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Maybe we are getting somewhere as to the original question of the OP. Does a Martial Craft become a Martial Art simply when it passes into the hands of the Rich? And even more problematically, is this the case with all crafts and arts?

Some of the most un-beautiful things, I find terribly beautiful. For me art or Art always has to be beautiful. It's up to the viewer to discover that beauty, sometimes its buried very deep within there, or at the conceptual edges. It's just a hypostatized version of our relationship to the world. As to art and craft, that is a super interesting one. Muay Thai in Thailand is much, much closer to a craft than an art, in most of the gyms producing fighters. I like that term, Martial Craft, rather than Martial Art. I think we are getting somewhere!

It's hard to care about anything when you feel as drained and unsure of bowel control as I did in that fight, haha. But it's a beautiful example, being sandwiched between two other fights, because it demonstrates how it doesn't matter. Each fight has meaning, and importance, but they don't MATTER. None of them... and somehow all of them. I was fine and fought, clinched with Pettonpung and then got food poisoning at dinner that night - terrible night and day, fight, then I'm okay again the next day (albeit tired) and you go fight again. It's like 0 and 1, as if fights are a binary, "good" or "bad," win or lose. None of them are like that. I did laugh when you said you fear the day that you just react with "ho hum" to feats like this, because that's how I respond to my own achievements sometimes. I need friends like you for perspective. So, thank you for that.

It's a cop out response on the light vs hard thing, but getting both is beneficial. Like a musician's work time in between playing live shows, the practising vs playing issue. They're not the same thing. The Western dudes mentioned above who just want to brutalise each other in the gym for their facebook but not have fights, it's kinda like a music student who only wants to play through songs at home start to finish, or keep going over stuff that's already familiar. Without actually taking apart the song structure and it's harmony, so he knows that it works without knowing why it works. A player worth his salt will do way way more of what the other guy thinks is boring - basically sit there with a metronome for hours, slow the whole thing down, drill, try new stuff, experiment with new phrasing recently learned etc. Sounds like tedious baby steps, but the legit players still do this light sparring way even with 15 years behind them. The musical 'hard sparring' is getting together with other players afterwards for rehearsal and then playing through the songs on the set list before the show. And playing with others, especially live, leads to stronger improvement than anything. But...you kinda need the first way, the practice thing, in order to do the second thing effectively, the playing/rehearsing. If you really wanna be tight and clean. Best training so far, hands down, was light sparring in the morning session with a teenager with the eyes of an old man - and like, no shin guards and no timed rounds, just continuous. Then in the afternoon, the hard sparring with shin guards, 16s, rounds, and we each had a corner etc. Awesomeness. O

You smashed it with that one. Craft (as in trade) in my opinion is utilitarian in nature, neither beautiful nor ugly, but extremely useful. Once a craft becomes within the purview of the rich it changes it's essence. I love that term, martial craft. I've never been a big fan of the term martial art and have only really used it for convenience.

Had to look up hypostatized. I suppose it’s true you can extend the idea of beauty to be “the thing one likes”. I often have this argument with studio driven artists (who are more craft-driven) and conceptual or “post-studio” artists, for whom obviously the idea is the beautiful thing, and they signal that by making extremely plodding, minimal or otherwise unattractive objects if any object at all. Neither artist understands or respects the other. Interesting re; martial craft. I love that. I view craft as on equal footing with art, & usually find it’s an extremely specious, class, race & gender driven distinction. “Reading in Detail” by Naomi Schor is a good book for breaking down the history of value & the words used to signal it in visual art. btw I love un-beautiful things too. Cut faces, busted pots - wabi-sabi!

In the general class, some of the fighters turn up to train or help. There's generally a couple every class. They are very helpful and knowledgeable and a great help especially to the new guys. I know what you're talking about with the bullies. All of us, the more experienced students, the teachers with their own clubs and the fighters keep a very good eye out for the bully type. If one is found they usually get toweled up and don't come back. We have a very tight nit sort of thing, not cliquey but tight and don't take kindly to wankers. Sorry Sylvie, the above is in reference to where I train, not my own school. I never have any intention to train fighters,

The specification of whether these are fighters or not is interesting to me. Because Kru Nu's philosophy is toward fighting. The whole "keep it light" enforcement in the west, I suspect, is largely because the majority of a gym is made up of clients who are not ever going to be stepping into a ring. The assumption is there's no reason to scare people off, get hurt, get upset, etc. That's bad business. I do believe, personally, that there's a lot to learn from putting yourself under that duress in sparring, even if you never plan to fight. But hey. The worst offenders of this going way too hard, with little emotional control with it, are bullies. They're usually men who want to identify as fighters but not actually fight, so they get their "fights in" at the gym, during sparring. One of the men I've mentioned in both these posts is absolutely that type. I do believe he'd ask to schedule a fight, but likely wouldn't go through with it and, if he did, would never be one to fight regularly. He just wants to pound on people who he knows are controlling themselves.

Utility is a good dividing line in martial arts (love how you frame the question in both directions), but in contemporary art there is not an inarguable line between art and craft, nor is beauty in any form a requirement (debatable what beauty is of course).

Thank you. It's important not just for me but for others as well. I, like your friend, face the dread of paralysis in whatever I do. My injury was to my back. Just the feeling of being able to do something is so mentally important, I can't really describe how important. Everyone tends to focus on only the physical part. You get used to pain, you get used to discomfort, but it was my experience that the mental part is the hardest part. It took 18 months to learn how to walk properly again, then comes the frustration of not being able to do the things you used to do, this leads to depressive states of mind. It's hard to relate the emotional cycles. But I guess what I'm trying to say is, With perseverance and one bit of good advice you can still train. I may not be as proficient as I once was, but I have knowledge and wish to impart that knowledge as I am a firm believer, martial crafts are beneficial first of all physically and as a by product mentally.

Thank you, Three Oaks. I don't consider myself to be great, but I do consider myself to be understanding and above all I love teaching people, especially those that don't fit the norm. Queenslanders are generally laid back and pretty accepting unless of course you're a dickhead, then we let rip. My dream (which I'm attempting to make come to fruition), is to have a school where being the norm is not the norm, so that people (especially those that have trained before, but not limited to) have a place to come and find or rediscover their sense of self worth, especially those like myself that have life changing injuries that they may feel excludes them from training at a regular school. I still train at my original muay thai school, that's my choice and I'm willing to put my body on the line because it makes me feel alive. However, not all people have that same mind set. Thank you again for the compliment

I genuinely believe it. How else can smaller people beat bigger stronger people? Its the real connector and cross over to traditional martial arts. Sport makes it about all things being even so size is a factor, you cant dismiss it...but you can deal with it. One of my fighters doesnt cut weight so hes always fighting bigger opponents. His last fight he actually cut weight and the dude he fought was still 10lbs over lol. Ended up 15 lbs heavier than my guy fight day. My guy beat him with technique and made dude quit in the third round (knees to the body after two rounds of making sure he kicked him in the body). Size is a factor not a determiner.

I think the weirdness, as far as adults goes, might come from sexuality and "sexual tension" between men and women. Thats just not something that happens with me but I have witnessed it between students when I pair them up to train. I try hard to make sure people understand that in the art we are equal. I tend to emphasize it due to how I teach the art which is less about power in general and more about technique which transcends physical power. Im not big on my students and fighters relying on power to win and more about being able to beat power with other aspects all people have.

Thank you so much Kevin. The praise of my writing is such a massive compliment coming from you, and the encouragement is much cherished as well. I am on an amazing journey, hard as it may be. Kero Tide thank you so much. That is incredibly touching to hear. Having given it some more thought today, it was almost as if this strength, energy or power I was demanding of myself to channel did not need demanding to manifest; it was something in me that I have discovered I can access - circumventing my ego. In so far as the ego functions as a way of asserting control, and which I have relied on for so long, you cannot imagine the joy of experiencing this force within me that did not need forcing, but seemed to be an expression of the very stuff I am made of. Like pulling off a mask that expresses what I value the most to discover the same face underneath. What an amazing sport, art, ethic - life - muay thai is.

I've just watched this old fight of Sylvie's yesterday and I find it particularly memorable for many reasons: - This fight like most of her fights happened late in the evening. The whole day prior to it (like for 20+ hours) she was badly sick with food poisoning. She couldn't rest; nor hold water down. She went into this fight in bad shape with pretty much zero energy. - It was her second fight in three days, and she had another fight scheduled the day after this one. So basically, the four days went like this: fight 167 - food poisoning - fight 168 - fight 169. Damn. I hope I'll never come to a point where I'll just be reacting to her achievements like: "Oh 13 fights in one day while suffering from pneumonia? Whatever. It's Sylvie." Because whatever craziness she's up to is never not absolutely awesome. I must nurture my constant state of "being awestruck by Sylvie" forever and ever. - Her commentary for this fight is so damn funny. I think it was after the second round, during the break, that she said: "I haven't pooped myself. So far, so good." Yeah, she had me there. I laughed a lot. Kevin sometimes filming everything but the two fighters is also funny. Maybe he's like me, and gets distracted by ghost cats. - Despite being sick and unusually tired, she held her own against Thanonchanok - a world champion way bigger than herself and very strong. Sylvie beat her once in the past; this was a rematch. (Actually, as of today they have fought 9 times with Sylvie winning twice.) She said in the commentary something along the lines of being sorry this rematch wasn't going to be much of a challenge for Thanonchanok. Got to love Sylvie's concern for her opponent's quality time. It was still a close and pretty exciting fight. Sylvie was in a state of "I don't give a fuck about anything anymore" which I suppose was most definitely an asset. It's the kind of attitude she aims for in her fights. She doesn't credit herself for it here because it was not a conscious choice on her part. If it's a result of being ill, then it's just luck. Yeah but it wasn't luck that she chose to be in that ring that night. She could've stayed home to heal. "Fucking impressive" doesn't even come close to describing her strength. This was her Post-Fight vlog: She also wrote a blog post about the fight, check it out for even more insights: https://8limbsus.com/muay-thai-thailand/fight-168-sylvie-petchrungruang-vs-thanonchanok-kaewsamrit

Speaking to everyone reading this thread, there is a very good book on Craft, and what is lost in a society when we lose craft: The Craftsman <<< Whether we are talking about craft beer, or craft woodworking, there is something very vital here. Muay Thai is craft fighting.

Jinx! Yes!

May your dream come to fruition . I have a friend and coach who has broken his neck (pro rugby) such that if he takes a blow to the head he’s looking at paralysis. He mainly does BJJ now (which actually seems more injury prone AND injury friendly, oddly). I can’t imagine there aren’t risks but you do what you love. Glad you survived your injury.

Love that story. Body body body and good bye!

This made me tear up, no exaggeration. Thank you so much for sharing your journey.

Right? The question is, is a completely useless Martial Art, still a Martial Art? (if there ever as such a thing.) Or, how far do you need to go in the direction of uselessness, before a Martial Art simply becomes Dance? Or, even more interestingly, how far must a Martial Art go in the direction of utility, when it ceases to be a Martial "Art", and simply becomes martial. along these lines, this is Jigoro Kano, the inventor of modern Judo (and the belt system that Karate adopted). This, the portion where I linked (1:40), is impossibly beautiful to me. But, I'm not educated enough to know what these forms mean, in the complete sense of what they do. It would be disappointing to me though to learn (if anything like that were argued), that they are perfectly useless. It's beauty is invoked at several levels:

Absolutely. Wilde was not a Muay Thai fighter, and this was his only novel based off of a Faust legend. If he had seen a Muay Thai fighter fighting within the trinity of transcendentals, he might have written about that experience/story instead haha The arts is such a large umbrella term and often (too?) all-encompassing. I’m realizing now that different kinds of art philosophies don’t always occupy the same “shared venn diagram space” as each other, though they all lead to a form of art.

This is so neat - to use chicken fighting and Kru Nu’s Gym as case examples. Art seems to draw in community, maybe even form community, because this is the nature of beauty. We want to discover it for ourselves, but we also want to gather others around to celebrate, study, learn from, and test Beauty together. There is a larger, communal validation of the Beauty. Also, we want to absorb as much of it as possible. Specifically in regards to Muay Thai, I perceive nak muays want to “inscribe” the Art into our bodies. For it to become a partner of our bodies’ natural flow is a beautiful thing indeed. (On a relevant side note, I think fight photographers want to savor and capture the beauty in a different form. Not on their own bodies, but within different cascades and shadows of light. They can then share something closer to their exact personal perceptions to the onlooker via the camera’s malleable eye and the dramatics of light/color/effect). On the topic of patrons, there seems to be layered motives to wanting to support. Some patrons want to tap into this beauty and grow from it and ultimately support it by tangible means. Other patrons want to invest in it because Beauty is also a source of raw power. (These motives are not mutually exclusive, but just two types of motives I am currently thinking of). I think the rarer ”Beauties,” like Petchruongrang Gym, are the ones chasing after the art, not the money. They could chase the latter if they really wanted to, with probably just a few tweaks, but they are so consumed by the art itself that may not be their primary concern. In a sense, they have reigned in the true power of Beauty because it is untainted. This is a pretty romantic view of power, money, and art, but I think I ascribe to it.

First, this is exactly what I am interested in - nice to know how it works beyond my little East Coast America frame. So the Taiwan point of view is interesting and makes sense. I love imagining you yelling "you can do it" OMG. The best. Incredible and well put. Thanks that is a very helpful distinction in sorting out my own two minor but annoying experiences. Both women were more fitness oriented people even though damn, they are adults (one is at my karate gym, the other was at Western boxing). Nobody does this at my Muay Thai gym. NOBODY. You are so right - no real fighters ever look the gift horse of being able to punch me in the mouth, in the mouth! Thanks again!

I think Wilde was not a Muay Thai fighter, and lived in an altogether different universe. There are, in this other universe, a trinity of transcendentals (as they are sometimes called), Truth, Beauty and Goodness. Three dimensions of the same thing. All three strike me as quite useful. One of the things that I find extraordinary about Muay Thai is how a truly beautiful move is incredibly beautiful BECAUSE of its efficaciousness. The right move, at the right time, is defined by its utility, without falling into utility. It also has the transcendental quality of mathematics, which has all 3 qualities, a mathematics of the body. At its highest, Muay Thai seems to possess all 3 through its utility. It has an almost Spinozist quality to me.

Thank you for sharing so much, Kevin! This speaks to the functionality versus symbolism of art. Is it just meant to express the artist or hide/free the artist? I am reminded of the preface in the classic novel, “The Portrait of Dorian Gray.” It’s a page and a half but my highlight is the last line after all is said and done about the greatness of art itself. [Admin edit: these photo files were lost in the takedown of the site]

I agree with Jeremy - in general women are more eager to please and seem more attentive to learning (this goes for the academic classroom as well). I would say this may be the case across most personalities in women, even with shy individuals who do not express themselves as loudly with their voice. In Taiwan, I was and under-10yo children’s kickboxing and BJJ assistant coach. The girl:boy ratio was always 1:10, or something like that. Of course there are cultural differences, but in general, I still noticed the girls were very quiet and not as vocal as the boys. Yet, it was clear they wanted to learn (for example, they would try to correct their technique when I pointed something out). The main coach always had me work with the girls and the newcomers as the only female assistant coach. So, I got to see how they grew over time too. One girl was always down to spar bc she would willingly and literally walk up to challenge. She “became more aggressive,” or stood her ground when she was in the center of the ring to spar with everyone watching, but still no screaming or crazy sounds, like the boys. Another girl was always more hesitant, but would go up since I constantly yelled, “You can do it!” As time went on, the girls seemed to become more normalized to the procedure of getting over nerves and going on their own. I think the mad cheering helped them because they were receptive and eager to please. The boys were objectively more talkative and “silly.” Even the “leader types” goofed off more than the girls. While they knew when to be serious and work hard, but they seemed to enjoy a flexibility of seriousness-playfulness as a child. I saw less of this behavioral breadth in the girls. This is just my general observation. There were some shy boys too, but the more extroverted personality traits were dominant amongst the males (also given the highly unbalanced gender ratio). At this age, there is not too much “sweetheart of the gym” present. Sometimes fitness-goal-centered gyms have this issue amongst adults. I can feel competition in the air to be “seen” by the male coaches or men in the room. But in serious gyms that train to fight, this dynamic is not as common. Women are usually THRILLED to have other women fighters step into the space and work with them. Occasionally, I would hear from female friends that this dynamic is going even in serious gyms. Even though, I am one to be sensitive to gender dynamics, I was surprised because I was unaware. So despite the gym space itself, perhaps the experience for women will still vary per individual. I can on, but I’ll stop here for now haha.

Oi. In the still you can really see the massive size difference. She's so hard to beat because she's super skilled and expert at controlling tempo. If you give her size too (which distorts all scores), its an uphill run. That being said I have such a memory of this fight. Sylvie was really, really whacked. We went to our all-time most dependable restaurant in Chiang Mai and she had a dish she always has, and just got clubbed by the food poisoning, nothing you could do. But yes, there was no way she wasn't going to fight. We've treated every fight as precious, that's our motto. Sometimes the fights you really might think to pull out of are the most precious. This one gave Sylvie a lot.

There is a tale that as Dionysus walked from India to the West his adornments gradually fell from his body, until he stood as Apollo, in Greece. That...is super cool and more or less amazing. It's a beautifully written response, and observation too. Very happy to have read it. It sounds like you are on an amazing journey, well worth everything you have bet on it.

Thank you so much for this essay. It seems to culminate in an almost fateful way with an event that took place in my life yesterday. I have been doing mental training for the past 5 years, following an experience in my life which required that I undertook that journey. This weekend I was at my wits end, feeling like I kept running into the same wall, not seeing any way out, not seeing any progress and no path towards progress either. Feeling very down, I went to training yesterday. I was dehydrated and hadn’t eaten properly, and the gym was steaming hot, so I decided on just coasting through this one training. Warm up went alright, got to pads where I was working with a young fighter who’s incredibly gifted, but due to age and size difference, wasn’t getting me too hard. First round goes okay, I’m still not feeling great, but I got through relying on routine. I figure the day will be alright at this point. And then I’m called over to do a round with my kru. My kru is an old thai gentleman who grew up fighting at Sangtiennoi Sor Rungroj (as far as I can gather from the other fighters). He’s quite reserved and distant, in his late 40’s, and he’s an incredible teacher. He moves so beautifully. He can be a mean son of a bitch though, and he was in a monday mood yesterday. He was very hard on me, not so much focusing on technique as burning me out; of course, not just in a physical way, but rather in a mental way - the physical exertion just acting as a medium, an instrument to unravel and reveal. This wasn’t just pad work, this was feeling for my heart. So, I gave all I had, physically trying to manifest what I believe I am made of, not backing off and channeling aggression and heart even in the face of such superiority - technical, experiential and physical. When the clock finally gave me pause, I fell to my knees to try and breathe, grateful I’d gotten through it as well as I had, feeling proud, thanking him. I was getting ready to return to my initial young pad holder, when my kru ordered me towards one of the gyms best fighters. This guy is a great pad holder and he is intense as fuck. He’s an incredibly sweet and nice guy, but he’s almost dionysian in his energy when he walks into that gym. To the point where you can barely get through to him while the training lasts. He could tell how battered I was, but quickly made it clear in a nice way that I was not to quit under any circumstance. Not just quit as in leaving the pads, which I wouldn’t do, but quit with the heart while remaining on the pads. Having tapped into the will, which you wrote about, in the previous round, I figured I would try that again, and sure enough I got through it. He embraced me and told me I’d done a great job, which felt amazing coming from him. I was almost puking at this point, so I just got through the rest of the training as best as I could. Only today did it dawn on me that will hadn’t gotten me through that second round wasn’t the will power that got me through the first round, and which has also gotten me through this first year of training. Something else appeared in me – or through me – that I havn’t experienced before. Something like tapping ‘’into forces and streams that lie outside of that frame’’ of the ego, the persona, the I. Make no mistake, I in no way dare to compare myself to Sylvie or the monumental path that she is treading, but I do believe I caught a glimpse of what you are trying to communicate in the essay - only having understood it, connected to it - through reading these words. In some way this new unknown that I will now need to familiarize myself with (in so far as that is even possible?) has carried over to my mental training, seeming to sort of unknit some of these knots that have bound me for a long time. Today has felt different. I have felt different. This event is something that has been underway for a long time – this shore hopefully – and I thank you deeply for writing the essay to give me the words to see myself in, words that show me that I am not alone, words to hope through. Thank you so much to both of you for all that you do. Best, Asger

Jeremy thank you. I am interested to read that the schools are generally egalitarian in Queensland. I am back East in the US, and grew up out West (which is probably culturally more like Queensland). I love the story of your big woman. OMG. I am very tall too and its strange being a bigger woman - you are constantly challenged on your gender (as many muscley women of all sizes are; I reckon Sylvie has written about this). Three months and a huge difference! You must be a great coach.

In my opinion light sparring in the physical sense is hard for a beginner as they don't have the technique down enough to go light. I actually start my students off with reciprocal drilling, starting with 5 for 5 and soft, once they get the gist of the combination they go 1 for 1 and soft, under my watchful eye. Once I feel they exhibit enough control in drilling, they then spar. This may take 1 week or 6 months, depending on how I feel the student can control themselves physically. At my school, sparring is done with solid contact, with the idea of enjoying it, (I don't run a fight gym). Where I go for training, beginners are always started off sparring (if they want to spar) with the more experienced students and instructors. This is so there is no ego involved, the student knows he/she is with someone who is there to teach and help and not bash.