yo-yo #85: Fiend Spitfire

everyone who's ever been stoked to spin a yo-yo, even for a short time, recognizes the toy's potential to transcend the mere act of throwing it. like almost any radical and worthwhile pursuit, yo-yoing maintains the capacity for a lifestyle. to me, mark mcbride has long symbolized this understanding.

his early advocacy for the nascent 3a style, 40-watt halo vids & t's, his book the yonomicon, and his role as consigliere-for-life of the duncan crew (particularly during their early-2000's renaissance) ensure his place in the yo-yo pantheon. to me though, his coolest enterprise was fiend, the yo-yo magazine which, though ephemeral and never attaining the mass appeal it might have, went a long way toward giving yo-yo players a rallying point for their [sub]cultural identity.

although, as is print's tendency and (perhaps) it's eventual downfall, you can't easily find an old copy of fiend. incredibly, the internet has hung onto parts of its old web presence, which if you haven't perused, you should. in describing fiend, bride tapped a literary vein far better than i ever could. yo-yoing's a tough thing to describe, but he nailed it here:

What is a FIEND?

A Fiend is into playing in a deep and serious way. He (or SHE) recognizes that yo-yo (or juggling, or top spinning or whatever prop you choose) is about more than just contests or lists of tricks. Those are merely tools to help you achieve the real "State of Yo." You really get it when you're throwing and you become one with the forces of nature and physics that make it all possible-your movements are a dance with infinity. You are surfing the wave of reality. The trick doesn't need a name, you don't need an audience, you've moved beyond all that. You just know that THIS IS REAL. An old Hindu text asks, "what is the difference between the dancer and the dance?" A Fiend answers "nothing."

i was blissfully unaware of fiend when it was current. as someone who experienced the boom obliquely, and from the 'outside', i knew jack about the online yo-yo world. the only thing i knew about mark mcbride was velvet rolls, the quintessential 3a trick for which ken's-world-on-a-string put up a bewildering tutorial (which was so out of my league that i remember assuming 'well, you'll never learn that; just get it out of your head'). i think i held a copy of fiend once at the mall cart where i hung out circa y2k, but being only 'peripherally' invested in yo-yoing at the time, i was more interested in the peripherals, and i gravitated to the pretty pictures in 'yo-yo world'.

at the time, the idea of being so 'serious' about playing yo-yo as to define any aspect of one's self by it seemed absurd. it's a toy, after all. but then, i'd always thought of myself as a 'skater'... i'd rock vision street wear at school, slap bones brigade stickers all over my notebooks and lockers, pre-emptively duct tape my sneakers to avoid ollie-holes (this was before skate shoes), listen 'religiously' to faith no more and suicidal tendencies, and nod in agreement with thrasher's philosophical observations. for years, skating had somehow held enough sway to effectively carve the stylistic path on which i diligently tread. was yo-yoing so different?

at the time i wasn't ready to consider it, but now, from the moment npr wakes me up to when i crash at night, i'm a yo-yoer. it doesn't just mean that i know this trick or that. i choose my pants based on which yo-yo's fit well in the pocket. i wear my callouses with the same pride that wrestlers take in their cauliflower ears. most of my best friends are 'fiends', and though i may only see some of them a few times a year, the dedication we share for this simple toy is all the common ground we need. for the love of pete, i've written 80-something blog entries on life as a yo-yoer! evidently, somewhere along the road i decided that 'the noble disk' (another great 'zine) is, in fact, a worthy centerpiece to one's sense-of-self... oh, and these days my notebook is covered in yo-yo stickers.

lately, it feels as though things are really spinning (oh, the pun), and i'm not talking about the whole 'boom' thing. i'm not interested in # of yo-yo's sold, but in how yo-yoers perceive themselves, and how the world sees them. bride was years ahead of his time with 3a, and likewise i feel as though the right confluence of variables for a sense of the 'yo-yo 'collective' is [finally] coming together.

you have chris allen, who, while perhaps absent of bride's edge, has worked his ass off to create (in yoyoskills.com) the means for yo-yoers and manufacturers to hear each other. you have paul han and bombsquad borrowing from the norcal skate scene to reinvent the 'yo-yo aesthetic'. you have the studio sessions guys pushing tricks into new and glorious territory (i think of them lately as our equivalent to the aforementioned bones brigade). you have save deth, at long last picking up fiend's torch and releasing a combination dvd + magazine which emphasizes not just tricks or toys, but music and lifestyle. and you have steve brown, once a contributor to fiend and now 9 days into his effort to document and present a yo-yo trick for every day of 2011. modern yo-yoing brims with the kinds of charismatic iconoclasts which, ironically, tend to inspire a sense of cohesion.

it's always a good time to play yo-yo, because yo-yoing is fun and interesting... but this is truly a good time to BE a yo-yoer, because it's starting to feel like something exciting again. my humble thanks to mark mcbride, and to anyone who's ever made that their mission.

yo-yo #77: raw bc blank

it occurs to me that i'm of the last generation of yo-yoer's who learned to throw during a time when transaxles and ball bearings were not widely available. although, somewhat ironically, my first yo-yo was a yomega brain, i traded it away for what was essentially a glorified imperial. fixed axle yo-yoing was just 'yo-yoing' in the 1980's, and for most of the 90's. and while i wasn't a 'serious' player by any stretch (and thank god for that as a child), i think you never really get away from how you defined yo-yoing when you were first exposed to it. my old teacher, the composer thomas oboe lee, once told me that as you 'grow up', you begin to take the greatest delight in the music you heard as a child - that's 'what music is' to you, and you come back to it.

this yo-yo was given to me by matt carter. when i first became aware of the online community, matt was already an established 'yo-yo artisan' with his own aesthetic-mod forum at dave's skill toys. at the time i was much more concerned with function than with form, and i largely ignored his corner, though i'd been regularly impressed by his work.

i got to meet matt at ma states this year, and even played one of his 'crow'd fusions', which i found gratifyingly similar to the flying v in play. although it was not clear to me before this year, matt is hardcore about his wood yo-yo's. i figured he'd dig no jives, seeing as he designed the graphics for at least 3 of the 'modern mandalas', but throwing wood really is his bag. we're kindred spirits in the 'school of lo-fi'.

he handed me this yo-yo at the contest and asked me to throw it around. it's a late 90's blank from the workshop of brad countryman, purveyor of the hummingbird and bc lines, and later tom kuhn yo-yo's. while the bc-era no jives are generally seen as being slightly inferior to those of the san francisco days, he's always had the fixed gap, glued-construction woody completely dialed. this example being no exception, it slid along on the string like molten butter on glass, and i was surprised when matt told me that he, himself had put it together from the parts.

though i protested for a second (or maybe just pretended to), he bade me keep it; to finish it up on my own - paint it or carve it. i've actually left it alone, owing to my sense that i really couldn't add to its simple perfection in any constructive way. he actually gave me another, in parts, to assemble and finish on my own. for whatever reason, it's still in pieces in a cloth bag... perhaps because this one plays so well.

yesterday, i was talking to my friend drew. as usual, we were discussing one thing, and gradually, like some heliocentric plant, our discussion naturally bent toward yo-yoing. drew's planning on buying a longboard, and we were discussing different models. i've frequently highlighted the distinctions between ball bearing and wood axle yo-yo's, and how they compare with other tools of 'dynamic art'. electric vs. acoustic guitars, new school vs. retro surfboards... standard 'trick' skateboards vs. longboards. in each case, the exponents of the former tend to focus on 'results' (fast, progressive shredding, 'destroying the wave', tré flips to smith grinds) while the latter tend to emphasize an attitude of 'cruising'. certainly there are people who attack an acoustic guitar with blindingly fast arpeggios, and i'm not gonna lie - i could hit some pretty complicated tricks on this yo-yo... but i'm not INCLINED to. and i like that i'm not.

as i told drew (and as egomaniacal as it feels typing this), i'd like to develop myself in to the 'gerry lopez' of yo-yoing; and not (please understand) in terms of recognition. it's true that as a surfer, lopez was unmatched, known as 'mr. pipeline' throughout the 70's. he cultivated a tremendous style that became immediately recognizable on any wave. what i find far more impressive, however, is the fact that he has aged with absolute grace. by his own admission, he can't go out and surf pipe at 62 the way he did when he was younger, or the way the young lions attack it now. but he continues to surf, with dignity and elegance, and he seems to treat every wave like it's a gift - which of course, it is. though he was once one of the most celebrated surfers of his era, he's absolutely the kind of guy you can imagine standing waist deep in the shorebreak, pushing some kid into his first wave... without even telling him his name. unlike gerry, my name really IS irrelevant, but i still want to 'be that guy'.

this is the kind of yo-yo i'd like to throw as i grow old (should i be so lucky). i once heard a compelling comparison between psychoanalysis and art. both are designed to explore the inner intricacies and compulsions of the human mind. what divides the two, however, is what's done with the discoveries. when psychoanalysis arrives at a discovery, it holds on to it, applying the truth to one's life and actions and attitudes. when art makes a discovery, it lets the discovery go. when an artist tries to rehash the same idea again and again without moving forward, the result tends to feel unnatural; forced, obscene, stagnant. art's got to be allowed to move on. i don't see myself as old, but i'm acutely aware of the direction in which my yo-yoing is headed. where a couple years ago coming up with a complicated combo would feel fulfilling to me, now i'm more interested in being aware of how a yo-yo feels at it spins, or in the 'thwack' of the wood as it connects with my palm. it's not a lot... just everything.

i don't really believe in the idea of 'transcendence' (at least in terms of moving 'beyond' this moment or place)... but i like the idea of growing past the compulsion to 'do tricks'; at least the fancy ones. i love watching the insanity my friends come up with on a yo-yo, but the older i get, the more the ideal of 'complexity' seems to shrink off into the horizon. when i'm old, i'd like to be the 'archetypical old guy', shooting the moon in the park, approached by some kid who aims to show me up with his new-fangled toy and new-fangled skill... i'd like to be secure enough to let him. a heavily idealized image, to be sure, but it reflects my desire to 'move on toward simplicity'.

i'd like to find the way to apply gerry lopez's 'soul arch' to yo-yoing, and to let that be enough.
because it really is.