YONDER BREAKS

If you're like me, you still listen to albums. Full albums, not pieces of albums shuffled together (I still shuffle too; no judging). There is just something about a succession of songs in the order the artist intended for them to be in that tells a story, has an arc, creates a feeling that one song just can't accomplish. And sometimes, one of these albums speaks to you in a way that really connects with your life -- like the artist just lived what you are living right now, and gave you this great accompaniment to make it a richer experience. This could be something as light as an album that makes you feel like you're  riding to the beach  with the windows down; or it could be heavy, like therapy on a cloudy day in an even cloudier part of life. The first time this happened to me in a memorable way was  Emery 's  I'm Only a Man . It's an album about sin and shortcomings relevant to humanity. Divorce, abortion, infidelity, even mur...

I didn't go to a normal high school. It was the  School of the Arts , and we all had to audition for one of several art majors just to get in. We had no sports (although a fledgling tennis team was started at some point while I was there), about half the teachers had weird eccentricities that kept us wondering who they were outside of the classroom, and vocal majors would walk the sidewalks singing between classes. I guess it's about as close to living out  High School Musical  as you can get. I went there from 6th grade until 12th, but when I got to high school, I had thoughts of bowing out for a more "normal" high school experience. I wanted the football team with cheerleaders and the marching band. I wanted big classrooms and nice facilities (SOA was literally in the middle of a project neighborhood). Ultimately, I just wanted something a little less strange, and a little more like everyone else. In the end,  my dad  talked me ...

Maybe you've noticed (or maybe not), but my blogging has been rather light this summer. Part of it is because of a  tumultuous move , but another part is that I've lost part of my inspiration. What is that inspiration, you might ask...surfing! (big surprise?) This is the surf report I've seen far too often this summer, and unfortunately, when I'm not surfing, I'm not writing. Maybe that doesn't make much sense, because you'd think if I'm not surfing, I'm doing something inside  like  writing. Not the case, particularity when I aim to write about surfing! This isn't the first time this has happened to me. Years ago I wrote for  StoreYourBoard.com  and was loving it. Then we had our first child and life became about the baby. I surfed when I could, and wrote when I got ideas. But without the former, the ideas were infrequent and therefore so was my writing. They didn't fire me so much as I resigned, but I  do  miss getting paid to wr...

My aunt bought me one of these pads years ago. I'm not sure I was aware of it then, but I guess she was...I'm pretty bad at making decisions. I remember one time sitting in my living room when I was in high school and staring at the wall.  My sister  walked in and asked what I was doing. "Trying to figure out if I should play video games or go skateboarding," I replied. (Oh, the hardships of youth...) My sister said that was dumb and walked away. She came back about 25 minutes later and I was still sitting there, undecided. "You're ridiculous!" she said, and she was right. I had spent so much time deciding what to do, that I could have probably done both things with the time I wasted. Where does this come from? Over the years I've come to realize that this  indecisiveness is rooted in  fear . I'm afraid to make the wrong decision, and so I spend way more time than necessary to make the right one. The folly in that should be more obvious, b...

I had a professor once tell me that  art is making something out of nothing . If that's true, skateboarders are the best artists around. Here's why: I've walked past this empty parking lot dozens of times, and every time I think to myself, "I need to skate that." Why?! It's just an empty parking lot! Maybe to a typical bystander, but to a skateboarder, even an empty parking lot is full of possibilities. A curb, a ledge, a handrail; stairs, loading docks, walls...it's all fair game to a skateboarder, not just as an obstacle, but as a platform for  creative thought in action . Many skaters feel that the way they skate is self-expression, because one skater can see a ledge and think one trick, while another will think of something entirely different. It's all open, and up to interpretation, combined with ability and practice. The end result is something normal transformed into something special, which is always valuable to humanity, and often hard to c...