Blog Entry #1 - Ong First Half

In Ong's book, on page 59, Ong discusses 20th century bards. I had little knowledge of bards until I played a video game called The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Skyrim is an open-world RPG that has fantasy elements and folklore inspired from Scandinavian Vikings. I've played this game for over 100 hours, finding myself immersed in a game like never before. The obsession grew to the point I'd wake up at 9 am and play until 5 am. With breaks in between, of course. I'd defend the game to my grave is someone were to say it's the worst game possible. I found many faults with it, and I admit to them, but reading Ong's discussion of bards, I find myself pondering on the dynamics of the games when it comes to the singing storytellers.

While the presence of these instrument-touting, singing folks were not predominant in the game, they still are there. It turns out that while traveling in the vast map of the game, you will happen to encounter them in the wild. Otherwise, you can easily seek them out playing in inns, taverns, and bars. You can speak to them and request a song to sing. What strikes as interesting to me in the book is that it explains that bards is part of an oral culture. It explains that bards learn by listening to other bards sing. And this happens for month and years. It's been researched that bards will not sing the same song in the same way, instead it becomes a formula. Almost like a plug and play, they can change the way it is sung, but can't change the foundation of the song and its meaning. With literacy, a bard can read the song and memorize it. But the further apart from memorization and the performance, it weakens the ability of the bard to recall the words. However oral bards found that singing the song at least a day after allows them to not be held back by the boundaries of literacy. This means that the day they don't sing, they can let the song soak in and he can essentially remix the story with his own themes and formulas. This allows creativity and diversity in their songs even if they are based on the same story.

This is an interesting observance. Referring back to the game, it seems that the bards in-game are literate bards. If the player goes into the Bards College, then they can find the vast library of the stories the bards can sing. Each story is not a song, however, it still has to be translated into music for the bards to sing. This would make one think, according to Ong's book, that they would have different variations of the same story, but with different words and flair to them. However, while this is most likely fault with the laziness of the game designers, the bards in the game each sing the same exact song. When requesting a song, they ask which one you would like to hear. So it shows that there is common folklore in the country of Skyrim. You can request one and they will sing it. Then the player can travel across the map and ask a completely different bard to sing about the "dragonborne" or something and they would reiterate the song sang by the other bard, word-for-word. Needless to say, this demonstrates that bards in the video game Skyrim are literate bards, each having attended a "college" to memorize texts and sing the same songs.

Then there's the case of traveling bards. They're more rare in Skyrim, and in personal experience, out of the 100+ hours I've played, I recall only meeting about 2 different bards in the wilds. One would think that because of their journeys and exposure to a greater world, that they would find new songs or find a way to improvise the one they learned from other bards, but that is not the case. Skyrim is an excellent game, with many bugs and improvement needed, and there are mods for that too. However their bland representation of bards leave more to be desired. A college for bards seem to create a robot mass of them, each becoming literate and memorizing texts rather than listening to other bards and improvising the songs on their own terms.

There are mods for this game. But I have yet to see someone create dynamics for bards to create music and tell stories uniquely.