Training is, above all, communication.
So many of us want the result now, we feel like we started too late and need to catch up – so we try to take a shortcut. Buy some program online and follow a bunch of popular influencers. “This is what the pros are doing” – podcasts about peptide stacks and science based lifting, carbohydrate timing and optimal protein absorption. We are serious and committed so why wouldn’t we try and reflect the best and most current knowledge? Like and subscribe, bio-hack and buy our way to a higher tier of information. The secret list and Red-Folder program. There is nothing wrong with these actions per se, they all have a time and place, but in a rush to get to the finish line I would argue that many people have never really started.
I don’t know if woodshop class is still a thing, but the classic first project is to build a birdhouse. Not because anyone wants to make a birdhouse, but it is an excuse to apply the tools and the skills the class is trying to teach. You saw and drill and hammer and see how your work fits together. Were those angles really cut at 22.5º? Did you set the nail gently or miss and leave hammer marks on the wood? The birdhouse is a physical representation of how you have applied your skill. Of how well you planned, worked, and paid attention. The product will show you the holes in the process.
If you can look at your finish product and see what you would like to be different, then it was a success. Again, the goal was never a birdhouse, but to learn. To learn how to plan, how to use your tools, and how to pay attention.
You can buy a birdhouse off Amazon. Drone delivery within an hour. It will cost you eight dollars and one pathway for progress.
|| Full test available on substack ||
So often what we call “art” is the result of caring about something so deeply that the logical mind rebels – or at least retreats. We are left marveling at something that we cannot comprehend because there is no way someone did this “the long way”. No way someone cared that much. We can be fascinated and touched and moved to tears because someone committed themselves wholly to the work.
Writers write. And read. And edit. And write. Stringing words together and feeling their deeper implication. Poets play with cadence and spacing and use these instruments to form a symphony. Always working. Always refining. More than most of us are willing or even able to imagine.
We all take pictures, but how much do you think about the pictures you take? How much time is spent trying to understand why you were drawn to pick up the camera in the first place? What did you see? What were you trying to capture? What would have made it better? A wider framing? A different angle? How much can a single f stop change the story? How far can this tool be pushed and twisted? Can be made to speak, and share, and feel?
It is just practice. And attention. Taken to its illogical conclusion.
Just practice.
Just attention.
“What if I cared about this thing so much, practiced and prodded and plumbed the depths… what could I discover? What could I create?
This is magic. This is art.
Caring more than is practical. Caring more than is reasonable. Caring to a level that sends the very notion of reason and sensibility spiraling… leaving only one explanation:
Magic.
Too often “art” is something other people do. “Magic” is simply that which done by methods we cannot comprehend. In a way, both art and magic are destinations. Elevations. Descriptions of a state of being. The road to get there is actually frightfully simple, even if the distance is unfathomable…
Practice.
Pay attention.
Care.
About anything.
Do it enough, and it becomes magic.
Becomes Art.
We are all magicians. We are all artists.
All we have to do is practice.
Is pay attention.
Is care.
📷: @axiom_sc
It was 6 years ago this week.
Michigan shelter in place. COVID-19.
Nostalgic isn’t the right word, but I have to admit that there was, at least initially, a sense of solidarity that seemed to permeate the collective. Fear or uncertainty or at least a recognition that everyone we met was going through something, that maybe we could offer a nod or a smile or honestly ask if they were OK. Before we divided into camps and our own private existential crisis, there was a glimmer. A moment where I think people felt that their actions mattered. That while fixing the world or the country or their state may have been out of reach, they could check in on friends and neighbors, be that sense of security that had been suddenly stripped away.
I wrote this zine in that spirit - my friends had started printing zines out in Salt Lake City, and it revived some old punk rock memories of the creativity that comes from trying to make an impact with a whole lot of time and not much else. That was the headspace I needed, that was the headspace I wanted to encourage and put out into the world.
It has been a while since I thumbed through it, and while I wouldn’t do it the same today, the words still resonate, and its purpose was served in the making.
Full text of the zine is now available on substack (and the app has a text-to-speech that is actually pretty good – just press the play button at the top)
Seed and Soil and Circumstance. This all happened before. The question now is: Which do you weed, and which do you water. That, and What are you passing on?
A new post is up on Substack.
< station515.substack.com >
Who is this for?
In short, this is for me. For who I was. This is, in its best form, a stand in for the people who guided me. People who helped me see and understand a tool that has changed my life. This is a tribute to those who gave me so much, an attempt to be a link in the chain and contribute to the growth of others. To pay forward a level of care and assistance that I can never pay back.
And honestly it is just trying to offer a perspective I don’t see out there very much.
The short answer is: For anyone. Anyone who can look at the gym, or physical training in general and can feel it in their bones that’s there is something important here – but is having trouble touching it.
Maybe someone who is already training and has experienced the inkling of deeper changes, not just of body but of mind and spirit – and hasn’t had anyone they can talk to about it.
Is this for you though? Honestly: I don’t know. I don’t know you.
But maybe this will help:
Continued at station515.substack.com
“ThE oNe exErciSe thaT no One is doiNG righT”
Yeah, fuck that. But also probably true.
There is short piece about the wall squat up on my Substack, and if reading articles about wall squats is your thing, than maybe we should be friends.
station515.substack.com
… continued from station515.substack.com
I never thought this would be my path, but it has truly become my passion. The thing that wakes me up and gets me asking questions. Not just the physical, but the deeper changes I have witnessed. I have seen people put themselves back together after a divorce or the death of a parent. Seen people turn self-destructive urges into life affirming habits. I never imagined it, but this space turned into a model for me, a laboratory. I could try and fail and try again. This place helped me learn how to be in the world, and it survives in the world because of the people who fill it. The people who trusted me before I had earned it. The people who continue to challenge my understanding and ask good questions. The people who resonate and give life to brick walls and rubber floors.
15 years since we left the garage. 15 years of trying to merge passion and commerce. I am excited for what comes next, to continue to learn and grow – to help create more spaces for thoughtful approach to physical and emotional fitness. Today, however – we celebrate.
And we reminisce.
Not just “What have I done?”
But look at what we have done.
And stand in thanks of everyone who made that possible – I can never thank you enough, all I can do is to try and show you that the trust you placed in me was well founded.
“Onward” indeed.
I just read Rick Ruben’s book “the creative act” and I laughed at how useful it would as a manual for creating a good gym routine. Not in detail (of course) but in the overarching themes. In the understanding of what to look for and what questions to ask.
Exploration. Attention. Arbitrary goals in pursuit of learning your tools…
I think more people would be better served thinking of training as a creative space. As a test kitchen. A laboratory. A place to ask questions and seek answers. A place to feel and fail and flail. To tinker and laugh and orchestrate spectacular failures. And to sometimes succeed. To sometimes find peace or transcendence. To, above all, pay attention. To Practice. To widen horizons. To have experiences. To get to know yourself and the people around you.
A gym is a funny place. The same tool can be deployed towards countless ends. If you don’t know why you are doing a push-up then I probably won’t be able to help you do it much better, but if you are willing to put some thought in to it, to really consider why you are doing a thing and how that should be reflected in your greater choices – well then I for one would be truly interested to hear what you are thinking.
And would love to create something together.
(entire piece at station515.substack.com)
Art is Magic and Magic is Stupid
I think I am paraphrasing Penn Jillette when I say that magic is stupid. I can’t find the interview, and I may be embellishing the memory, but the statement was something along these lines:
Magic is stupid. You can figure out almost any trick if you think about it for a few moments. Just ask yourself “How would I do that?” Your first answer, before you start thinking about what it would take to pull off... Chances are, you were right – you just dismissed the obvious answer because it’s stupid. Because nobody would go through that much effort for a simple card trick. We reject the idea that anyone would be willing to do that much work for something so stupid… Well guess what? magic IS stupid.
Practice and planning are, on the surface, too mundane to garner our attention or excitement. They don’t foster wonder or stir emotions. But try cutting a deck of cards precisely in half – 26 cards in each hand. Now do it again. Do it until you can’t fail. How much practice do you think that would take? How many times of doing it wrong, assessing that information, modifying behavior and doing it again?
Continued at station515.substack.com
One of the few images I have from the early days. June 29 2009. 16 years ago today. This room was my garage. My gym. My workshop. My bedroom. It was central to my existence. My heart. And in the end, it was the people involved that made it truly beat.
This is from an older piece that I just put up on substack (more at station515.substack.com) – it seemed fitting for the day.
“A friend introduced me to the term “belay knife” – it has always made me laugh, a tool – honed, maintained, and carried specifically to cut away dead weight. He taught me a lot about how to use that particular tool, how to keep it sharp and use it with conviction. The funny thing about tools is that they are extensions of the user, and that which was used for years to keep people away can be used to bring them in. The sharpness and familiarity can be repurposed. That same knife can live on, can carve space for people instead of cutting them away. After all, a Sunday roast is easier to carve than 9mm of nylon, it just requires a different sort of risk.
Yes. Hell is other people. But I think that some part of me sees salvation there too.”
