Pages from the Glittering Darkness

I try my best to teach my students and my fellows that the lightest possible touch is sufficient to be considered a good blow, for we are in fact engaging in an intellectual and physical exercise, not earnest combat. We do not need to 'jack' our opponents to make a good kill.. or at least we 'should' not have to. At times I wonder if I do my pupils, fellows, and myself, a disservice with this point of view. After all, often we land a shot on a fellow whom we are not used to fencing and what would be a good and proper touch for our community is not noticed or worse, ignored by our opponent because it did not have what they felt to be the 'correct force for a true intended blow.' "It touched me.. but it was just a graze.. very light.. I dont think it should count as a thrust." is a phrase I would be willing to bet that I have heard more often than Illadore has heard her hated phrase. There are a few reasons this can tend to frustrate me. One is because the reality is, that if our weapons where sharp, a wound is very very easy to deliver. Anyone who has conducted, engaged in, or underwent body piercing can attest that there is absolutely no force required to puncture the skin or muscle. Only cartilage, such as in the septum, provides real resistance, and that still falls easilly after the application of slightly more thumb pressure as one might assert when punching buttons on a telephone. I did body piercing for a while with my wife at a professional studio. I have observed that the tip of a razor sharp rapier is not too dissimilar to the tip of a piercing needle. Each ends in a bladed tip designed specifically to spread the flesh with its edges as it enters. Do not think of this as a nail or sewing needle puncturing, but rather as bladed arrowhead entering its target.. the design spreads the wound so that the pressure required is actually fairly insignifigant. Thus, it is my opinion, that Calibration should be defined by precision and control, not by the application of pressure. There is never a time in our art that we should have to increase pressure or calibration to better 'emulate' proper swordplay.. We can be perfectly proper and show our scholastic intimacy without such machismo notions that force has to equate to 'correct.'  

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• #2 Comment from salleavarimEntry Author 
  9/13/03 10:10 PM | Permalink

  Footnote: One thing that occured to me to reinforce the design of the rapier tip as a spread and cut style of wound then a 'puncture' was to consider the tip of many types of hand needles for leather sewing. Many of the needles I have used have either a triangular blade like a stilletto dagger, or else it has a edged point like those discussed in the above post. The design of these bladed needles is to ease the passage of the insturment through the skin of the leather.
• #1 Comment from ranimonica 
  9/13/03 2:33 PM | Permalink

  I am definately a believer in light Calibration. If you touch me, I'll take it.
  
  My main problem is that I often get "over-anxious" sometimes and hit too hard, because I'm trying too hard to get a shot rather than trying hard to get in a good shot with good calibration.
  
  But, I'm working on it. Recognizing the problem is half the battle.