Welcome

This website is a laboratory for my imagination – a place for thinking out loud, planning projects, and documenting my research. If you’ve ever met me and wondered ‘What the hell was he thinking?’ this website might clear things up. Everything you read here is my opinion,my theory crafting, or my fault. Mea culpa, caveat emptor.

Why A Website?

There are four reasons why I chose to go this route:

• Most importantly, it’s a way to keep me focused and on track. I have the attention span of a goldfish most days, and I am easily distracted. My life is cluttered with “started but never finished” projects, and I’d really like to get out of that habit.
• Second, this website acts as a functional archive of what I have done, as well as a place to showcase what I am currently working on and future projects that are under consideration.
• Third, it serves as a way to keep my patrons up to date on my activities, even though we may be geographically distant from each other.
• Finally, it will allow fellow magicians (and others with a need to know) to see ‘behind the curtain’ of my performances and offer feedback or advice. Those areas of the website will be password protected, for various reasons. Check the ‘Rules’ page for details.

About Me

My name is Matthew Kelley, and I am a member of the Society for Creative Anarchism (SCA) which is a non-profit educational organization that researches and reenacts the medieval period. I’m also an Army veteran and a Florida native. I live in Lakeland, Florida with my wife and a small army of cats.

Within the SCA, I am known as Gunnarr inn Hviti (pronounced GOO-narr in VEE-tee) a 10th century Norseman form Iceland, living in Jorvik (pronounced YOR-vik) which is where modern day York, England is located. My Norse name literally means ‘Gunnarr the White’. Not only is my hair turning white with age, I’m also a huge fan of polar bears – my heraldry has a polar bear on a blue background.

As “Gunnarr” my role is that of a skald – a Norse entertainer, usually a traveling poet or storyteller. In a different culture, I might be called a bard. As an entertainer, my medium of choice is Performance Magic. Performance magic is just that, a performance, and has nothing at all to do with supernatural or occult ‘magic’. It is a show, meant to entertain or educate the audience. Skalds influenced people, from common folk to rulers of nations, with stories that extolled heroic virtues – or cautioned against bad behavior. In the same way, my performance art often involves storytelling as well as magic.