Okay moonchild, I have seen enough and I must respond. I am Little Hawk, also known as George Coventry (my real name). I am no troll. I am a folksinger, and am very seriously interested in folk music in just about every respect you could care to mention. I originally logged on looking for some Spanish lyrics to a well-known folksong (We Shall Not Be Moved, aka No Nos Moveran), and got some help from Joe Offer on that. So far so good. See our thread about No Nos Moveran. I then started looking around at the site (my first time on it)and noticed the following threads..."Why are most mudcatters heterosexual?", "Why are most mudcatters white?", "Why aren't most mudcatters musicians?" and so on. That is the approximate wording of those threads, it may not be exactly right, but it's close. Take a look. I then investigated said threads, to some extent. I couldn't help but wonder why anyone would ask such questions in the first place....had they been bitten by the "political correctness" bug...or were they just genuinely wondering...or what? I responded to those threads, not to play mindgames, but simply to offer my own honest reaction. My feeling was that it all deserved a certain satirical response, again not to play a mindgame with anyone, but to stimulate some serious thought about the matter. Accordingly, I launched a thread asking the question "Why are most mudcatters human?". My point is, it makes about as much sense to worry about that as it does to worry about how many blacks, whites, Native Americans, lesbians, gays or whatever are contained in a given group of people. It doesn't matter. All humanity is of one spirit. In fact, all creation is of one spirit. The cultural notions that divide us are arbitrary. To realize this is to seek peace and unity...unity in diversity. My sense of humour is not a mindgame, it is an effort to stimulate serious thought, while doing it in an entirely harmless way. "Flamespeak"? "Trolls"? I never even heard of those terms with regard to computer stuff until today. My experience of chat rooms has been almost nil in the past. I think I know what those words "troll" and "flamespeak" mean, however. I am guilty of neither practice. I am a folksinger. If you ever get a chance to listen to my songs you will find that some of them are quite satirical as well, and they all have a meaningful point of some kind.

As I am very inexperienced regarding both chatrooms and Mudcat Cafe I am learning as I go along. I appeared as GUEST the first couple of times because I hadn't joined yet, having just discovered the site, and not knowing how it worked yet. I then did join, not to fool somebody into thinking I am sincere (I am in fact absolutely sincere), but because it looks like a place I would like to visit frequently, being a folksinger. That pretty well covers it.

Other than that, humour is its own justification, and is as much at home in the arena of folk music as it is anywhere else...and humour can be very enlightening. If you sing a lot of very serious social comment songs (as I do) you will find that tempering your performance with humour gets the point across far better than burying people under an endless barrage of heavy messages. Laughter releases the audience's tension and opens them up to creative thought, and it shows them that the performer is human, not just someone with a big serious ax to grind.

Regards,

Little Hawk (George Coventry)