Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu

Campagna's Prophetic Culture, here on the "shaman" who negotiates the created world between kinds, preserved only by her strength. This is close to my experience of Sylvie who had been in a constant endurance of negotiations, presenting the marble figure to the god of Fear. It's hard to describe how continuous and arduous these negotions between kinds have been. The final note on selectivity is on point as well.

The Campagna reference for the above in Prophetic Culture, writing on the liminal.

- diary Trauma directs us to liminal spaces [Campagna, 2] because trauma is the breakdown of our metaphysical view, our "frame". These liminal spaces and practices can work to carry for the truths (loosely stated) which the trauma could not coherently bear...that is, the mark, the eruption, the break in the Timeline bears it, as a fissure. These are fractures and rifts of personhood. A liminal space such as Thailand's (trad.) Muay Thai, liminal in its trans- or intercultural nature (Westerners practicing in another culture, re-tuning their bodies to new modalities and their values - not only that -, liminal in the way that its Muay Thai works within violence and fear, threats to the breakdown of the body, in impact, psychological agonism, in Ruup, but also the breakdown of the body in training, and with that the person, all of it gathered together in an art, importantly an art, because only an art can successfully carry the truths of the Traumatic, forward into a post-apocalyptic (end of Time) future. The Littoral Zone.

Campagna on Time leads into the idea that we are all producing Time (what he calls "Worlding") in each of our days, our existence, and that we also live in "a Time", a shape of things. This makes of Muay Thai's trad "Art of Producing Time" a certain marvelous imperative. I regularly emphasize the temporal nature of Golden Age fighting, that in a certain sense these were Time Battles between two elevated agonistic arts-of-time. In this sense, in the Campagna sense, the (rite-oriented) aspect of ring Muay Thai captures pure elements of Time creation. As he forwards the idea, the facticity of events in Time, in the past, are not what matter. You can get everything "wrong" about past events, even inverting outcomes or perhaps to some degree values, but the core of what "was" is its particular "art of producing Time", which is to say its unique, substantive way of placing events in relationship to each other, the qualitative expression of those events in narrative, the temporal changes and internal relations of those facts/events, basically...their "unfolding". The nature of their time. In this way, by analogy, in Golden Age fighting it is not the strikes, it is not the techniques, as isolated elements, that need to be passed on, it is their art of producing Time...because the art of producing Time is the fundamental fabric of our reality. How things unfold, much less than "what" is unfolded (though certainly there is some relation). * * * There was a minor event in the stadia last night where Naksu, Sylvie's training partner at Rambaa's, was knocked out (rather spectacularly) be a bicycle knee right up the middle. The immediate temptation is to "solve" this problem at the technical level. What was his guard like? What was his strike-choice? "How did that get through?" --- but the problem happened at the temporal level. The pace and rhythm with which Naksu was fighting, and the way that he would stall on the porch, resetting some, before an "attack"...lacking in Doh, created this knockout, a 15 year old against a seasoned 25 year old. Before the knockout you could see that the distances were all wrong, that his opponent was fighting in "his Time". In the battle of Times, Naksu was losing. The fight was early, the odds were mostly even, but Naksu was in a bad spot...in regards to Time. Its not always or even often that the mismatch of Time dominance results in such a clear and decisive blow. He could have easily missed and the fight could have gone onto a more complex femeu control, largely uneventful...or Naksu may have recovered his sense of Time, and begun imposing it upon his opponent in later rounds...but this knockout came almost entirely out of Time. The opponent was given their own temporality, and out of that they were able to draw out one of their more rare techniques...perfectly timed. The agonism of Time.

The Art of Producing Time When discussing the nature of Time and historical revival, Campagna speaks to the Art of producing Time that is preserved in epic restoration, the very frame of the world. This is why I emphasize the temporal mastery of Golden Age Muay Thai. A small seed of Time, a kind of Time, on the subject and solve of Violence.

Watched this film again, The Flowers of St. Francis. Nothing quite like it. As a black and white photographer filled with cinema, it is quite powerful. The fusing of subjects into the ground, and the characters caught in simplicities. I'll try to get a screengrab of a few frame that struck me.

There is a Right Wing problem in adventure tourism in Thailand. This is very difficult to talk about because everything is heavily politicized/polarized, and the manosphere has long dovetailed with and supported combat sports, but this is far more pervasive than one would expect or even believe, occurring on several fronts. There is no easy way out of it, or even to avoid it, but becoming more aware is probably a good thing.

Contact Sylvie in private message on Instagram. She can arrange a session for Dieselnoi, she communicates with him regularly. https://www.instagram.com/sylviemuay/

Here are some thoughts I had today regarding padwork which made me think about your question. It doesn't connect directly to your question, but it does open up thinking about padwork in different ways. (Also, thank you for your kind words - I realize that I neglected thanking you as it means a lot when people learn these deeper qualities, can feel that "language" element, and its bothered me that I didn't respond to what you said). If you click the top banner of the below you'll be taken to it. It is somewhat advanced stuff though, not easy to do or get to, but it does open up different ideas about what padwork is for, and what you can get out of it.

Muay Khao in Padwork - note a little bit advanced stuff Talking a little more about Muay Khao training (and padwork), beyond some basic things like the padman doing rounds of "latched on" work where you trailer hitch and continuously knee or work into knees, there is a shape to Muay Khao that involves building up the fatigue in your opponent, which involves continuous pressuring and tempoing early on, nothing rushed, importantly with the mentality of depositing fatigue. Even if you don't have a padman aware of this, you can do this on your own, of your own device. People do not think much of manipulating or effecting your padman, but taking cue from David Goggins trying to mentally break his SEAL Team trainers, you can use your padman's energy managements to become aware of their fatigue, tempoing up or displacing them when they start to manage. This builds up your own sense of perception, becoming acutely aware of its signs, and developing responses, things that will serve you well in fights. This doesn't mean going HARD, like 200%. It means managing your own fatigue while you work that edge and tax your padman. The purpose of this is to slow reaction times and decision quality in later rounds in fights. You don't win fights early in Muay Khao work, you prepare the material so you can work late. A great padman will see and help you train this shape of the rounds, even as they manage their own fatigue. It goes without saying this involves not just "following along" with called strikes, which I believe is detrimental on a deeper level, because what you are training in those cases is "being dictated to". Lots of fighters have this problem, they have spent countless hours of (unconsciously) learning to be steered, so when their opponent looks to dictate timing, space or rhythm they have years of being comfortable being dictated to. This though is a subtle line to walk, and it depends a great deal on the experience of the fighter and the quality of the padman. Ideally, you want padwork to gravitate towards a dialogue, a back and forth, which mirrors the dialogue of fighting, accepting dictated tempos and spacing, modifying them, shaping them in return. Good padmen (who aren't just burning you out with kicks or holding combos over and over, largely ex-experienced fighters) will recognize this dialogue dimension, and you'll bring out more of their "fighter energy" and creativity, which is Golden stuff. Lesser experienced padman, or padmen who are just grinding, may not respond well, but you want to get into that zone of your 5 rounds being shaped like a fight...and for a Muay Khao fighter that means depositing fatigue in your padman early, if you can. Even if you can't, the aim of recognizing stalls, energy management, gatherings, and working on them yourself (not being passive) is a perceptual skill set you want to develop. For Muay Khao fighters though, you want to get to that clinch, or those finishing frames in the later rounds. You have to feel those angles of dominance, the cherry of what you built in previous rounds. Great padman know this, and develop pathways later where your body can sense, can experience those finishing elements. Femeu fighters, other style fighters, have other shapes in their fights. This is specific to Muay Khao.

Watched Sylvie's padwork today, something new I really have encouraged to happen and that she has been doing daily for a few weeks (?). Tons of in-the-pocket rhythms and improvisations, space management. I can see lots of growth, creativity, enjoyment. Good, good stuff. Unfortunately just like everyone else who has trained her for maybe 4 years now, they all want to take away her clinch. Nobody likes her clinch because it feels reductive. Hey, nobody respected the muay of Samson, Langsuan, even Dieselnoi either, this is a long story with the style. They don't care that she can beat 60 kg girls with it, and is hell for pretty much anyone to face, and has won nearly 200 fights with it (almost every win a direct result of her clinch), its an anti-style especially to the contemporary eye (which has been shaped by Entertainment Muay Thai). This is really good work, but its been years since she's trained with anyone who loved her Muay Khao stalking style and developed her into a clinch demon. All of her clinch dominance in the last several years, pretty much since COVID, has been pretty much kept on life-support by her alone, every clinch partner much bigger than her, stronger, Thai, so she just is managing controls, never being able to experience dominance in the grab, that taste of blood in the water with the lock, every kru in their own way discouraging her from the one thing she has been the best in the world among female fighters at. This is just the morphing of the opportunities of muay in Thailand, and something that has to be lived through. I'm excited for the in-the-pocket work, it fits nicely with what she's been developing with Chatchai. It's very good stuff. But ideally, all that pocket work should be used to pressure and punish the pocket so her clinch is even more unstoppable. Not sure how to get there, giving the state of Muay Thai and the place clinch has within it now. It's been sheer willpower from Sylvie that she is even the clinch fighter she has been over the last several years. Clinch is a vulnerable skill, it erodes quickly, and true clinch requires all kinds of rhythms and set ups to make it effective in the later rounds. It's a very complex, systematic approach to fighting. It's not just about winning clinch positions. It's the culminating persistence of them, using fatigue as a weapon so mistakes get made, positions neutralized too slowly, a bit late, windows getting bigger and bigger. I'm hoping this all comes together. If it does, and Sylvie can regain that late locking effectiveness, watch out. It will be quite a combination. This difficulty though, in the wide view, is that proper Muay Khao training likely does not exist as a whole any longer in Thailand, and that we've had to piece together elements of it even to get this far. There is an incredible bricolage to training in Thailand if you want to reach back into what the Golden Age was, because so much of the methods of muay have changed. Not only is the sport fought differently, and trained differently, its also thought differently even among Thais.

Lessons in Narrative I love this fight from January New Power soooo much. It explains why in trad scoring you can't just add up "points" or count "damage". It's almost entirely symbolic control. Dodo starts telling his "story" right away, and its the same story the whole fight: "Your strikes don't matter, they have no effect on me, I'm coming". He doesn't rush, he only ups the metronome in a few decisive points in the fight, he is entirely dictating, and it doesn't stop. And the fight is very easy to follow in terms of dramatic narrative: Will he break through? Will he do "enough"? When he reversed direction (after getting his head snapped back by a punch in the 5th and giving a bit of a humorous head shake), after so much stalking...and Blue follows giving chase, his few moments of femeu slipperiness swing the scoring hard. After landing endless strikes Blue is suddenly out of it. There's no "KO", there's no highlight reel moment. He's taking head kicks glancing off the dome and high scoring mid-kicks. It's all tempo and imposition. Dodo Kor. Sakpairin (red) vs Liam Petch Captain Ken Boxing Gym (blue) watch it here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/muaythaiphotolifeideas/posts/3432943350176138/

An interesting phenomena is older Muay Thai coaches in the West having to confront the growing CTE fear, which they view as alarmist. People just don't want to join gyms, spar and get CTE. These coaches view this worry as alarmist and exaggerated, and cutting into the potential of the sport. I'll just say that when the sport is sold as hyper-violent, all about the KO (marketed through endless KO highlights, promotions hyping "KO rates", and visibly changing the rules of the sport and how it is fought to generate head-hunting and knockouts, this is the shadow side of all that aggro-marketing. People just don't want CTE. It's one of the hidden ways in which the "modernization" or "globalization" of Muay Thai is likely undercutting its deeper, long term potential. The sport being turned into a commodity for entertainment, an entertainment thirsting for fighters going unconscious, may actually do well in a digital, short attention span environment...but, people like their brains, and increasingly don't want to be a part of the "will sparring give me brain damage?" experiment (the truth is, nobody really knows the boundaries on this). This hidden long-term marketing failure runs parallel to a second problem, which is if you change the sport into a clashing, defense-less KO fest, you are actually going to give brain damage to the Thai fighters who are the foundation of the sport, including Thai kids. It was the defensive prowess and capabilities which truly separated out the great muay of the past, just not as sexy a thing for the casual doom scroller or sunburned tourist. It is possible to market the deeper meaning and support the past capacities of the art, but this takes longer term thinking. In the meantime Western coaches will be answering CTE concerns.

Phuket would probably fit both your needs the most. More larger bodied fighters, and the sea.

You are right, you want to just experience each gym. Afternoon sessions will often be busier (by my recollection), so let that shape your decision. But, if you are comparing gyms do the same session in each.

It's quite far from the ethic of Thailand's Muay Thai, which really is much more like Boxing.

This will not be for everyone or even anyone (perhaps one day this will be a productive line of investigation), but an Anthropological Deluzian-Guattari reading of Sylvie's (Shamanistic-Warrior) path of Nak Muay of Becoming, in particular as it relates to filiation and alliance, transversals. One cannot stand in filiation without being confined by the strictures of that filiation and culture, by gender and elsewise. By forming an transformative alliance outside of filiation, with the stem-roots of filative branches that have been forgotten or denied, she creates a hyper-filation Becoming. citations from de Castro's CM. This framework has strong (homologocal) descriptive resonance with Peter Galison's theory of Trading Zones, discipline languages and trading "agents" in his explanations of Science (without recourse to metaphysics).

Noting the other day, there is a generation in Thailand of 12-15 year old farang, which I consider the children of the Muay Thai Library, who fight in the Thai style in Bangkok stadium shows, making the effort to permeate those social orders, and refuse the lure (and the absurdity) of Entertainment Muay Thai. "Muay Thai" is being done, reborn in a certain way, from that commercializing blight that struck momently with COVID onward...but, its a shame that they face a highly reduced Thai fighter pool, many of whom have lost the ability to fluently fight "Thai", often themselves delinquent in defense or overburdened by the combo, or saddled with the inherent conservativism of this decade's gambling Muay Thai, those foreign boys not having the mountain to climb even of the 2000s, let along the 1980s and 90s. There is muay being done, being spoken, being practiced, but there is no home, no breast really to draw it to...at least at this point. The well-spring resides in the countryside, in the provinces, in the features of the depleted kaimuay and festival seasons, but it is not known how long it will remain.

"their misunderstanding of me was not the same as my misunderstanding of them" (Roy Wagner, 1981) In approaching Thailand's Muay Thai, both as "Thai", but more importantly perhaps as a subculture, the above is the abiding North Star. You will misunderstand, and you will be misunderstood...in incommensurate ways. Keeping track of this dividing line, this faultline, and feeling its edges is of the utmost importance...long term.

This written about Jean-Pierre Melville's best films, regarded by some as slow, can equally give insight into apex Golden Age Muay Thai, which holds something of the cinematic in its control over time and rhythm: "There's a rhythm in each of Melville's mature films that rivals that of the best of John Ford and Yasujiro Ozu. The movies are not "slow," but rather, they move at a deliberate and calculated pace wherein not a single shot or second is wasted."

...this puts the ethical characterization of youth fighting in Thailand in a contradiction, varying with its framework. Typically the notion of "child labor" is seen as children (innocents) engaging in the onerous, fallen-state of labor, the least free thing an adult can do...in particular, a violent, dangerous sort of labor, the worst kind. In this world picture in which labor is seen as onerous servitude, and fighting as labor, it makes deep sense to see this as ethically wrong. But...if fighting within the culture contains an expiative meaning, and the training in fighting, traditionally, as the maturation and bulwark of culture against violence (predation), we would be quite far from fighting-is-labor frameworks. We are reaching toward an understanding of the pedagogy of personhood, one that is Buddhistic, in that young males help form the prophylactic fabric of the culture. The problem is that both of these frameworks can apply, or, by circumstance one may apply much more than the other...especially as Muay Thai is being commodified for a violence-hungry global entertainment economy. *This is leaving out any thorough disentangling of the very concept of "labor" from the West's industrial age (along with its coterminous Cult of the Child), and also from Marxist & other ideals of measured units of equity. To say this is to allow traditional Muay Thai to investigate us, rather than us investigate traditional Muay Thai. How is it that we organize ourselves toward violence (and its corollary, predation)?

Key to decoding Muay Thai in terms of the excluded predation is that "domination" (often symbolized aesthetically in the conventions of the sport and art, but always suffused with physicality) = Predation, inscribing it within the (ritualized) social sphere.

Without imparting a colonialist lean, one might argue that Muay Thai (in its rite form, and then apex to its art) is Christological. In this one sense (at least). It is taking predation (the violence of Death, the display of power over another) at the very heart of the communal, at the heart of personhood. As Girard argues, the Christological lifts up the practice of the sacrifice to a universal. I do not adhere to his Catholicism, but it is good to trace this vein of ethics, along the line of predation itself. If we read the expiative force of the fighting ring in the preformative of an excluded predation, then the Christological "death hath no dominion over him" pronoucement is "predation has no dominion over us"...it does not belong here...through the rite practice of alchemizing it, inviting it in on our terms. Exclusion through inclusion. The point of this redescription isn't to Westernize Thailand's Muay Thai so much as to resposition what is going on in Thailand's Muay Thai in terms that sit within some of Western ethical, liberatory frameworks.

This is quite important, even at the personal psychological level, as Sylvie's recent Jungian readings of the Tale of Bluebeard (Women Who Run With Wolves) point out, if the exclusion of predation is the foundation of community (ontological grounding of the "person"), we each can have a predator within our psyches, a predator who preys not upon others (outside of us), but upon the persons within us, emanations of innocence, youth and dreams. The boundary of predation, as it can be symbolically and ritualistically defined, may be key to our own mental health and liberty...otherwise we ourselves predate ourselves.

Muay Thay Beyond the Logic of Girard, an Alchemy of Violence Girard creates a kind of electro-static concept of the Rite of Sacrifice, the analogy that violence as some kind of energy builds up within the group, which unless symbolically though still quite affectively discharged, by rite, will otherwise surface as real violence between members of said group. Not adjusting or correcting this - though Girard's vision does have something of late 19th century electro-magnetism science mysticism to it - de Castro points out that Amerindian peoples live in a world of predation, and personhood is awarded within (and between) groups where markedly predation is excluded. This is its defining characteristic, the outer edge where predation (which rules the universe otherwise) ends. Just as a sketch, it seems that my Girard-inspired concept of ring Muay Thai as an extension of the logics of the Rite of Sacrifice (the production of the loser, ie, the holy-profinated victim) is further clarified if we imagine that the group logic described by de Castro involved also the ritualization of predation, at the group's edge, folding in the outer logic within the circumfrance of the group. And, this rite of symbolized predation, when risen to an art and practice, can work both with Girardian expiative properties, but also with the logic of boundary predation, reinforcing the exclusion of absolute predation (the law of the Universe). This is about affectively alchemizing violence (and its real-world corollary, predation), into practices of civilization and personhood making. In a certain sense digesting it, breaking it down, so as to not practicing it. This is one of the great violations of the West in aggro-molding Thailand's Muay Thai so as to feed its own needs to consume violence in the simulcrum of entertainments. One is undo-ing the very cultural alchemy and turning Gold back into Lead, so to speak.