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Being dumb as fuck seems to help.
Not all, but a lot of the gnarliest skaters seem pretty "simple minded," to put it gently. You almost have to be at least a little bit stupid to repeatedly jump down big gaps and shit.
I think it helps to be able to turn your brain off while attempting tricks. David Foster Wallace wrote an essay that pertains to this subject. From "How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart":
"It may well be that we, spectators, who are not divinely gifted as athletes, are the only ones able truly to see, articulate, and animate the experience of the gift we are denied. And that those who receive and act out the gift of athletic genius must, perforce, be blind and dumb about it -- and not because blindness and dumbness are the price of the gift, but because they are its essence."
And also:
“The real secret behind top athletes’ genius, then, may be as esoteric and obvious and dull and profound as silence itself. The real, many-veiled answer to the question of just what goes through a great player’s mind as he stands at the center of a hostile crowdnoise and lines up the free-throw that will decide the game might well be: nothing at all.”
Aw, man, you got me thinkin'!
Love David Foster Wallace so much RIP.
So who is the Nicola Jokic of skateboarding, the one who thinks out and analyzes and understands every trick and situation, the one for whom the head is an
advantage?Who's the Hal Incandenza of skateboarding, the fragile, crystalline super-brain who might get the yips in the big moment?
Who's the Big Don Gately of skateboarding, the absolute meat tank with the head like a concrete block, who is still a really chill kind dude?
Edit: nominees for the Don G award: Foy, BA, Stu, Grosso, others?
Edit edit: hmm so maybe there are more Don Gs than Jokers in skateboarding?