In Twilight Regalia

It being the long weekend, we set out to test our new Magellan GPS and make for Northern California for the Scottish Highland games. Every time I go there I bring a different set of people with me… and this time it was my husband’s initiation to it.

“So what are your plans for the weekend?” My attorneys always ask on Fridays, being polite and not really caring about the answer.

“Ah’m offf to watch Scoatts toss aroond telephone poles.” I answer.

(This gives them the mental challenge they were not expecting. You should always give attorneys more to do than they were expecting, or they make trouble. )

Then ensues a thumbnail explanation of the importance of the games in Scots history and how in William Wallace’s day they weren’t allowed to bear arms, so they developed all these other methods of testing strength and yada yada….

About then they are wandering off in thought realizing that talking Pebble Beach to you really will not seem as interesting, and they pretty much leave you alone.

But I have a secret reason why I go back. I hadn’t mentioned it but can now.

Why do people go to the Scots Highland Games?

There are people like my husband, who have absolutely no idea what it’s about anyway, but are perfectly willing to be dragged into anything that offers a spectacle. And a spectacle it ends with. So I figure I can bore the hell out of them until the closing ceremonies, and they’ll suddenly be enlightened, which is exactly what happened to me the first time I went.

What do you do at these things? Los Angelinos would find it lacking in speed and polish, but it’s about a few things:

One, if you’re a Scot, you get to hang out with your compatriots. There are huge grassy areas with over fifty tents of different clansmen and -women, all interested in representing their particular family name, history and allies. Yes, allies. This comes from a time when everyone feuded with everyone and you were either an enemy or allied. A small nervousness arises in me when I think I am allying with that very thought…. but the rest is worth it. This extends to all who have even a smithering speck of the Scots name about them or are attached to a Scot. You can be black or chinese and be a member of the clan if you’ve good reason to be, and one of the best of the athletes there this time was as African as could be. One was from the Ukraine. One was from Portugal. They wear their colors due to their surnames or their spouse’s, and all is a big family. ( Hence I would have loved to see Alex in a kilt, but for him, a Korean in a kilt was just too much. He picked out a T-shirt with a Celtic pattern and was very happy.)

Two, if you’re descended from them, you get to wear (or the better for them, buy and wear) your tartan, your clan’s particular plaid, and wander around with a scarf or a tam o’ shanter, or glengarry hat, or something, feeling like you have an oddly artificial sense of belonging. This leads to the humour factor in the attendance at the grounds. You get your goth girls wearing quasi-kilts that land somewhere below the buttocks, sported in tandem with studs and corsets. You get your exceedingly overweight kilt-wearing men with the belly out over the front and a T-shirt that says something that may or may not extoll Guinness beer. You get your lameass preteen boys wearing something like Pirates of the Caribbean meets Braveheart, with errant Civil War-era swords dangling at skinny legs. You get your 50 and up women with breasts spilling out of shirttops with tribal tatoos and pounds of crystals around their necks, sporting unlikely banners of plaid like beauty queens gone horribly wrong.

Or, in real San Francisco style, you can do the bona fide Northern California Ren(aissance)-Faire thing and become a member of the Royal Tudor household, or portray some druidic looking blacksmith in a living history exhibit. Of course you get to wear your clan’s full regalia, and for a day you’ll be a star in the pageantry, while at all other days getting in and out of your car in full period costume will only win you some guffaws and references to Dungeons and Dragons.

And the rest of the attendees? The toast of it: You can be a highland dancer with a beehive hairbun, traveling around the country to compete while Mom packs and unpacks your many outfits. Or you might be a drum and pipe band player, traveling around the country to compete in crack-accurate time and tune. Or you can be one of the many singers and musicians and storytellers that actually get great audiences for a change. Or you can be one of the men or women (Yes! women too!) in the center arena, carrying and heaving huge weights and breaking records for height and distance like Olympians. These are the soul of it, and you won’t know until you see them dance, or hear them play, or throw. They are who we come to see. You might know, if you read me before, my Olympic attachment — I love challenges like this. There’s a sense that all of the competitors are really in it for the sport and challenge, not for a sense of besting one another so much. (That’s the environment where testosterone is best channelled, in my opinion.)

But the opening and end of the games, the opening and closing ceremonies, are magical. The first time I attended was the charm.

After a nice day of events that first time around, I felt like something about this all was very quaint, but not enough. I felt no real need to bond with any of the clansmen I met. The Camerons were very nice to me, but I knew very little of what to say to them. My friends were not as impressed by the celtic bands as I was, having not been musicians themselves. And although there were many nice things, it seemed a tad unpolished and homespun. There was nothing my friends were wowed by except the athletes…. and somehow that wasn’t what I wanted them to know. I was looking for something that would ring true, like home in me, and it should be there. I knew it should BE there, or this was going to be a loss somehow.

We went back to our grandstand seats for the final ceremony. Much officious presentation was made of trophies, which was nice. Much patting on the back of organizers, fine. And then, they brought in the pipebands. They came in,
and they came in
and they came in
and they came in in more and more waves, until there were roughly 900 to 1000 players in tight lines on the field. It was ENORMOUS.

We had heard the bands around the grassy areas all day, but they’d all been scattered far around…. nothing like this.

We looked, and looked around, and looked some more, and it was the announcer reverberating, and then,

They played Scotland the Brave.

It sounds like 400 years of thunder in the sky when 1000 players face you and join that tune.

There is nothing like it on this planet.

I had not felt this with my own American anthems, ever. Whenever I heard our own songs, it was a vain repetition, or someone murdering the tune, or a sense of the lurking military danger of hubris so prevalent in our American oversight and overgrowth. When I heard our songs it was like a GIANT declaring I AM THE GIANT. FEE FIE FO FUM. IT IS I. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAA. It worried me. I saw tanks and bombs when I heard it. I still do. I wish I didn’t. When I hear God Bless America, I feel ok being an American, because it sings about a beautiful land that wants to be guided by a higher right; but not with any of our actual anthems do I feel that.

This was different. My friends and I looked at each other and they silently mouthed, “WOH!”.

At that moment, I heard everything I expected I might feel if I knew who I were. Suddenly I DID. I looked down at the tartan on my shoulder, and looked out at the pipers and truly felt awed. A life and death seriousness flowed out of that music, and the greatest sense of pride without malice I have ever experienced. Suddenly my stubborn holding to my own honest intentions in life made total sense. This was not the song of a conquered underdog, but the pride of those who are because they ARE, because they can and will be, because no one can keep them from being who they are. It had at that moment, more dignity than anything I have ever heard.

And I realized, it was totally my anthem.

Awesome.

And That’s why I will always go back to the games.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 4th, 2006 at 10:17 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.