Rodney Mullen - A Beautiful Mind

the thing that stuck with me most about skating or that it's given me over the years I think the ability to just go back to something for the sake of loving it and falling is so integrated into us a lot of people don't fall as much as we do in every level and we're falling becomes normal and picking yourself up again is normal and I think the the kind of resilience that skaters have is uncommon in call it regular life you know as I've gotten older and my body got kind of torn up for a long time I started to channel some of that energy into academic things and for all unimportant reasons I ended up TED Talks PopTech and bootcamp and all these small groups of highly charged intellectuals a lot of tech world and it's an honor and I feel like an idiot and all the above I went there and I was thinking about just what you're talking about I want to share what skating is how special our community is because we feel like outsiders and we all find this mutual sense of belonging in shaping a community by what we do and what we do is we individuate ourselves we separate ourselves and then share it back I take whatever I take mark marks our dark side so I take that and add my own bit because I had done Casper slide so I can pop off a block or what I take these elements and I help for myself to separate myself and give it back into the rest of community grow and then I feel more invested part like of the infrastructure like when I went down there I tripped out because I don't come out in public a lot I really don't and being back down there was my first side of the barracks which is awesome and being down there and all these amazing guys like I can't do what they do and they're come up to me and they just say thank you and I'm tripping out because man thank you for taking what I did and doing what I could never imagine because I still feel invested in that and so what have I taken from skateboarding is look I want a bunch of contests and I traveled on how the good things that you could ever hope to have happen that stuff comes and it goes but the thing that lasts is the thing that keeps growing it's alive and that's what the community is doing and that's something that I have and it comes from an ethos of sharing and feeling connected with people through what you do and that is something I take and that's not something that's often taught and so that's one of the things that I have loved sharing to the outside called the outside world people that don't look at skateboarding in the way we do right and that's been like a joy for me and it keeps me on my toes because I'm thinking okay how do I talk to them in a way that shows the beauty of what we have man they flew me to Camden Maine this thing it was like a precursor or early Ted I don't know who was first but they keep it tight we're Ted's a franchise right and Ted and TEDx and man they fly me there they give me a driver they see all this stuff I'm scared to death because I'm talking with people coming across the world about you name it newest and brain surgery the latest in technology in satellites and then there's me and I walk up on stage and I start saying hey look I want to share a few things that I learned from my community and I started with Danny Way falling and getting up from that video from this documentary by what we learned from getting up again and again it changes you and the culture that we create guys who just go out and put it on the line that imbues into you whether you know it or not that shapes how you look at things and the next thing you know you're doing it I see all the time especially like Mitchie Mitchie sweet little kid that I saw just doing like freestyle tricks next thing you know he's hanging out skating a little vert and then he's with Bob and Danny and toning these dudes and he's doing this insane stuff he's like is that supposed to be hard you know it's this idea that you now fitted yourself in this culture where this is normal and you're doing things that who's ever going to do that and so what are my takeaways from skateboarding because like and skateboarding changes you in ways that you could never essentially try or go learn in a few sessions it comes from years and years of getting back up it changes you from inside not from here in the same way the culture of it you know a skater you don't have to say much it's not just what you wear and there's just something to them you know and that's that tacit knowledge that bit need you can't put your finger on that's what we have and share and so it by the end of the talk I have I have Danny and I have cardio right do these incredible things you know cardio essentially recovering from being paralyzed like those two words don't even go together and what Danny did with a broken neck and then jump in the gravel and he didn't do it just in a way I thought that by pulling himself from such depths it gave him something to jump the girl Great Wall of China type of thing I think this is what skateboarding has given us and it comes from all of it from the act of doing from the belonging to it all the little subtleties that you never really put your fingers on when I shared that to that community and again it is a gnarly community and I go afterwards and I had an MIT professor coming up to me MIT professor I I wish we could he said it potentially the greatest academic institution the world a Yale Law professor I'm going to show that in our class because we need this characteristic what skaters have a research doctor came to me so he was a doctor and a scientist okay combined like a double PhD guy in the hardest things you can imagine and he goes you know 99% of scientific researchers from my perspective I'm talking to the guy and I thought good because there's only that 1% that it takes equality to reach in it the unknown and to do what's not safe or guaranteed this is what you guys do all the time it comes from getting up I wish we could teach that I wish skaters would become scientists because then we would have more great scientists all of these qualities all of them I take from scanning much less the guys like I see Daewon like this almost thing I see day one and then I see Lewis and James Craig like he the rock kids that I mean they were always ever run couple the areas where and you thinking man I always knew they are good kids are just being kids and they go through the undulations and now they're doing what I did like team manager apologizing to hotel managers stuff like that right and they come up to me and they say man rod now I know what it was like and now I see like unis these guys killing it and I feel part of it and I'm thinking my god I feel part of whatever you did and now what you did I'm taking it all in so these are the things that skateboarding has given me it is what could you ask for who has that kind of wealth you know I think there's something about skating that's special that way because we don't have there's X Games but one man like these guys doing the stuff there's a medics there's no scientist there's no you're on your own you're being chased out of things you are outside you are on your own that quality in itself is fairly rare for people doing high-level athletic stuff because by the time they're doing that stuff there's a whole gaggle of people around them willing to help type of things support and you know I mean football teams in the entourage is everything else skateboarding you are on your own not only you're on your own you are you got to go through adversity it's illegal it's probably the whole idea is not getting that's baked into us that's pretty rare that's peculiar to what we do so I'm not saying we're the only ones oh sure there's other amazing right but there's something about that that's really again it bakes into us at a deep level that helps shape us that's rare dude you just know when authentic is that's a very nature of authenticity tacit knowledge something we all know but we can't teach the smallest nuance of facial expression you know what they're thinking likewise with authenticity and that is the undergirding power that empty like an electromotive force it's what pushes out style okay yeah we know we think of guys with bad style and I probably show up you know what I mean like who's the guy would bet a stick man and I got his staff and all I got it but past that you can't really capture it by its very nature by the time you've defined it and Quarantine it to some verbal parameters she probably missed the point you know when someone has good style in the essence of style is authentic to who he is remember when I goes way back but I guess whoever Henry Sanchez had such a distinctive thing with his arm would push and of course man like you look up to Harry Sanchez because he was amazing but you see people pushing around like him you're like dude you're in it you know you're an idiot stop you're just trying to be like him that's not you yeah but I'm doing what looks freaking awesome yeah but you it's not awesome because it's not you that's the point well that's that's what allowed me to do what I did I think my greatest gift it was not so much whatever physical attributes but it was just stubborn and being isolated you know just loving tumbling something around for the sake of tumbling around and seeing what comes out it's always been me so that's still there that's me for sure I go every night like I've always been a night guy since I was a teenager hard to manage members in school but you do sleep three hours sleep three hours whatever it is at least I can get that night time something about it man it's always been my own that's when things come to me my eyes don't go elsewhere they just stay skating has been an internal thing for me and that's the joy and the older I get it's like a meditation you know that's just my personality it's always been on my own and then there are times I'd go skate what they want I missed those times if I'm still God they want to bring John and all those dudes and we would go skate in the evenings a few times a week I was the best I missed that if I could have that now I would definitely do that but certainly on every night one of the talks Ted thank TEDx in Orange County I got to meet a Fields Medal winner - that's so much better than winning a Nobel Prize you know they just give those out for math when they discuss Cedric we come friends and I'm not sure how athletic he was but he has that thing the way his mind works like I get it and the kind of math that he did he was very honest because I sit in in certain algebraic lectures and after five minutes I don't even know what they're talking about the guy feels metal Charles real no I mean but what he did the nature what he did and he's kind of nonlinear dynamics the essence of that captures a mindset that we as skaters have and he gets it it could take it with his formalism in a way that makes him special in all the world but what we have and what we do how it integrate and expresses through this similar qualities and I know just enough about that to feel that and to know that you know Sedgwick should skate and these guys if they ever picked up those books they might be surprised at what they have a natural it comes that component has always been in Me's in there I'm a nerd the part of feeling things out in transposing it into some kind of formalism there's kind of mathematics is beautiful in that it's called group theory captures a lot of quantum mechanics that is something that look it's look man it's not like you read the books you think we're better skater it's not like that but the symmetry is involved it's about symmetry and what do you think of symmetries balance in the way we look at things of with the grain chicks that move with the gray with a hardflip is by nature against the grain hits hard any hardflip not hardly an answer these things they go in tandem to one another you know one you feel the other it expresses in another kind of way and I think the older I get the more I enjoy the feel of skating for the sake of it I were talking with Tony Hawk he's just a good friend we have a lot in common way back I broke my ankle and I was like it's a sign I should quit you know this is so many years ago and he's like dude no they just break sometimes magic angles which is true and we're talking about like were you gonna know it's time to give up to quit I remember we talked about that when we were even younger we've been friends a long time you're like man if I can't do it at this level like this level for us why bother how horrible would be to say I'm not what I used to be cold turkey blaze a glory type of thing cut it off like there's honor and then I I realize now all these years later like that is so full of crap is no man just to feel maybe don't do it publicly because that could be sad oh you can't do oh he's trying to hang on to some dream or whatever because we all have that fear of judgment that's yeah that's true I'm like that I'm afraid to be judged I don't necessarily want to be seen in public sucking getting older but what I keep inside that joy of just feeling what I do rolling around playing around that's something I'm going to do as long as I can that's Who I am Who I am and now coming back here for the I mean I go through periods where I don't come out at all for coming here where it's so legit I mean of all places what's most legit the barracks coming here and seeing all these dudes come up to me and say I forget that part of it that they still embrace me so you

Channel: The Berrics

Views: 579,472

Rating: 4.9784036 out of 5

Keywords: berrics, Rodney Mullen (Skateboarder), The Berrics, A Beautiful Mind, interview, Skateboarding (Sport), Skateboard (Sports Equipment), legend, smart, Almost Skateboards (Organization), ted talk, advice, rodney mullen interview, rodney mullen a beautiful mind, 2014, Rodney Mullen interviu 2014, Rodney Mullen 2014 video, Rodney Mullen a beautiful mind, Rodney mullen new video HD, Rodney mullen at the Berrics, the berris rodney mullen

Id: ZgEbxU5tZu4

Length: 16min 52sec (1012 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 09 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/galileo_figaro1]

post this to /r/getmotivated

[u/antanith]

Rodney Mullen is probably one of my all time heroes. Always been humble in what he does and how he approches skating.

[u/ozebloke23]

Thanks, that was really interesting.

[u/GrandviewOhio]

the BEST

[u/schnitzi]

That was so good. I hope people realize what a rare case he was. He dominated an area of sport in a way that is virtually unequaled across all sports, and it lasted for many years.

BTW, this apparently is his Fields Medal winner friend that he mentioned, as he's the only one named Cedric :)

[u/Sieve417]

WOW i wish i knew this guy..