where you come from & where you go

it's so gratifying to watch something you've cared about grow. 

definitely true of children, and I suppose also cats, guinea pigs, or house plants... and (incredibly) also of yo-yo styles.

i'm running a little giveaway thing this month (it being Fixed Axle February). basically i developed a somewhat arbitrary trick-list and said i'd randomly draw a winner from those who filmed themselves hitting it. people like yo-yo's, so i guess i did assume a few people would try it, but i wasn't actually prepared for the feeling of seeing other players stoked about hitting stuff like varial and bird. in fact, even just people asking for advice about them has been cool.

it's interesting that with the 0a scene having collectively enjoyed a bit of a hiatus from focusing energy on fixed 1a tricks (being hard at work in establishing whatever it is that the 0a style is becoming), stuff like split the atom represents a fairly significant challenge, even for some experienced fixed axle throwers. i remember visiting steve brown one year when he was doing street performances in virginia beach and i was just getting into fixed axle. he made the point that after yomega changed the game with the influx of transaxles, it was hard to find a player who could hit split the atom on an old woodie like the demonstrators of old.

that conversation (along with several with jack ringca about exploring the limits of fixed axle throws) was definitely a catalyst for me. ~17 years later i don't think about it in quite the same way, but at the time it was important to me to somehow retain the stoicism of the players who toiled to master tricks before bearings (or the internet) provided solace. i couldn't fully retain that, of course, but i DID put in  work, and wonderfully pointless though it may be, the canonical skill set i developed in those years feels like something worth maintaining.

in jazz, you need to know the rules in order to break them. in the last decade, 1a has represented "the rules" and 0a has developed as a counterpoint by focusing on trick elements which are better suited to responsive and fixed axle yo-yo's... but i confess the idea of developing skill in 0a WITHOUT jumping through string-trick hoops on fixies is something i never really thought about. like if we were effective in developing a style of yo-yo that people wanted to play, a benchmark of success would be that they start to learn it independent of the context and references it came out of. charlie parker understood the style of lester young, and consciously threw it out to make his own style. ornette coleman did the same with charlie parker. a generation later, you had saxophonists seeking to sound like ornette without having gone through the same process with regard to his stylistic predecessors.

and that's ok - it's inevitable, and it's how style evolves. it's really interesting to think about what i have ignored, as opposed to what's influenced me. watching players hit the tricks for this contest, it's even more interesting to consider where the players watching THEM will take the style next.