The Sword Guy. (Episode 1 and episode 56). We’re catching up today after my recent trip to Jessica’s training space in Kansas where we filmed the new Abrazare online course. You can find the course at guywindsor.net/abrazare23.
In our conversation, we talk about medieval wrestling, and compare and contrast the approaches of Fiore and Liechtenauer. This leads into a wider discussion about why the German sources could be described as a ‘swamp’, and Fiore’s system as a ‘well’.
We go deep into Liechtenauer’s Hauptstücke and the Zornhau. Here is the photo of the tree that’s on the wall of Jessica’s Turnhalle:
Jessica hasn’t yet written a book about the Hauptstücke, and we talk about why this is and the difficulty of wanting to write both a memoir and a training manual at the same time. The book Jessica refers to is: Among Warriors: a Woman Martial Artist in Tibet, by Pamela Logan. The blog post I refer to is: https://guywindsor.net/2013/11/7-great-martial-arts-as-a-path-books/
Talking about writing books then leads us on to a brand new book idea, which we will start in the first quarter of 2024. Watch this space!
Finally, here is the link to the Unarmed Flowdrill, which Jessica mentions right at the end of the interview: https://vimeo.com/851206322/57c7821ffe
Transcript
Guy Windsor
I'm here today with Jessica Finley, who is an author and historical martial arts instructor who runs Ritterkunst Fechtschule in Lawrence, Kansas. She's the author of the book Medieval Wrestling, and she co-created my new medieval wrestling course, which we will talk about in the interview. But her main claim to fame in life, and forever, no doubt, is the fact that she was the first person I interviewed in this show, yes, in episode one. And she also interviewed me for episode 50. That makes Jessica the very first person to be on the show for a third time. So Jess, welcome to the show.
Jessica Finley
Hello. Thanks for having me.
Guy Windsor
It is nice to see you. So whereabouts in the world are you?
Jessica Finley
I am in Lawrence, Kansas. If you were to look at a map of the United States, I'm right in the centre, if you don't know where that is.
Guy Windsor
I know exactly where it is. Because I was there just last month.
Jessica Finley
That's right. That's right. We had a wonderful time.
Guy Windsor
We did. And we will talk all about it in a minute now. The whole whereabouts in the world are you, it's just a standard kind of warm up question I use just to sort of get my interviewees who generally don't know me terribly well before we start talking. And it also kind of sort of helps listeners kind of keep track of well, okay, this person is from America. That person is from New Zealand, that person's from wherever, right. Yeah. But Lawrence, Kansas is actually quite a nice place.
Jessica Finley
It's a wonderful place. It is much overrated, and I like it that way, because it can continue to stay affordable.
Guy Windsor
You mean underrated.
Jessica Finley
Yeah, what did I say? Overrated? Oh, well, I mean, it could be that too. Yeah, yeah. No, it's a lovely town. Has quite a bit of cool American history if you're into American history.
Guy Windsor
What's the name of the horse?
Jessica Finley
Comanche.
Guy Windsor
When I was there we went to see Comanche which was the last horse surviving from Custer’s disastrous battle for the Little Bighorn. And it was eventually stuffed. Famous character.
Jessica Finley
He was the only American soldier found standing is the way they bill him. Of course, you know, because as a military horse.
Guy Windsor
He was an American soldier. Clearly not paid like an American soldier.
Jessica Finley
But he is cool. Like little horse girl Jess adored Comanche so much. Because we went to that museum all the time when I was a kid. Like that was a common trip.
Guy Windsor
It's a great museum. And of course, Lawrence also is the location of your own salle. But you being German, you call it a Turnhalle for some reason.
Jessica Finley
Exactly. Yeah, I have my little training space. And since you've been here, I've resumed group lessons. And that's been going quite well. So we have a number of classes going throughout the week, here in town, and I'm continuing to do private lessons in the space as well. So it's been quite lovely.
Guy Windsor
And I know you are sort of known for your wrestling stuff. So we should just for the sake of the listener, who can't be bothered to go back and re-listen to episode one. What is your wrestling background?
Jessica Finley
I originally started training in judo in 2001. And I did judo for about seven, eight years, something like that. Of course, at that same time, I was starting to study HEMA seriously and began looking into the wrestling texts that come down through the German tradition, way, way, way back then. And I studied under Christian Tobler. So I had sent him a note and said, hey, what are your interpretations for these texts? And he said, I don't really have an interpretation. I'm not a great wrestler. You should do that. And that's how I started doing it.
Guy Windsor
So as someone with a wrestling background, with a sort of specialisation in the German material, when I was in Lawrence for a week, and we shot the material for my Abrazare course, so Fiore’s medieval wrestling stuff. What did you think of the Fiore stuff? Be honest.
Jessica Finley
Oh, no, I love the Fiore stuff. I think he is quite deliberately succinct with what he is presenting, he is giving you the bare minimum that you need, but also at the same time the things you're most likely to need. At least the way I see it, considering his context of wanting his entire system to also work in armour and wanting his entire system to also be, I don't know, if you want to say duel or battlefield or earnest or you know.
Guy Windsor
A l’oltranza, that’s the Italian word. In French it would be a l’oltrance, I think. Basically, it means like, to the limit. The real thing like, no one's getting no one. One of us isn't going home today.
Jessica Finley
No quarter. So yeah, I mean, if you were to look at the German stuff, and go, well, how many wrestling techniques are in the duelling armour section? There's, like, I don't know, 12, 13, 14, something like that. Not a lot. A quite similar number to what Fiore shows.
Guy Windsor
The reason that I thought it would be worthwhile flying all the way to Kansas to shoot the course, was, I mean, from a professional perspective, for personal reasons, obviously, worth going to Kansas just to hang out, but professionally speaking, worth going to Kansas to do this with you specifically, is that I am not much of a wrestler, myself. And so, it was necessary, I thought, to have someone who actually was a wrestler, in the videos, and also, basically there to call bullshit on any interpretation. I don't think Fiore would put a bullshit wrestling technique in there. But I could certainly look at a perfectly good wrestling technique and create bullshit out of it. As people have done in the past, I mean, we've all done it, right, you see something that turns out to be a perfectly excellent technique in the treatise, but when you're interpreting it, you come up with some absolute shit, which you have to have some kind of feedback mechanism that will show you when what you are doing is shit. And I figured that if I tried pulling off some bullshit wrestling move, you would just throw me on my head, and that would be good.
Jessica Finley
I don't know that my method of criticism is quite that blunt.
Guy Windsor
No, metaphorically throw me on my head. “Guy, I don’t think this works, why don't we try it like this?” Is how you would probably have done it.
Jessica Finley
That's right. That's right. Yeah. And I think we did run across a couple of things that we played around with. I mean, I don't know that we changed your interpretation. No. But,
Guy Windsor
There's the canonical interpretation, which is the strict literal choreographical execution of the play exactly as shown and written with no wiggle. And then there's the play of the play, which is how you actually do it when your opponent is trying to mess with you. Now, there was one bit where I think my choreographical interpretation of the play is going to probably change and it's in the second play of the Abrazare, where I have always done it so that when you do the arm bar and step through with the right foot to break the elbow, you were suggesting doing it with a tutta volta, bringing the left foot around, so rather than stepping through with the right foot, the right foot stays where it is, and the left foot turns, and you end up in what looks like the same sort of position. But the way you were doing it that makes me think, actually, that's probably more what he had in mind. Because I've always thought of it as you put the leg through and you fall backwards on this in a sacrifice fall to break the elbow, so your whole weights going down on it. But that's it the more I think about it, the more I think that isn't really the medieval way. We don't see a lot of sacrifice throws, so you can get into that same position without any intention to go to the ground by doing the tutta volta instead of the pass through, and I think that's probably, I mean, I'm literally in the process of writing the book of the interpretation at the moment. And I think I'm probably going to wiggle that in there.
Jessica Finley
Nice. I know, in judo, at least, we would practice everything, both ways. Like, you can turn around by turning around forwards or by turning around backwards. And either way you get to the same place, or what appears to be the same place. But the energy flows totally differently. And so for Judo, you practice both because you need both. The way some of the German stuff is described and illustrated, that appears to also be so. Sometimes you step into the place, and sometimes you yield away and end up in the same place. So, there's something to be said for both ways. So that's what I mean, it isn’t that it's wrong.
Guy Windsor
But which one do we think Fiore had chiefly in mind when he commissioned the artwork? And I'm thinking it was probably the tutta volta and less the pass.
Jessica Finley
Yeah. That’s how I was feeling for sure.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, I got that impression, but we were doing it. Okay, so why do you think we see wrestling in medieval sources abundantly, but there's practically no boxing?
Jessica Finley
Right, yeah, there's very little like fist to face. stuff. I think that's a really complex question. On one hand, wrestling is something you can do after church on Sunday, and everyone can get up and go to work the next day. So that's great. So as an informal practice that you can do to various levels of like competitiveness and intention, wrestling, while vigorous and definitely has the potential for injury, isn't the same as like, bare knuckle boxing, which more or less guarantees some amount of injury. And so I think that's part of it is that it's more accessible as a physical practice for the development of all of the all of those solo arts qualities. Like, it's good cardio, it's good strength. It's good. It's fun. So there's that. There may have been rules and laws and social mores around like a face to face like it could be that it was legally an escalation of violence. I think that's true in some places. So that certainly could be a part of it. And wrestling is going to apply, to my mind, more easily to the broader martial art, it's going to apply in armour, it's going to apply with a sword, it's going to apply with a pole axe, whereas maybe, maybe a fist to the teeth isn't as useful in those scenarios.
Guy Windsor
But I mean, Fiore has striking in the places of pain. And he shows like hand strikes to the under the nose, for example, or under the ear, right. Which is not boxing. Open hand stuff because you don't want to punch the head with a closed fist unless, unless you're a specialist in that. So to do that, without breaking your own bones is really tricky. Unless you're wearing these hoofing great big boxing gloves, which didn't appear until much, much later.
Jessica Finley
Yeah, yeah. And not to say that the Germans don't also have stuff around pain compliance. There certainly is all the things Fiori shows, as well as ridiculous stuff, or things that I think it was ridiculous such as grabbing him by the head and running him into the wall. That shows up. That works. Like do I think of that as a wrestling technique? Not so much. No, it gets kind of dumped in there and so because the German side of that house, my friend, Alina Boyden, who you've interviewed talks about the difference between being a well and being a swamp. So the German stuff is kind of a swamp. Not super deep, but incredibly broad. Whereas Fiore seems to be a well. It's not very broad, but it's very specific and intentional. So the German stuff, will have everything from clearly playful wrestling or friendly or sportive stuff. And then there'll be like, just a dump of a section of, I mean, we do have some punches, for instance, in the von Bauman, like punch him in the teeth, if he tries to punch you in the teeth. Here's how you set that out. And then wrestle him and throw him. And that stuff clearly is separate from the wrestling techniques that are in the unarmoured longsword section. So it's just kind of a different beast, the way it's being presented. Not that the techniques or the use case is different, I don't think.
Guy Windsor
So why do you think the German sources are divided up into this person's dagger stuff, and that person's longsword stuff, and this other person's wrestling stuff, whereas Fiore has a kind of united vision of a single martial art that is expressed through wrestling and dagger and sword and armour and all that kind of stuff?
Jessica Finley
That is an interesting thing. And, and it's hard to know why that is so. I think it's largely just because of the literary tradition that we get the implication that it is so. Because of course, we're just working from the books we have. For instance, Lignitzer, as a medieval master, has a treatise on sword and buckler, a treatise on dagger, a treatise on wrestling, a treatise on armoured combat with sword, right? So that's all Lignitzer. But the way it comes down to us, is as these separate little modules or these separate little treatises that then come down through history and are broken up in different ways. And so it makes it very much feel not united. Whereas if it had been presented, as this is Lignitzer’s martial art, without these chapter headings, without these sections that got copied differently, would we see it differently? And I think so.
Guy Windsor
It's just it's pretty clear that both Fiore and Vadi present what they consider the important bits of the whole lot. Now, Vadi is much more focused on longsword than Fiore, but we don't see that same separation of different aspects of the art into different works. And it doesn't make sense to me why anyone would do it other than that way. If you have a coherent vision of if I'm going to do this longsword stuff, and you need to have these particular dagger techniques, or these techniques that are best taught with a dagger, to be able to defend against longsword pommel strikes. It doesn't make sense to me to have here is the longsword stuff. And then here's a whole separate book on the dagger stuff, and they're not connected.
Jessica Finley
Yeah. Well, I mean, I don't know if you were trying to serve this to me on a platter, but I'm going to pick it up. I think that the Hauptstücke of Liechtenauer are what you're asking about here, right? Because, so how to best think about this, like you can present information in a variety of ways. And we can pick it up in a variety of ways. So if you were to think about the difference between reading a book about a martial art system, I and you probably would write it like Fiore wrote it, right. Here's a cohesive system. Here's the beginning and the end. Here are all the parts in an order that we thought was logical, that built upon itself in a linear fashion. Whereas if we were to build a website about a martial art, and we had no rules about how that website could be built, we might build it such that you grab modules and you go places where you want to go based around these quote unquote, “hyperlinks”.
Guy Windsor
Jessica, you've just given me a brilliant idea.
Jessica Finley
Tell me more? I seem to do that to you, Guy.
Guy Windsor
This is true. Okay, the hardest thing about writing a book about historical martial arts, in my experience, is I perceive the art as like a three dimensional structure, four dimensions really, because it exists in time as well as all the various dimensions. In my head, my understanding of how Fiore’s art should be done is not linear. It is more like a molecular model of a diamond. Lots and lots and lots of pieces all connected to each other. But unlike a diamond it is much less regular. There are clumps, which are connected in these particular ways. And this bit’s closer to that bit over there. But I see it in my head as more like a cloud of interconnected nodes. When writing a book, you have to find the node that you can then take out and put on the page and then put another node it’s connected to and put that on the page. And you have to take this three dimensional structure and stretch it out in a way that makes the three dimensional structure possible to reconstruct from the linear structure. It reminds me enormously of protein synthesis, where you have DNA which codes for these specific amino acids. So basically, DNA is an instruction. Any particular gene is an instruction for put these amino acids in this order. That's all it does. And so when the bits of the cell that actually do the protein synthesis, they go along to the DNA, and they RNA and you know, endoplasmic reticulum and all that stuff. But what happens is you get this string of amino acids, which then fold themselves together into the three dimensional structure of a protein. And that is what writing books about historical martial arts is like for me. But you just said website. And I had a go at this with my syllabus wiki, where it is organised in such a way that you can find the bits that you want. And you can find most of my drills and what have you for free online at the syllabus wiki, so swordschool.com/wiki. You can find it on the website. It's fine. But in terms of its structure it is basically a whole lot of chapter headings. And within each chapter, there's a whole lot of stuff. So it's more like a string with strings coming off it.
Jessica Finley
Closer, but still not quite there.
Guy Windsor
Closer, but still not quite there.
Jessica Finley
Yes, believe me. I mean, when you asked me in that first episode, what is the greatest idea you never acted on? It is this. I have been trying to find a way to make this vision that you're glimmering on right now, happen for the German stuff. It's beyond me.
Guy Windsor
That’s not what you said. What you said, I looked it up in preparation for this interview.
Jessica Finley
All right. Well, you remember better than me.
Guy Windsor
No, I looked at that from the transcript. So I know for certain this is what you said. Because the lovely Katie who does the transcription, she doesn't make stuff up. The best that you hadn't acted on yet back then was historical martial arts gear based on American football gear from around 1915.
Jessica Finley
That's a great fucking idea.
Guy Windsor
It is a great fucking idea. But I think, actually, although it has certain logistical and business challenges, it is a straightforward idea. Because people have been making clothes and protective equipment for various things in various ways for literally 1000s of years. And this is just an iteration of that. But what you're really talking about, and what I have in my head, is an entirely new way of structuring information that is closer to ... It's not the same thing, but it's the same sort of conceptual jump as a difference between video calls and hologrammatic calls.
Jessica Finley
Yeah, yeah. And that's the thing. This is an entirely new way to conceive of this, and also just the medieval way to conceive of it, this is your Mind Map, your mind castle, of how we store information biologically in our head. Most of us right now, culturally, and at least in the West have been fed the idea that you store things like a computer, and that it's ones and zeros, and it's on and off. And it's digital, and it's linear. And it's ‘if then’ statements that force you down a path. But that isn't the way our brains actually work. And that's not the way we actually remember things. And once you know something well enough, it does become this universe, with movement, and space and time. All happening. And so when people try to compare, or I have seen people trying to compare Fiore and German, and people that understand Fiore, or took the time to go through it, find him more accessible, because he's more, what we have culturally been taught is the way information is. The German stuff is this node bullshit, it's everywhere, it's this map of ideas, that you're to coalesce into these twelve Hauptstücke on your own. And you’re to do that work. So that then these notes live, and you can just grab them and go. And so this is a thing. I'm so glad we got into this, this isn’t what we're here to talk about. But it really is something I'm so passionate about, because I wish I could help people understand it, I think it would be useful beyond martial arts, if you could understand how to process information in this way. And when I've talked to people, for instance, my ex-husband, he is a computer security expert, like world level expert on this stuff. And when I started talking to him about it, very recently, he said, do you know that MIT is currently working on exactly this. MIT is currently trying to understand this as a way to process information? And I was like, I had no idea. Because it's 1000 years old. We’re back to it. It's useful, it's useful beyond just understanding how the German side of the house is supposed to work.
Guy Windsor
Yes, but a book is inherently linear. You do have books, which have like choose your own adventure thing where, you know, if you choose go down the corridor with the creepy spiders, go to paragraph 127. And if you choose to run away from the creepy spiders go to paragraph 192.
Jessica Finley
But that's still linear.
Guy Windsor
It's all presented in a linear fashion, but your path through the material is not linear, it's kind of zigzagging and moving back and forth.
Jessica Finley
But the Choose Your Own Adventure doesn't allow you to look at it and simultaneously understand that choosing page 184, inherently is going to lead you somewhere, whereas choosing page 72 is going to lead you somewhere else. And to have both of those live in your mind simultaneously so that you understand the consequences before the choice is made. And that's the beauty of this nodular understanding of the thing.
Guy Windsor
Okay. Yeah, you're not supposed to read the whole book, and then figure out your best path through it. You're supposed to make the decisions as you go. That's true. But okay. I don't think that some dude writing martial arts stuff in 1400 in Germany, is thinking about a nodular understanding of consciousness and information processing. That strikes me as an extremely modern way of looking at things.
Jessica Finley
Well, it's a very medieval way of processing information.
Guy Windsor
Well, okay, processing and presentation and not the same thing. It is a medieval way of presenting information perhaps.
Jessica Finley
Well, so when you and I discussed the tree that I created and the fact that it's based on a medieval martial arts tree, which is based on tree structures that are out all over medieval study, all over medieval manuscripts and all realms. And Mary Carruthers, who's written extensively on this sheet describes them as machines. It's not a figure. It's a thing. It's a drawing, yes. It's a figure, yes. But that you are intended to put in your mind and manipulate and through the manipulation of that figure, come to new and unique conclusions. So that's a different use of it. It's not a bar graph. It's not I took a bunch of info and dumped it into a condensed idea. It's here's a condensed idea that you are going to meditate on, work on, mull over, physically manipulate in your mind and explode into new data, which is cool.
Guy Windsor
Okay, I think maybe the average listener might need a little bit of background. We ought to say, firstly, what are the Hauptstücke?
Jessica Finley
So the Hauptstücke are the primary techniques or the chief pieces of the art. Liechtenauer says that there are 12. A couple of masters say that there are 17 because they include the strikes in with that 12. So 12 and 5, 17, however you want to think about it. And they are each distinct principles that can apply to any sort of conflict that one might come into, of course, it's presented to be talking about single combat with medieval weaponry. But it was also expected to be applied to armies on a greater scale. It was expected to be applied when you're hunting prey. So these are just kind of like, I don't know, like, what do we have? We have like books written by businessmen about like, what business taught me about life and love, right? It's kind of the same thing, you know.
Guy Windsor
Okay. So firstly, we should probably tell the listeners that while I was over there in Kansas, and I saw this beautiful tree painted on your Turnhalle wall. It looked to me like the outline for an online course. And so we went and shot videos for all 12 Hauptstücke. And that course is coming out soon. Maybe November, I’m hoping November, it may be early next year. Because I'm doing the editing. So it'll be ready when it's damn well ready.
Jessica Finley
So that was that was wild. That was while we were sitting on the couch, having a break from shooting the abrazare course. And we're sitting there, just trying to get our brains together. And Guy’s like, what is this? Tell me about it. And then at dinner a couple hours later says I have a brilliant idea. And so we went from three days of known hard work to six, real fast.
Guy Windsor
Well, it was a brilliant idea.
Jessica Finley
It was a brilliant idea.
Guy Windsor
Yeah. But because we did that course together, which meant I was setting up the camera and I was the stooge getting whacked with swords. So the first of the Hauptstücke on your wall, bottom left, is the Vier Leger, the four guards. So in what way would you say these four guards relate to something other than standing there with a sword?
Jessica Finley
Oh, yeah. So the four guards are another word you might use as like encampment. So if you're thinking about it in terms of, of military positioning of armies, are you up on top of the hill? And the other person is below you? Well, then you're in vom Tag. You have the high ground. There are known advantages from being there. But if you want to attack you must come down the hill. That's just the way it is. And so this is kind of the way you can start to generalise the ideas encapsulated in it. And the names of the guards are punny, right? And so, you know, vom tag also means can mean clear as day in English, right? The same idea as obvious, forthright, you know, all of those words that come with that, kingly even. Whereas, alber, right, which is the fool or, or foolish, depending on who you listen to, so you're down at the bottom, you're down in the ravine. To attack, you've got to come up. Your best course of action from down there is not going to be a straightforward attack running up the hill, we all know that's a bad plan. So you're going to have to take some sort of trickery, you're going to have to come around the outside, you're going to you're going to play the whole fight differently if you're down there. And so this is the way you can start to broaden this out and think about it. And I've certainly spoken to people that have trained with me or students who are having, I don't know, I can think of one person who was having trouble with their college administration, and it was kind of becoming this antagonistic situation. And so I kind of outlined it to this person in terms of a fencing engagement, so that they could get some clarity around how they were reacting from maybe an emotional space where they needed to…
Guy Windsor
They were thoroughly in the Nach, in other words.
Jessica Finley
Yeah, yeah. And then they were like, oh, now that I can think about this, as though it was this other thing it allows me to then understand my options in a different way and start to make conscious choices rather than instinctive choices.
Guy Windsor
Okay. Do you see that in Fiore at all?
Jessica Finley
Oh, I haven't studied him well enough to say. What do you think?
Guy Windsor
Well, okay. I view any kind of confrontational situation in fencing terms, obviously, have done for decades. Because how else would you do it?
Jessica Finley
Do you even study fencing, bro?
Guy Windsor
When friends are going through an unpleasant divorce or whatever, like, very often hang on, they're stuck. They're stuck in the situation, they can't see it tactically, they can only see it emotively, understandably, because it's a very emotional situation. But to get what they want out of the situation, they need a perspective that allows them to see it more so an interplay of forces and interests. Well, this person wants this and this person wants that and these things are in play, these things are not available. It's just a different way of seeing it. It just reminds me of one of the best things I ever did, in terms of being able to run a business, right? Because the first business I started was in Edinburgh, and it didn't do very well. Then I moved to Finland, and at that time, the Finns had the Mark. The Finnish Mark, they switched to euros a couple of years later, but I didn't have any kind of cultural associations of the Finnmark as having value. So like unlike pounds, which I'd grown up with as being valuable and intrinsically somehow special. The Marks were Monopoly money. Yes, it mattered that I finished the game with more of them than I started, otherwise I would lose, but I didn't have any emotional attachment to the money itself at all, which meant that I could make rational decisions about things like spending money on a necessary business thing, like hiring an accountant. And I didn't think of it in terms of, oh my god it’s this much money. And so it’s this much of these tokens. So where am I going to get those tokens from? Well, okay, if I do this weekend course, fine, then the tokens come in. And it just helped me see everything more dispassionately. And I think if you don't have a framework within which to view interpersonal conflict of whatever kind dispassionately, then you could only ever view it passionately. And it's often very useful not to.
Jessica Finley
Yeah, it sounds cold and calculating and grim when you start to dig into it quite like that. But at the same time, that kind of is it, because we're all working within these constraints. And so noticing them and understanding them, and making it an intellectual undertaking to work within them, I think, is more helpful than not, it doesn't mean you aren't desperately heart-rended over what's happening, but it also means you can say that is true. And also, we have to get up and have breakfast tomorrow. So, I'm going to take care of what needs to be taken care of.
Guy Windsor
Being dispassionate about something viewing something dispassionately doesn't mean you don't have feelings about it, it just means that you are able to view it from a different perspective. I wasn't expecting to get all philosophical in this conversation, Jess. I thought we're going to talk about dropping people on their heads.
Jessica Finley
Have you known me long, Guy?
Guy Windsor
Yeah, quite a while now. Okay, so, alright, so coming back to the Hauptstücke. There are 12 of them. But also Zornhau. How does that work?
Jessica Finley
But also Zornhau. And the other of the five strikes. Yeah, it's a curious thing. And so the thing about Zornhau in particular, is that it is nothing but a peasant strike. It is just a cut that gets you into sprechfenster, which is just longpoint or posta longa, which is just a place from which you feel. So in one way, it's not special at all. And in another way, it is the centre of everything and the most important thing that's ever been created so again, that’s just a fun thing to play with in your mind as how you view that
Guy Windsor
So the second of the Hauptstücke is the vier versetzen, which is basically what most longswordy people will probably think of as four of the five Meisterhau. Krumpfhau, zwerchhau, etc. So, why is zornhau not one of the versetzen?
Jessica Finley
The vier versetzen all come on strange lines. Krumphau comes across like a rainbow or a windshield wiper, something. Zwerchhau comes across like this middle hau but you're doing it with your false edge so that’s weird. It’s a helicopter. Exactly. Schielhau is the strike about which many masters have nothing to say, to quote a text, right? So it's this weird, twisted short edge oberhau which doesn't make sense. And is often quite difficult. And scheitelhau is a vertical strike with the goal just to barely tip cut their forehead, right. It's at this extreme distance. So they're all very weird. Whereas the zornhau and the resulting bind from it in longpoint, if you read about that longpoint spreche fenster, right, the speaking window. It says that all oberhau and unterhau should come to this place. So, in a way, we give it a special and a raised position. But it's just what every blow that isn't bizarre, should be.
Guy Windsor
Okay, can I just point out that you've now gone on record as saying that four of the five meisterhau are bizarre and speaking as a Fiorist, I am very pleased to hear Liechtenauer person say that, because they are.
Jessica Finley
They are absolutely bizarre. That's the point.
Guy Windsor
Aha, excellent. But wouldn't it make for an easier drawing and an easier machine, if oh, God, I just had a thought.
Jessica Finley
Oh, I wonder if you okay, I'm here. I'm here. What was your thought?
Guy Windsor
Okay. Okay. Now, you've probably already had this thought, because how you drew your tree is what triggered the thought. Okay. Here's the thought. The way the tree is drawn, you have basically a vertical line. And then the circles, so six on either side of this vertical line, which connect to that vertical line. And those circles are effectively like the leaves on the branches that come out from the trunk. But the tree still needs a truck. So the 12 Hauptstücke as I'm thinking of it, are manifestations of variations on the zornhau. Zornahau is the trunk.
Jessica Finley
You got there. Absolutely.
Guy Windsor
Okay. So you would agree with that statement?
Jessica Finley
I would agree with that statement. Yeah. Because like I said, it's the thing that is special and important and is the core. And also isn’t special important, because literally everything should go through there. So it's just a way to play with it. And the other thing is, Guy, is very often in medieval manuscripts, they would create a tree, as you saw, as I drew, right, as Guy described with this, this verticality and the series…
Guy Windsor
We will put a picture in the show notes. There will be a photograph of your actual painting on the wall in the show notes, obviously.
Jessica Finley
Wonderful. So go have a look at it, y'all. But very often in medieval manuscripts, they would not only do the tree version of the concepts that they're trying to work with the machine they're trying to create, but also would create a circular one. So all of those nodes now expand out to the outside of the circle. So we would have the 12 on the outside, the vier versetzen, the four in another concentric circle in there. And then the very centre point would be zornhau.
Guy Windsor
And that's basically a mapa mundi.
Jessica Finley
Yes, yes.
Guy Windsor
Those medieval people rather stupid, weren't they? They didn't wash.
Jessica Finley
They ate rotting meat all day, I have been assured.
Guy Windsor
And we know they never took baths because the priests complained about the bathhouses.
Jessica Finley
They, rightfully so, complained about the bathhouses.
Guy Windsor
So obviously they were no baths because the priests complained about the bath houses so the bath houses all disappeared one day.
Jessica Finley
So this is it. You know, as a teacher, Guy, or instructor, whatever you want to call me, coach. I don't care. There is this beautiful tension between how much of this do I just offer and how much of this do I sit and wait for somebody to find?
Guy Windsor
Okay, yeah, same thing. If you just put it in front of them, they can't see it.
Jessica Finley
They can't see it anyways. Yeah. And this is why I don't have a book about the Hauptstücke you see.
Guy Windsor
Yet.
Jessica Finley
Yet. Yes. There there's there are so many complexities to it, that every time I find a solution for it, I find unacceptable problems with my own creation, which is why I have like, four half written drafts on my hard drive.
Guy Windsor
Okay. This is interesting, because the book is linear, and you are forced to take this three dimensional structure and lay it out in a line. But the online course structure is the same. Video is even more linear than books are because you can't skip back and forth as easily.
Jessica Finley
It makes me very sad, and I wouldn't have gotten through it without your support. That is a real fact.
Guy Windsor
But when we were doing, when we were doing the online course, we had no trouble and shooting a video for each of the 12 Hauptstücke. And then some additional bits and pieces to kind of fill in obvious gaps. You know, someone with a bit of background might say, but what about this? And so we shot a video about this. Things which are common knowledge, but not one of the Hauptstücke. I think vor and nach and indes. So if you think about it, you've written the book. Because if we took the transcripts from all those videos, and tidied them up a little bit, there's a book.
Jessica Finley
There is, but what a dull book.
Guy Windsor
I'm not saying you should do it that way. Here's a thought for you. The book that you would want is basically the sort of thing where, if you already know all this stuff, it shows it to you in new and interesting ways that blows your mind. That's the book you want. But you don't write books for yourself, generally. You write books for the people that need them. And what would you have given for a straightforward explication of the 12 Hauptstücke took a plus zornhau and a couple of other things in 2002?
Jessica Finley
I mean, my left arm probably. So that's a fair point.
Guy Windsor
Right. So yeah, I mean, I'm not satisfied with any of my books, obviously. Because they don't address my needs at all. I mean, like, what use are they to me? They are books written for people who don't know this stuff already. Now, the process of writing the books is useful to me, because it makes me think about the things in new and different ways and organise them in different ways. And I understand the art better for having written a book about it. And, of course, once they're out in the world, and they start generating income, because people buy them. That's great. But the only time I ever refer to one of my own books, is when I'm quoting it for some reason. Why would I? I didn't write the book for me.
Jessica Finley
That’s an interesting idea.
Guy Windsor
For the benefit of the people who are interested in Liechtenauer and want to know your thoughts on it. Many people learn best through books. Many people also learn better through video, other people can only really learn stuff in person, lots of different people have lots of different needs for things and ways of learning and preferred modes of learning in. But for the people for whom a book would be really, really useful. It would be doing them a service to swallow your dissatisfaction and produce the book that would be good for them.
Jessica Finley
Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, that's an interesting thought, because I wonder if I am conflating not the book I need for me right now, but the book that I imagine 2004 me would need. When I think about it, I get inspired by martial arts books I read around that time. For instance, like my medieval wrestling book, I took huge inspiration from this little booklet called The Art of Judo. It's this tiny little book, you can pick it up for like 10 bucks on Amazon, maybe less. It's ancient, black and white. And it is minimalist, is the best way to describe it. And that book, I got so much from because there was very little text, a lot of photos. It was all bullet points. If any of you have read my book, you'll be like, oh, yeah, that's what you did. Yes, that's what I did. Because that was the mode that I found useful. But you know, Guy, when I think about sword stuff, when I think about Liechtenauer, our as I conceive of it now, and what young me would have needed/wanted. I can't think of the title of the book. If I get it, I'll get it to you and we'll put it in the show notes. But it was this martial arts book of a woman who went to study across China and Tibet on her motorcycle. Oh, god, okay, I've got it in my library. I will find it and get the title because it's just not coming to my mind right now. But I found that book incredibly moving. And it really taught me what it was to study a martial art. And there was nothing about technique. It was just her experience of study. And I keep getting hiccupped, because I somehow want to blend those together. Because in my mind, they come together. Do you see?
Guy Windsor
I do. Totally do. You go get your book. I'll nip to the bathroom. We'll be back here in like one minute, and then we can resume.
Jessica Finley
I'll do my best to find it. Let me see if it's right here.
Guy Windsor
We're back.
Jessica Finley
Okay, so the book is titled Among Warriors, A Woman Martial Artist in Tibet. And it's by Pamela Logan.
Guy Windsor
I shall be purchasing that forthwith.
Jessica Finley
When did it come out? Let me see. It came out in 1996. So it's been quite some time. But yeah, early martial artist, Jess Finley, young person, Jess Finley, that book, I was just like, Yes, I too, want to circumnavigate the globe as a singular woman, with a purpose of studying martial arts. That sounds incredible. I want to do that, you know. But, I mean, it was very much, as I recall, a book about the seriousness of it, and some of it was just the hardships of travel, and some of it was the hardships of the training, you know, coming to places where she was expected to be up at 5am training, as the sun rose, and going all day, of course, exactly. As one does. But she talked about the community of it as well, that we all in one way, you know, suffered together for it, but that it's beautiful.
Guy Windsor
Okay, but that's one kind of book, which is a memoir, and it gives you an insight into the fundamental human motivations and experiences of being a serious martial artist. And I have a bunch of similar sort of favourite books. I wrote a blog post about it ages ago, I'll stick a link in the show notes. It was called my top five martial arts as a path books. And it's got basically books about treating martial arts as a path through life. And not just, this is how you hit people with swords. But that's like, the why. And something of the emotional stance or the mental stance you take towards it. So a little bit of the how in that sense, but it's not about how you actually throw a punch, or how you actually throw a sword around. A training manual is a totally different beast. And its job is to is to communicate physical skill to the reader by telling them exactly what to do and how to do it.
Jessica Finley
Is there no way to merge the two?
Guy Windsor
Okay. I don't think you should merge the two.
Jessica Finley
Oh, okay. So tell me about that.
Guy Windsor
Because they are fundamentally different. And the thing is, if what I need next in my martial arts journey, is to understand how and when to throw a pommel strike. That's what the next bit of the book should be. So you do this with a pommel strike, you step like this, and you do this and you smack them in the face and Fiore says this, whatever. That has nothing to do with why I'm training in the first place. It has everything to do with what I'm supposed to do next. Now the thing with Donald McBane’s 1728, The Expert Swordman’s Companion, he has a thorough, shortish, how-to treatise on smallsword, right? This is how you murder people in a duel with a sword. Hold it like this, stand like this, stab them like this. And if it's dark, execute the round parade until you find his sword and then having found his sword rush down and you will surely find him at the other end of it. Specific. But he also has his autobiography, and as it has an annex on the art of gunnery, all in the same book. But that is three separate books that happens to be bound in one book, really, right. There's the how to treatise. There's the this is my life treatise. And then there's the gunnery thing, which practically no one ever reads because most of us don't have cannon. So I mean, it was, I think, pretty clear to McBane that you shouldn't mix them up. And generally speaking in historical martial arts sources, we don't find much in the way of sort of memoir-ish, autobiographical stuff. Fiore says, he has these students and he's trained this long enough and he basically gives a few paragraphs of, look, I know my shit, this is why you should read this book. But he doesn't interleave memoir stuff with the technical stuff. And I think that's the model that we should follow. Because the memoir stuff is great and interesting and has its own thing. And honestly, a really good memoir is probably more valuable to a human life than a really good how to hit people with swords book. It's going to be more useful to you in terms of your overall life goals. But every book makes a promise to the reader.
Jessica Finley
Yeah. All right.
Guy Windsor
And if my promise is: the medieval longsword, a training manual, I have to make good on that promise. And if it is, Guy’s sword journey, then I have to make good on that promise. And so you can't really combine the promises.
Jessica Finley
No, I know. I mean, I think you're right, because otherwise, I would have probably figured it out by now.
Guy Windsor
Yeah. So I think you should do both. But treat them as separate books. Occasionally, you come across a memoir that has, for example, recipes in it. Because it's all about living in Italy, and Italian food and cooking and stuff. And it's mostly memoir about, you know, living in Italy, and how wonderful that is, all those Italians are lucky bastards. And the recipes are there, because cooking is a fairly common skill, and the sort of person who buys that kind of book is likely to know how to cook already. And so throwing in a few recipes, you can easily skip over it if you don't want to do it. But it kind of invites you more deeply into the world, because then you can recreate this thing that they've just done. But, I mean, that's the only exception I can think of.
Jessica Finley
Right? And I almost want to write a training manual, where it's that idea inversed. Where the invitation is into the how the fuck does vier leger apply to my life? Feel free to skip it. But I can't find a way to make it palatable in my own mind.
Guy Windsor
Okay, but here's a thought for you. These memoirs have recipes in them, they don't teach you how to cook. They assume you already know how to cook. And if you can't already cook, you just skip the recipes. And they don't have an equipment list at the front and an ingredients list at the front. Okay, make sure you've got all this stuff in your cupboard and make sure you've got all this stuff in your fridge and make sure you have this kind of knife and that kind of knife and these pans in the oven like this. And they don't do any of that. They tell you the story. And then here's a recipe. So you can do both. If you have a, this is the training manual. And maybe in the introduction, you say how important that it’s all been to your learning, and you have could be in the same volume. But it's fundamentally a different book, and this is how the vier leger applied to my life. So once they've learned this, because most people who would buy a memoir are not trained historical martial artists. So you can't just say, and next time, you're practising a zwerchhau, think about how it protects you from above and how this relates to dealing with the passport office when they were being a dick. The common frame of reference has to be there before that kind of thing could possibly work.
Jessica Finley
I know. That's why it's an unlikely idea to work.
Guy Windsor
No, it’ll work beautifully. But you just have to separate it out. You have to have the training manual. And you can write it mixed. But you can't publish it mixed because it won't make sense to readers. By all means, write it mixed. But then just separate it out and put all the memoir stuff in one volume and all how to do stuff in another. And that will also tell you whether it's complete. So, I mean, if you're thinking memoir, you might have great stories about three of the vier leger, and two of the four guards. And, you know, six of the other Hauptstücke and the others not so much. And it won't matter if it's a memoir. But if it's a book about the Hauptstücke, you have to have something for everything. So you put all of the technical stuff in one section or volume, and you put the memoir stuff in another section of volume, but you can write them interleaved, you just then separate them out later.
Jessica Finley
Yeah, yeah. You know, I'm reminded of have we talked about the 15th century Italian dance master?
Guy Windsor
We talked about him in Kansas, but the listeners weren't there.
Jessica Finley
I'll get a link for that as well, because it's Primo. But he also writes in this fashion, like, there's an introduction that's basically on why everyone should learn to dance. Then he has his technical instruction on the dances and what they are and how to do them. And then he wraps up with not really a memoir, more of a diary of cool places I went, neat parties I was at and who else was there and what happened. And it's hilarious.
Guy Windsor
And so you have a historical model to copy.
Jessica Finley
It's true. There is one right there.
Guy Windsor
Right, there you go. It's not just me. There are historical models.
Jessica Finley
It's true. It's true. I mean, it might be the way to go. Who knows.
Guy Windsor
But I think that's probably why you've got four drafts sitting on your hard drive is because you're trying to mix oil and water. And they keep separating.
Jessica Finley
Yeah, yeah. No, that's exactly how it feels in my brain.
Guy Windsor
So let them separate and do them separately. And then, once you've got them complete and separate, you may choose to add an emulsifier and mix them together. But that's a choice to be made later. And the historical martial arts world can write me handwritten letters on handmade paper to say thank you when those books come out, because you know.
Jessica Finley
Wow, that's a bar for me to reach.
Guy Windsor
I think that the historical martial arts world would benefit from both the memoir and the Hauptstücke book.
Jessica Finley
Yeah. Well, there certainly hasn't been a historical martial arts memoir yet, has there?
Guy Windsor
I've been thinking about writing one for ages.
Jessica Finley
I mean, you’d spit it out in two months.
Guy Windsor
I wouldn't actually. I've tried spitting it out a couple of times. It didn’t go anywhere.
Jessica Finley
It's hard.
Guy Windsor
It's really hard. The thing that makes it most difficult for me, I think, is so much of what went down in the late 90s and early 2000s was bad actors being arseholes. And if I put all of that stuff down, it's going to damage some relationships.
Jessica Finley
Yes, yes. It's an interesting conundrum. I mean, I've thought the same. There are certainly ways to tell the story. But I think the story needs to be told Guy. I've thought this for some time. You know, another book idea I've had that I haven't quite figured out in my own mind. But what if I were, let's throw this out, to go as a journalist, and start interviewing all y'all, because I know all your names, and I know you all well enough. I'm, as we've discussed before, generation 1.5. So I can contact, for instance, I paid Pete Kautz last year for a private lesson.
Guy Windsor
Yeah. Interesting chap.
Jessica Finley
Interesting person. A lot of people that are in HEMA right now don't know his name.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, that’s a shame.
Jessica Finley
It's a shame, isn't it? So it's occurred to me that there are a lot of people who for a million and one reasons, not all bad, are no longer involved in historical martial arts but are foundational to the way historical martial arts are done now. Their names deserves to be known.
Guy Windsor
Absolutely. There are the invisible foundations, in many respects, and some of them are still around. Christian being one. I mean, one obvious example. That's a whole other thing. Finding the people who were interesting and useful and did great work that we all benefited from but then they're no longer really in the public eye. For whatever reason, could be they stopped doing historical martial arts, could be they died. I mean, Patri Pugliese. Great example. You can't interview him because he sadly died quite a long time ago now. But yeah, I mean, everyone should know who he is.
Jessica Finley
Steve Hick? Still around. There's a lot of names, we can just start throwing out a million and one names. But now that book Guy, maybe. Maybe if I did the interviews, and you helped me edit it and write it, we could find a way to make this happen.
Guy Windsor
Okay. That's a different thing. But that is the history of the foundation of historical martial arts. Absolutely. That isn't my memoir of how I ended up starting my school in Helsinki, which is a whole different thing.
Jessica Finley
It is, but they touch each other in a way that might make one thing accessible if the other thing got going. That's why I brought it up.
Guy Windsor
That's true. I think it's a brilliant idea. It’s a definite hell yes from me, Jessica.
Jessica Finley
Okay. Well, let me get on that shit then. Because people are gonna die. Because that's the way it happens.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, interview them before they die. Huh. Now, it's not good listening when I kind of wander off.
Jessica Finley
So we've gotten completely fucking off. So sorry, Katie. Sorry, anyone else that has to be involved in the editing.
Guy Windsor
There will not be much in the way of editing. It's just now I'm thinking, because one of the issues I was having with writing my own sort of memoir of how historical martial arts looked in like, 1992 is that if it revolves around me, as the memoir always revolves around the memoir, it's very local. And I'm sure if it was well written, people would enjoy reading it. But it might be more useful if there was a much had a much broader scope. Yeah, let's do that.
Jessica Finley
There's something there.
Guy Windsor
There is, and there are a lot of people who did extraordinary things to get things off the ground. And then have, for whatever reason to stop. I mean, the one thing one that leaves into my head is William Wilson and Jherek Swanger translated Capoferro and put it out for free in like 2002.
Jessica Finley
Yes, right. Yeah.
Guy Windsor
Which, not to put too fine a point on it is why I'm a Capoferro person now.
Jessica Finley
That was supposed to be my first event, I think, was William Wilson.
Guy Windsor
Right. There you go. But I think Bill's heart troubles have prevented him from being terribly active in the scene for quite a while now. And again, most rapier people probably don't even know who he is. And what a shame because, you know, the work he was doing with Jherek 20 years ago, speeded us all up by years and years and years. We are years ahead of where we would be if he hadn't done that work.
Jessica Finley
Yeah. So I think between us we could get a list of must be interviewed. Some of them I can think of might not return my call, even though I'm pretty neutral.
Guy Windsor
I'm not terribly neutral. Some of the people I’m thinking of they wouldn't return my call either. So we'd have to get somebody else on board whose call they might return.
Jessica Finley
Yeah. But I mean, I think between us we could find a way to have as comprehensive a list as anybody could come up with.
Guy Windsor
Here's a thought, one thing we could do is, we can interview them like, for a podcast?
Jessica Finley
Oh, no, that's easier than a book, she says, without a real podcast.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, well, no, having produced a podcast and written books, I can confirm that producing a podcast is a damn sight easier than writing a book because you just talk to people and ask them questions. And there's a bit of production of stuff. But once you've learned how that's done, it's not actually that hard. It's a lot of work but it's not terribly difficult work. Whereas writing a book is almost all difficult, as you know.
Jessica Finley
So maybe a book could come from the interviews?
Guy Windsor
Exaclt. So what we would do perhaps, is come up with a list of people and interview them, and see if they would be willing to be interviewed on the record for a podcast. And if they're not, that's fine, we interview them, for the book, but those who are happy to be interviewed for the podcast can be interviewed for the podcast. And in fact, if you if you look through the 160-odd episodes of the show, there are quite a few people who would be on that list who have already interviewed at least once, for sure. So we could always get them back. Okay, that's a really good idea. It's not like I don't have an abrazare course launching right now. And as the Hauptstücke a course to edit and get ready, hopefully before Christmas, and and like,
Jessica Finley
I'm completely not refounding my school and overwhelmed with lots of responsibilities related to that. It's fine. How about we take this on Guy?
Guy Windsor
Well, okay, I'm going to Germany this weekend. I'm in America in October.
Jessica Finley
Wait, who are you seeing in Germany?
Guy Windsor
In Germany, I'm going to the Potsdam event. In fact, when this goes out on Friday, I will be on my way to Potsdam that afternoon, and I'll be there the weekend, this goes out. So second and third of September. So the Swords of the Renaissance event it is called. Lovely, lovely event. I was there last year, and came back for another one. And then in October, I'm going to Baltimore for Lord Baltimore's Challenge, which is a smaller event this year and in October rather than July. And it's going to be fascinating, because we're looking at how to train. How to use tournaments to help your training. So rather than just show up at a tournament and see how it turns out. It’s going to be you have a couple of bouts and then you work on the stuff that didn't work in those bouts. And then you go in for another couple of outs, and then work on the things that you learned in those bouts. And then you see what general thing you should perhaps be fixing, maybe you see the tempo to strike, but your footwork isn't quite good enough so you're not in position to lunge when you see the tempo maybe. And so you work on that. Or maybe against this specific opponent, you have this issue and against that other specific opponent, you have that issue. Why would they be different? How do we work on this one, how we work on that. That kind of thing. So rather than it's just a day of classes and a day of tournament, it’s a day of classes, followed by a tournament environment, optimised for maximising fencing development.
Jessica Finley
Nice.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, it's super fun. And then November I'm off to Finland. December I'm going to Spain for an event in Spain, which is going to be marvellous. A long time since I was in Spain. And then it's Christmas. So when are we going to write this fucking book Jessica?
Jessica Finley
It looks like the first quarter of next year Guy. Because I am going to be in France next month for three weeks. Touring castles, climbing cliffs, seeing some rugby and eating good food. More or less. I don't even think there'll be any fencing unless I run across somebody.
Guy Windsor
So it's a trip to France that does not involve historical martial arts directly. Wow.
Jessica Finley
Yeah, my first international trip to not involve historical martial arts.
Guy Windsor
It'll be an actual holiday,
Jessica Finley
An actual holiday.
Guy Windsor
Oh, my God, they’re amazing.
Jessica Finley
Well I mean, I am demanding a large amount of castles, villages and museums. So I don't know that it's entirely devoid of historical martial arts. But I'm not being paid to teach anywhere. Yeah, that's all of my September. October, I'm in Boston, teaching a weekend on the Hauptstücke and how they work, so that's going to be super cool. Then in November, I'm going to be up with the Arms and Armor guys. I'm gonna do a seminar for the Oakeshott Institute and, and give a lecture on historical pattern garments.
Guy Windsor
Right, and people who are interested in those things can listen to the first interview I did with you where you talk about them at length.
Jessica Finley
That's right. And then December's Christmas. I don't have anything scheduled for them. So I think it's first quarter Guy.
Guy Windsor
Okay. Yeah. First quarter is currently a little quiet. So all right. So let us in the meantime, we come up with names of people to interview and a list of questions that are likely to elicit the right kind of reminiscences.
Jessica Finley
Yeah, yeah. And I'm thinking this is going to be really cool. I think this is going to work really well, Guy. I'm excited.
Guy Windsor
Good. Okay. Now, we have addressed your best idea you haven’t acted on in the historical martial arts gear based on American football from 1915. And then we went off on a great long ramble about ways of presenting information, maybe using a website that allows you to kind of get access to that kind of 3d feeling of it. Which I don't think counts as the best idea not acted on. So shall we say, for the purposes of interview structure, that best idea not acted on is interviewing a bunch of old time historical martial arts people that modern martial arts people might not know.
Jessica Finley
Yeah, yeah, I think that is it. And I think, unlike many of these ideas, this one will be acted upon. It could be. So if you are a listener of Guy’s podcast, and you were around in the early 2000s and you would like to be a part of this book.
Guy Windsor
I'm thinking 1990s too. 2000s is kind of late to the scene, honestly.
Jessica Finley
That's fair. I mean, I was around in 98, at least. So at least knowing you guys's name.
Guy Windsor
Alright, so last question. Last time, I asked you this question you said you would spend a million imaginary dollars making armour more accessible for historical martial arts practitioners? Would you still spend the money the same way? You don't have to have thought about it. You can just be off the cuff if you like. Would you still spend the money in the same way? Or would you do something else?
Jessica Finley
Oh man. I mean, that's still the simplest way to spend money that I think could do the most good. Because it is still a huge problem. Oh, that's so tough. I wasn't ready, I should have thought about it. I should have known.
Guy Windsor
Oh, you may have assumed that I had a bit more imagination and would ask different questions every time.
Jessica Finley
Maybe, maybe.
Guy Windsor
But it's a perfectly fair response to say, well actually, given that I didn't get the million dollars, so I couldn't spend it fixing that problem. I still think that is the main problem.
Jessica Finley
It's still a huge problem. So what I would layer on to that is I would develop a line of affordable, longswords that are incredibly flexy and that the blades are cheap and easily replaceable, like a foil, so that people could fence with something that hits gently, like a foil-ish.
Guy Windsor
We don't have anything like that, at the moment really, do we?
Jessica Finley
We don't. I just got a custom set of Arms and Armors in made to my specs.
Guy Windsor
I know, I played with them, they're very nice.
Jessica Finley
And they thrust so gently.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, they still have decent presence in the blade. And they cut properly, but they also thrust with the flex that you would want. But the way they accomplish that was by carefully hand grinding the blades.
Jessica Finley
That's exactly right. It is not a cheap or easily achievable replicable process yet.
Guy Windsor
Except they do it with fencing foils, epee blades, sport fencing sabre blades, I think the problem is scale.
Jessica Finley
Exactly, you would need an influx of money to create the mechanical process that would happen in a shop to make it easily and cheaply repeatable. And that would take money. So I could also apply the money towards that.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, okay. So, basically making a longsword fencing blade that actually works as well as the beautiful handmade ones, but is mass produced? And you can have it in a couple of different lengths, perhaps you have a couple of different hilts that you could interchange with it.
Jessica Finley
And we could start to treat both masks and blades as consumables that are expected to be replaced, which they are, but currently, they're so expensive that people think of them as items that should be you know, legacy items that I should have the sword to hand on to my grandchildren even though I fence with it for 50 hours a week, every week.
Guy Windsor
Who do you know who fences 50 hours a week, every week? Nobody, I guess. My Terry Tindall mask is still going strong after 15 years now. But my sport fencing mask that I use for rapier and stuff, that gets replaced every, I should replace him more often than I do. But I want to say every four or five years.
Jessica Finley
Yeah, yeah. And I mean, like, if you are longswording in a fencing mask,
Guy Windsor
You're an idiot. Sorry, but then no one should do that. Not in high intensity situations. Friendly stuff in a salle, fine. But in any kind of competitive environment it is an inadequate tool for protecting your face and head and is not designed for it. They’re shit, and I can't abide it. So sorry, I had to throw that in there.
Jessica Finley
That's fine. Given that if you are that person doing that thing, you should replace it every six months. Period. Because I don't know if you've ever taken a fencing mask inside a HEMA overlay. Put it on some sort of Bob, like some sort of training and hit it. Do that. It falls apart.
Guy Windsor
In my salle in Helsinki, we have the mask that we did that with. And when beginners are putting on a fencing class for the first time I show them this utterly destroyed mask and I say, this is what happens to a modern fencing mask when it's hit with medieval weaponry. And there are like gashes torn in the thing, because we used a pole axe and we use a dagger and we used a sword and whatever. And it's toast. You couldn't even get your head in it because it's crushed. Do not confuse a mask with armour. It is not the same thing. You just wear it so that your partner can touch your head without it becoming annoying. So yes, absolutely. People should try that for themselves.
Jessica Finley
Yeah, I mean, I strongly recommend.
Guy Windsor
If you look at an FIE regulation mask, they all have the date of manufacture stamped on the head. headpiece, the clip that goes on the back of their head, because you need to know when it was made, so you know when to replace it. I forget what the rules for FIE, because it's been such a long time since I went to a fencing tournament. And they probably changed them anyway. But, I mean, there are rules about how old your equipment is allowed to be.
Jessica Finley
Yes, as well as they have punches to test whether or not it fails in that way. There's some complexity that failing in that way isn't necessarily relevant to what's happening to it with a longsword. But point is, it's a consumable, friends. So don't spend $150 Getting a specialty paint job on a thing you should be throwing away in six months. That's what I'm going to say.
Guy Windsor
Although, for a gentle, friendly play in the salle, absolutely. For actual competitive use you want to be changing it. I mean, if you go to one tournament every six months, you maybe don't need to change it that often. But I will say also one blow that significantly deforms the mesh, that's it, the mask is no longer useful. Actually, that happened to me once, before the Terry Tindall mask was invented. At least before it was available anywhere. I was demonstrating at a seminar in Sweden, I think it was, and I was free fencing with one of my students. And I came in to attack with a fendente, and he was in denti ghigaro and instead of parrying, he stepped off the line and stabbed me in the face. Beautiful shot. It was absolutely beautiful. But it was a bit hard. And, again, this is like 2005 or something. So the equipment wasn't that bendy and I don't think we have rubber tips on our longswords then either and crushed the mask sufficiently that it actually cut above my top lip. Excellent shot, well done. Then I showed the mask to the students I said, Now, this mask is rubbish. And I dropped it on the floor. It's rubbish. Once that has happened to the mask, it is no longer fit for purpose. Not that it was particularly fit for purpose for longsword anyway. Okay. So you would spend that million dollars on, let's say a second million dollars, you've got the million dollars for the armour, which you still haven't received yet. So no wonder you haven't actually solved that problem. But yeah, developing not foil blades, but longsword blades that work well in the thrust but a mass produced at a level where they are considered a disposable?
Jessica Finley
Yes. Yes.
Guy Windsor
That's a good choice. Okay, if I had the money I’d give it to you.
Jessica Finley
I think we need that. Yeah.
Guy Windsor
You may be right. Okay, before before, before we wrap up I do have one question. All right. Because let's be completely transparent about this. The reason that we're doing an abrazare themed interview with you today is because we're in the middle of the launch for the abrazare course, right? This is how marketing works. But what was the most fun thing about shooting the abrazare course?
Jessica Finley
Oh, man. It was wicked fun. You know, what stands out to me Guy is doing your flowdrill. Which is a step out outside of what's canonically in the book, admittedly. You do elaborate on that.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, it's a training exercise, it is not one of Fiore’s actions. It's a training exercise. We call it the unarmed flowdrill.
Jessica Finley
Yes. But that training exercise, that's what comes to mind when I think about like, what are my memories of what we did? That comes forefront before everything else. We did all sorts of fun things don't get me wrong. But that one appears. And I think in part because while flowdrills are, once you have them memorised and once you understand where they're going, you can kind of escape your own present consciousness of it, and that's like the beauty of them. But then, for me, it was all so new that I had to stay hyper present, to even be able to do it for you. And so maybe that's why it's so indelibly burned in my mind is a thing we did, but it really is.
Guy Windsor
Well good. Excellent. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I invented that thing probably 20 years ago. And it's a useful thing. I will put the video from the course of the unarmed flowdrill into the show notes so people can see what we're talking about.
Jessica Finley
Excellent. That's wonderful.
Guy Windsor
Excellent. Well, thanks so much for joining me today, Jessica. It's been lovely seeing you again. As always.
Jessica Finley
Thank you Guy. What do we do? Oh, we know what we're doing next. Never mind, I was going to say what are we going to talk about next, we've already decided. First quarter.
