So, I am back to school from thanksgiving break. I ate some turkey talked with my family and had a brilliantly uneventful thanksgiving. I got some great training in, and I am feeling strong. Saratoga is bustling with that large-small town energy, people know each other, but still don't know everyone and you can feel the artistic tension, like two people will meet and do great things,and know one will have seen it coming. I am so excited to start trying to make it on my own there, it feels like home, and I feel like there is so much more to explore there. Not just in terms of parkour but in terms of people to meet, and opportunities. I visited a few galleries around town, and it actually made me feel confident in my abilities and my chances of getting artwork into some of them. I did fall into some of my lazy habits of sitting around and sort of bouncing around town not really doing anything. I am positive that once I am living on almost nothing and have surrounded myself with everything I love, with no opportunity to just waste time, it will be a different story.
I have roughly 30 more days of school and I am going to try and make the best of them, if new york city is good for nothing else, it is good for parkour. I have found some excellent training spots and am planning to go there every chance I get. Tommorow included. Nothing particularly interesting to talk about right now, but I am grateful for this time. I know soon that I will be looking for apartments and thinking about money much more than money deserves. Now is my time to prepare mentally for what I am about to do. Move out, leave the nest, spread my fledgling wings and hope that I dont land face first at the foot of the tree.
If you have any interest in parkour, or any interest in knowing what its all about I would recommend watching this video
It is done by an exceptional guy I met at a parkour demo we did with david belle for the New Yorker festival, his name is duncan and he knows what hes talking about.
The second day of vacation Paul and I went out for some brisk training. We really worked each other. We hadn't trained together for quite some time, and it really felt good. I was able to do some wall runs that were out of my reach last summer, and my climb-ups have vastly improved although I would not say they are close to fluid yet. I really feel like I might be understanding my body and its strong and weak points. My legs are not naturally powerful. I don't have a large jump, not just compared to other traceurs, but compared to really any abe bodied male on the street. I am aware of it and I am really working on it.
I have been really dishonest with myself and my training. I always think in the back of my mind that I should be better for the amount of time I have trained. But when I am being really honest with myself, I know I have not trained nearly as much as I wish and sometimes tell myself I have. Some months I will just not be that inspired to train. I have to realise that parkour is more casual to me than some people, even though it is always on my mind. I am doing exactly as well as I should be for the amount of time I have put in, and If I want to be better, I have to train more, not just as much, but more, and harder. Duncan's Video reminded me that there is a level of control that can be reached with these movements that I wish to obtain. I dont want to push the limits of parkour and what the body is capable of, I want to be controlled and confident in my body and I want to know EXACTLY what it is capable of at ANY given moment. I feel Duncan is at least close to this point, and I am reminded why I began parkour in the first place. To be in control of my environment, not governed by it.
Until Next time.
-Taylor
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Everything Else
So, my story. I am dropping out of college for the second time, both times after the first semester. I am thinking I need to at least take a while and decide if I actually want to go to college. I wont go into why the first place I went was horrible, but it was, don't go to saint rose. I am currently at the school of visual arts in New York City. I love the school, great classes and great teachers, but New York City is eating me alive. The place just takes everything beautiful, hopeful, idealistic, and joyful out of a soul and promptly dumps it all into the east river where it floats away to less poluted shores. I am very motivated to become an artist, I don't need the motivation of grades and assignments to do my artwork, I am ready to just do it. All the time.
My friend paul and I are going to be moving in together, probably into some dumpy place in Saratoga. Our home town. We are going to get basic jobs and do our artwork and make our music, which I have some recordings of, and continue to progress in parkour. I will try and mabye get my artwork shown in different places around here, I have very low hopes and am not expecting to really get in anywhere, but I really do want to try, and start to understand how it works.
Paul and I will keep each other from getting lazy and from just bumming around. We want to keep learning we are very curious about many things. We are not going to have a television instead stacks of books and drawings. We will not have a fancy sound system and a pool table, but our guitars and voices. We will surround ourselves by only the things we are passionate about and nothing to just kill time. We will either be reading about epic journeys in far off lands or the latest on quantum mechanics, or creating artwork, making music, or training for parkour, and definitely our fair share of goofing around.
My mind is open to anything and this is by no means a permanent thing. If it doesn't work out and Paul and I just run out of money and cant feed ourselves, we will come up with a new plan. There is no reason to follow a path you know you will not enjoy in this life, no reason at all. The New York art scene is not for me, I am a quite, shy, laid back person and I feel terrible, almost physically sick in New York City. The rush and haste and stress in the air is heavy and weighs me down every time i go back, I dont care how important it is to be there as an artist, it is not worth my happiness and well being, I will find my way. I may eventually go back to school, but I need this time to really understand why or to go back with the knowledge that I tried the alternative.
So, I will be posting here, letting whoever cares to read it, know about how I am doing, or what I am doing. mabye some other people are contemplating dropping out of school and pursuing their passion, no matter what it is, and hopefully this might help that person.
thanks for reading.
-Taylor
P.S. Recordings
DivShare File - 2005 song.aif
DivShare File - gardenhead2.aif
My friend paul and I are going to be moving in together, probably into some dumpy place in Saratoga. Our home town. We are going to get basic jobs and do our artwork and make our music, which I have some recordings of, and continue to progress in parkour. I will try and mabye get my artwork shown in different places around here, I have very low hopes and am not expecting to really get in anywhere, but I really do want to try, and start to understand how it works.
Paul and I will keep each other from getting lazy and from just bumming around. We want to keep learning we are very curious about many things. We are not going to have a television instead stacks of books and drawings. We will not have a fancy sound system and a pool table, but our guitars and voices. We will surround ourselves by only the things we are passionate about and nothing to just kill time. We will either be reading about epic journeys in far off lands or the latest on quantum mechanics, or creating artwork, making music, or training for parkour, and definitely our fair share of goofing around.
My mind is open to anything and this is by no means a permanent thing. If it doesn't work out and Paul and I just run out of money and cant feed ourselves, we will come up with a new plan. There is no reason to follow a path you know you will not enjoy in this life, no reason at all. The New York art scene is not for me, I am a quite, shy, laid back person and I feel terrible, almost physically sick in New York City. The rush and haste and stress in the air is heavy and weighs me down every time i go back, I dont care how important it is to be there as an artist, it is not worth my happiness and well being, I will find my way. I may eventually go back to school, but I need this time to really understand why or to go back with the knowledge that I tried the alternative.
So, I will be posting here, letting whoever cares to read it, know about how I am doing, or what I am doing. mabye some other people are contemplating dropping out of school and pursuing their passion, no matter what it is, and hopefully this might help that person.
thanks for reading.
-Taylor
P.S. Recordings
DivShare File - 2005 song.aif
DivShare File - gardenhead2.aif
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Discontent means good training
My first post is not a triumphant one. Today while training I fell on a simple movement and hurt my knee and bashed my head.
I have been feeling rather confident in myself lately as I have been intensifying my training and I have been adapting to it well. More repetition of movements that I remember being hard for me a year ago. Today I was working on being fluid with my movements while running full speed, something I do not do enough considering how important it is. On a simple speed vault I underestimated my speed and missed the rail with my hand and landed on my side from roughly four feet in the air. The thought that came to my mind after "Ow" was that my day of training had been ruined, I had only been our for two hours and still had a lot left in me, but as I sat there I realized that this may have been the perfect thing to happen to me, it knocked me off my high horse and reminded me that what we do is only dangerous when we start to feel content and that we don't need to be cautious or focused in order to do these movements.
The injuries are not serious in fact I would hardly call them injuries at all, I fell and banged some things on the ground and it hurt, but some ice and rest will leave me good as new tomorrow. Even so, I am discontent with myself I am aware that I am no where near as strong as I want to be, and I realize that my mind can become arrogant at the expense of my body. Today was possibly the most productive day of training I have had this month, and I have really been pushing myself all month. Tomorrow I will go out and start from the very beginning, it is the very best place to start.
On another note, I bought some delicious apples from a local orchard today, macintosh, they are dark red and tart, and each crisp bite makes me want to sink my teeth into it even further and massacre it's sweet flesh so that it taste haunts me every second I am not eating one. My good friend Paul is coming back home tonight, we haven't seen each other since we were in a parkour demonstration in New York City together. We might record some music which would be fun to put up on here. His blog is located at http://pvvmichael.blogspot.com/ . Im not sure is hes written anything yet, but by the time someone reads this he probably will.
I will wright about myself and what I do in the next post, but I felt I should start off with something that I felt deeply about and then move onto the boring stuff concerning my life.
-Taylor
I have been feeling rather confident in myself lately as I have been intensifying my training and I have been adapting to it well. More repetition of movements that I remember being hard for me a year ago. Today I was working on being fluid with my movements while running full speed, something I do not do enough considering how important it is. On a simple speed vault I underestimated my speed and missed the rail with my hand and landed on my side from roughly four feet in the air. The thought that came to my mind after "Ow" was that my day of training had been ruined, I had only been our for two hours and still had a lot left in me, but as I sat there I realized that this may have been the perfect thing to happen to me, it knocked me off my high horse and reminded me that what we do is only dangerous when we start to feel content and that we don't need to be cautious or focused in order to do these movements.
The injuries are not serious in fact I would hardly call them injuries at all, I fell and banged some things on the ground and it hurt, but some ice and rest will leave me good as new tomorrow. Even so, I am discontent with myself I am aware that I am no where near as strong as I want to be, and I realize that my mind can become arrogant at the expense of my body. Today was possibly the most productive day of training I have had this month, and I have really been pushing myself all month. Tomorrow I will go out and start from the very beginning, it is the very best place to start.
On another note, I bought some delicious apples from a local orchard today, macintosh, they are dark red and tart, and each crisp bite makes me want to sink my teeth into it even further and massacre it's sweet flesh so that it taste haunts me every second I am not eating one. My good friend Paul is coming back home tonight, we haven't seen each other since we were in a parkour demonstration in New York City together. We might record some music which would be fun to put up on here. His blog is located at http://pvvmichael.blogspot.com/ . Im not sure is hes written anything yet, but by the time someone reads this he probably will.
I will wright about myself and what I do in the next post, but I felt I should start off with something that I felt deeply about and then move onto the boring stuff concerning my life.
-Taylor
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