Rodney Mullen: The Intangibles That Distinguish Us - Wired (2015)

[Applause] [Music] [Music] these are much my friends I'd like to share a little bit about what we do and how it shapes our community can I think it transcends skateboarding we share a kind of common language of our own devising which is where we begin if I were to write down a bunch of these tricks didn't look a lot like that you have a little bit of chemistry you might recognize a few of the others the way we combine movements imposes sort of syntax a protocol based upon the physics of what's going on you're adding Momentum's well the nomenclature of physics was derived foundation same foundations today one kid can text another across the world name of a trick and regardless of their native tongue they completely understand what's going on we created that together [Music] okay so that's a half cab impossible late foot flip it's kind of a clunky name as it may imply it's built of smaller movements called the executive motor functions where they ingrained similar to drawing out a flipbook where an enormous amount of hours and detail goes into it till eventually by the time you're done with a flick of a thumb or foot out comes fluid motion in this automatic way create bigger harder tricks as you've just seen all you do is you tumble through whatever your process is it's something like this you tumble around and flick through those books until you finally can find pages that match and splice them together for this larger movement which sort of executes that rhythmic sense of beat a lot of this was developed back in the early 80s and something called freestyle getting second thing it was like getting first nobody deserved to ever take a spot and that's when the rumors flew that he was practicing nine hours a day means we going hours a day is that possible [Music] when we would go on tours he would just go up two in the morning you know arrive at the hotel I'm going skating okay that was intelligent I understand but they're a couple of real reasons first all those hours all those hours of repetition for contest runs again they militated against my progression while contests are still important they have their place they were largely superseded when video started to take hold because it was more dimensional in its representation of what we could do well next point worth mentioning is my whole king of the mountain thing kind of came crashing down because freestyle itself was being superseded by this fast evolving new kind of skating which you've seen called Street skating no for me it was like waking up after I mean it emerged fast like after a summer so define that what you've done all you put your heart into is now fairly irrelevant even worse than that it's associated with some kind of backwardness mmm they retired me the guys on tour they got me a 25 and retired t-shirt they took away my pro model which is your bread and butter and it's financial as real as hard as it was to adjust it forced me to adapt to again a kind of new broader way more dimensional in this representation again of what we could do and while I had to let a lot of it go never to be used again which sucked what I had done was so perfected that once I made the jump it actually gave me a kind of distinction that wasn't accessible in the same way back in the early 90s late 80s guys started to apply these more technical tricks on the urban environment around them environment stairs ledges full pipes everything it's fair game it's continual usage of your imagination to think hmm how can that be scalable combined with this creative way of stretching what you have right to fit these little yin-yang fitting pearls of context meeting context well you gather them up video there's more expressive of who you are we've been doing that for 25 years this is the nature of what we do we think it's quite artful the authorities on the other hand think differently the rotten truth is there is a rogue quality to what we do I guess it starts a little bit with a daily dose of trespassing this tends to tend the lens through which we see the world hues that are how do we get around that we have a lot in common with the hacking community in a lot of ways a very real way we're hacking the environment in the sense that we are using it in ways it was never intended to be used and creating something in the process and then pass it around within our tight community upon which they can build and we all share and rise together [Music] [Music] these are some of the most creative and driven people I have ever known in the longer I'm around them the more hardened I become in the conviction it's the greatest obstacle to creativity precipitating something new is breaking through this barrier of disbelief that can be seen in a lot of ways garden-variety one that you've been exposed to is we found we publish it well sometimes within months weeks days some so-called friend friend will send you a link of some rotten kid in Transylvania and he's doing your train everything it took you had and he's doing it and the insult to injury part is he's not even that good but he has enough this kind of belief is rarer than Talent and the combination of the two as present then all these guys have been showing you that makes you special no matter how many times you practice that trick you go up and stand up on that legend you look down and see how deadly that potentially is no it really is and fear can take hold and wipes everything away if you learn anything being around these guys it's whatever you do don't think about it too much the flip side of that is they use go for it without thinking about it you're asking for it and you're gonna get it your number will come up this bats home the dynamic nature of balance that permeates all that we do which is a cognitive awareness and understanding of the physical parameters behind all of what we do whether it's a center over a base of the distance he's looking at whatever it is that can join with an unknowing visceral knowing and intuition of what is your range of recovery and then an intimacy with its edges because the edges that's what gives you the edge and on top of that a honed agility nimbleness with it at all to stay out this factors into fear management risk assessment and of course the chicks themselves [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] hmm all these makes you see they take hours if not days most of what we do by far is fall and that shapes us proportionately the best skaters are said to be the best fallers you can see how easy they are with it and this trickles into the entire community I mean today most companies are owned or operated at least in the crucial junctures by pro skaters so when you sign the dotted line contract both eyes understand you're gonna be limping around on crutches part of the duration there will be times then you are not coming back this factors into our company dealings all the way to this up close and personal with risk and consequence and how to get out of an addict how to handle yourself again permeates all we do and I think has a lot to do with how quickly we evolve this may come as a surprise to you skating can be hard on your body in my case I had so much scar tissue in my back leg that it was yanking the femur into the socket 15 times a day on good days grinding cold days walking more than 50 feet had to take a break though these Coast doc takes a bunch of shots he describes this process they put you to sleep and it sounded an awful lot like a boat crank they tie it to smaller joints and they Ratchet it up until it breaks the adhesions and what's tying you down I talked to a stuntman who'd had it done to his knee what a mess I opted for the little plastic tool he had he described my official release can poke yourself loosen up the fascia give yourself from movement maybe if you're tough you can pull a little scar tissue man I take that he tells me with his eyes what he wouldn't say with his words I was done so I come home and after the first thousand hours of this little tool digging it in I think you know what there takes further so I found screwdrivers and I started taping the head so it wouldn't break the skin I would get in deeper and then you know it's all insane he's fire hydrants they have these knobs and you can stick it in and you can get leverage you pull and pull and the scar tissue it actually you feel like going around the bone and you can feel it stretch and stretch and stretch until it just breaks like dried gum and I'm it's an ugly process you vomit after about three years of this 13 days out of 14 up to 3-4 hours a day more I think I'm up in the valley on a cold night I figured out a better way to get leverage because I was too weak I could hang upside down then we well in my car truck then pull on the frame so I just screaming pulling until the funds this is odd I broke it a dozen bones maybe you broken a few feeling you get there Rises little vomit nausea fingers and collarbones and ribs they break like pencils this was like a tree branch so I'm hanging upside down and I pull myself out my hand and this scientist what the numbness went away I got up and for the first time in years it worked like a ball-and-socket again not the whole stick shift thing I couldn't move not only did this give me freedom it gave me a sense of direction look at this we are sophisticated puppets there's a little stick man inside the flesh suit now all these movements thousands of them the tissues the facial muscles will string the levers inside and make us move move its itself orient them so they move over the bones and adjust in such a way to Optima optimize their leverages for those movements by those movements so what you do is directional then the somatic infrastructure through which you have encoded all these executive motor functions it's now shaped and optimized for that direction at the expense of the other direction or what happens if what you do is now so highly evolved you guys see the distances and how technical the part of what you use to differentiate yourself to distinguish yourself Hey do it backwards well that means the further along down the track you are the more of this shaping you've taken and the less able you are to adapt and to make there's a physical barrier look at this you don't need to know what native stance left foot forward is regular right foot forward is goofy you don't need to know what native stance these guys are who they are they need to see the background imagine their silhouettes guy a on top is mid ollie switch and regular backwards fours guy be on bottom same thing mid landing loot him what he knows you know anything guys on the left are going backwards it's written all over their body well what if you could buy some medieval means involving screwdrivers you could reorient the flesh over the bones so that this should look like a mirror image mirror images right take away the physical barrier now you have new leverages to work with this is real watch this is older footage right now look I'm regular left foot forward forward backwards forward look at the locking of the hips very distinctive backwards after this trick the work started this is switch sort of backwards back sort of backwards useless forwards forwards wheredid backwards go this is a just all over the place this would be inaccessible without the work a switch trick cannot be done switch [Music] [Music] [Music] then a friend of mine says anybody got a check that we can do a little project so we were together we released this on social media and I don't know a lot of feedback pretty quick and people were arguing on what do you call that lots of them well the board itself is a fakey laser that's what's going on it's definitively a fake you laser problem is the upper body the leverages that generator have nothing to do with fakie backwards it is visually self-contradictory and through this fracturing of the nomenclature a whole little range of tricks grows out the defy even being named I mean look I'm 48 years old how far do I expect to take that I don't know I'll take it somewhere but that's not the point I held the title for over 11 years defended it 35 out of 36 contests whatever the first few were cool but then the expectation to win weighed heavy like a tombstone again this turtled up protective position there there's no more winning there's only not losing then something dawns me from the vantage point they're just so painfully common they getting what you wanted or thought you wanted whether they whatever can quench the fire that gets you there unless you replace what drives you with something more permanent it's intangible tea so I'm bordering something creaky now I'll peel back my point is that I recognize as a very very special audience there's anything I can share with you there is nothing of greater intrinsic value than to create something new for the sake of it and watch it disperse through your community and see where they they take it because that in turn makes you part of what they do and that gives you more permanence you could ever ask for they give you belonging more belonging that I could have ever dreamed or accomplished on my own thank you for listening to me [Applause]

Channel: sacrebleu

Views: 43,301

Rating: 4.95889 out of 5

Keywords: Rodney Mullen, Wired 2015

Id: 2bunw-xh-lo

Length: 21min 27sec (1287 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 27 2017