yo-yo #'s 92 & 93: spyy garagecraft woodies

when i look at my life honestly, all of the most memorable and significant periods - the times when i truly grew and changed as an individual - were when i had it comparatively rough. understand, i never 'actually' had anything rough. i've never been abe lincoln carving out an austere, frontier existence while self-edumacatin' in a cabin. my home has never been torn apart by war or famine or disease (knock on wood).

regardless of one's background though, we all 'have it rough' sometimes. within the context of one's life, you can only compare against your own experiences, and it seems only natural that the times in which we are most hard-pressed are often the ones from which we take the most valuable lessons. there's obviously a tipping-point: if one's challenges are so great or so many that you can't progress at all, it's a different matter. in general though, we need a bit of newton's 3rd law in our lives, lest we spin our wheels (so to speak) in stagnant, boring complacency.

this summer, i took a welcome retreat from nc's 3-digit early july, touching down in calgary, ab to judge the canadian national contest. though the experience was filled to bursting with memorable anecdotes, i might have taken the most joy from the hour or so spent carving and sanding these yo-yo's out of strips of oak in steve's garage. when steve (the proprietor of spyy) married his wife, suzanne, he was already into yo-yo's. as such, crafty dude that he is, it seemed fitting that he should put together some nice DIY yo-yo's as gifts for the guests. i had the pleasure of throwing one of these ink-stamped beauties, too. i'm not sure what kind of wood it was (pine maybe?), but it weighed in around 40g. it was like playing a yo-yo made from gaseous helium.

steve, gary longoria, and i just kind of fell into a pattern with his press and power tools, and at the end of an hour or so, had somehow etched a quintet of slick-looking wood butterflies from his oaken stock. (i love that, depending upon how gary operated the press, they each have distinct scorch-marks along their profiles.)

we were able to cajole the yo-yo's into playing well enough. the narrower of these two has a fairly deep gouge which gives it a bit of a rattle. we later shot lasers at them, etching subtle logos and messages into the wood, and inducing a wonderful scent which i'm sure still pervades steve's basement. the wider butterfly (etched 'supersonic' on one side) ended up perfectly smooth - rare in a wide[ish] gapped butterfly woody. i spent at least 20 minutes hand-sanding it, and the unfinished oak feels softer than teflon.

it wasn't until much later that it occurred to me that it's actually TOO soft.

since these are glued together, we basically had to set the gap using a popsicle stick tool and then pray we got it right. the gap isn't too wide, but the profile of the yo-yo and the smoothness of the inner wall are such that virtually no string will hold a decent bind (much less a tug), and unless the tension is positive to the point of kinking, i can pull the string right through the gap from a full wind - not what i look for in a wooden yo-yo. it's still fun, but i get pissy if i can't set a wooden yo-yo up to do decent moons, and this guy is just too slick & loose.

a few weeks ago, i tried an experimental surgery that had never occurred to me. dead duncan stickers can work wonders in a no jive if the gap's too large, so i surgically cut a line down the radius of one and used tweezers to set it [ever so carefully] around the yo-yo's gap. alas, i was not born to be a surgeon, and the slightest movement of my hand established a 1mm gap in the sticker, causing, in turn, an irregular whir.

beyond that tolerable side-effect? perfection. tight binds, crisp loops, late fly-aways into smooth string-stalls. it's incredible what a little friction can do.

the metaphor holds true for our lives as well. when we're just coasting along, everything going our way, life rarely feels as meaningful as when we're pushing against it to a degree. we need that push-back; it gives us context for our lives - a frame of reference. everybody's different, but i think we all share this universal need; not for hardship so much as something to lean on - something to feel sliding against us as we spin. having that metaphorical traction is what enables us to move.

in yo-yoing, we call it 'response', but i rarely consider how apt the term is. my kids at school want massive gaps so they can get away with any kind of sloppy throw or flailing laceration. they're honest at that age, too. they'll tell you they don't want response because it makes whips hurt. but in our lives, if we're out of control, we SHOULD get that response. we SHOULD get a knuckle-whack, or a speeding ticket, or a dear john letter. when we screw up, our lives should snap back and make us untangle and wind back up before trying again. that cause and effect helps clean us up and give us a handle on where we went wrong.

we live in an era of minimal response. we want it to be easy, but we aren't always wired for easy to seem meaningful. we can design yo-yo's to make tricks more blissful and forgiving, but applying a perfect takeshi recess mod to your life can be a bit trickier. in a world where, more and more, people seek to distance themselves from negative consequences, the idea of inserting some augmented response - of holding oneself to a higher or tougher standard - can feel almost heretical. but it's not always a matter of being hard-headed or artificially going against the grain.

sometimes you just need that extra friction to feel right.

yo-yo # 65: tulipwood eric wolff masterpiece

awhile back, for no good reason at all, i put together an incomplete list of tricks i'd learned. it was fairly substantial, and mostly composed of ridiculously simple stuff culled from now-outmoded (if not defunct) sites.

for years, the only site i learned from was 'ken's world on a string'. hallmarked by simple text and illustrations, kwos is one of the few instructional tools left over from its era, and i still find myself going back to it to check this or that, or to remember old, beloved tricks that i once treasured.

years after i stopped visiting kwos, i stumbled upon the mark hayward/harper reed collaboration, 'howtoyoyo.com'. this may have been the first organized video catalog that i encountered, full of treasures filmed at contests in the early 2000's. i still remember some great, 8-second 5a trick-tutorials by steve filmed in a dark parking lot and performed with laser-cut precision. trying to learn them, i'd have to watch the clip over and over dozens of times. the real cache, though, for me, was the list of picture tricks. performed by dale oliver, bill deboisblanc, dale myrberg, cappy, john bot, and others... it's a trove. and i don't throw that word around (although... who does?). the videos are ridiculously hard to see, but bits can be deciphered.

going through the list i had composed, i ran into a trick from said collection that i had TOTALLY forgotten. buried in the list is a phenomenal trick by bill deblah entiteled 'flower'. upon seeing it in type, i flashed immediately back to a day in 2005, when i sat in my empty classroom until dusk trying to get it wired. i never really did, and abandoned it in frustration. however, when i looked the trick up yesterday, i understood it immediately. i picked up this yo-yo, a gorgeous eric wolff-turned tulipwood butterfly, which i scored last year at nc states, and had it first try. funny how the mind changes. with yo-yoing, it's not like you develop crazy abs or cauliflower ears, or any outward sign that you're 'developing'. but the more you yo-yo, the easier it is to make connections. you really feel how you've grown when you re-approach a concept that seemed difficult or impossible years ago.

anyway, i think it's a cool trick; it feels 'cutesy' and old-fashioned. it got me thinking about the way we create and retain tricks. obviously, they aren't something that you can hold. they aren't objects that can be manipulated whenever, or stored away. and yet, we tend to treat them as possessions; as if we 'pay' for them through the process of learning them, and after we can do them, they become 'acquisitions'. i wasn't thinking about it in such explicit terms when i composed that list years ago, but that's the attitude from which it surely sprang. these here are the tricks that 'belong to me'.

the sticky point is that when you acquire something, it becomes your responsibility; such is the nature of acquisition. if you buy an old pick-up trick, it's yours - you CAN do what you want with it. but if you let it sit stagnant in your front lawn while weeds and shrubs grow through it until it becomes a rusty, dilapidated eyesore, then your negligence has expanded to affect the landscape and community. everything you own, everything you have is, implicitly a BURDEN upon you. some burdens are heavier than others, and the more you've got, the more you're responsible for. we can try to get around it with slippery ideologies and/or ignorance, but it's pretty straight-forward. you've committed to bringing certain things into the fold of your life; into the realm of your 'control'. whether that's a car, a bonsai tree, or a work of art like this yo-yo - or even something intangible, like knowledge or a certain trick, then doing so makes you responsible. whether you mean to or not, the things you HAVE are things to which you tie a piece of yourself. as such, none of the things we acquire should be perceived as trivial.

if, whether tacitly or explicitly you decide, 'i know this yo-yo trick - it's mine,' then caring for it becomes a kind of duty (like changing your cat's litter box, only less gross). how do you care for a yo-yo trick? the same way you care for any artistic element: by doing it right. if you've learned kamikaze, then you should do it correctly, using the elements paul uncovered. if you mean to do something different with it, then you're changing the trick. that's ok, but don't do so casually, just because you have trouble with 'magic drop' or something. when you teach it, teach it right. you're passing it on. you're proliferating a piece of yo-yoing's living tapestry. don't muck it up.

awhile back, jon rob made a good analogy, comparing yo-yo tricks to undiscovered land. the tricks are all there, waiting to be found. you may uncover them, present them, or learn them... but they don't really belong to you, alone. no one can really steal 'your' tricks, and the tricks you learn aren't really 'yours' either (that said, there's nothing cool or interesting about doing a derivative freestyle that people will have seen before). you may have exposed the thing, but once it's out in the open, it kind of belongs to everyone, and everyone who learns it must share the duty.

it's the same with any art. it's not really a question of whether or not i CAN copy picasso's bull sketches... it's more a question of 'what would be the point?' artistically, the moment those pictures have made the journey from picasso's hand to the page, they no longer belong to him. 'intellectual property' lawsuits notwithstanding, the moment an idea or emotion is expressed, it's no longer really within our jurisdiction or control. picasso discovered some incredible ways of drawing a bull. now everyone can do it. but... why would they? spencer berry discovered the movements that compose 'breath'. now everyone can do it (i mean, kind of). but... why would they?

cause it's nice to make pretty pictures? cause 'breath' is a fun yo-yo trick?

why DO we do any tricks that have already been discovered? obviously, in the beginning we have no choice. we perceive yo-yoing to simply be a collection of tricks that we have to learn. by now, i really shouldn't be so perplexed when i happen upon the question 'do you guys make up your own tricks?'... i mean... after a few years, what else is there to do? realistically though, what we'd call 'new' aren't even our own tricks; when viewed close up, the 1a tricks we do are composed of the same underpasses, pops, and landings that have been popular for the past decade. a 'new trick' may be composed of less than 1% innovative material. and when viewed from afar, the tricks we do melt into the landscape of the freestyle or session. a doctor cannot understand the human body without understanding cells. a yo-yoer cannot understand the nature of yo-yoing without a sense for 'tricks'... and yet, just as with the body... it's the WHOLE that really matters.

and that whole must always belong to everyone. no one (not yuuki or shinji or the eternal spirit of pedro flores) is big enough to throw the whole thing.

each of our string hits represents a brushstroke in the painting of our trick, each trick a brush stroke in the painting of our combo, each combo a brushstroke in the painting of our session, and each session a brushstroke in the painting of our life. however we wish to divide it, however we try to stake it off and claim it, yo-yoing is really just one trick, and that's what we have to take care of. though we may reveal this or that fraction thereof... no particle will ever be the exclusive province of any one of us. all of it belongs to all of us, and as such, taking care of it becomes our collective responsibility. nobody gets into yo-yoing for the responsibility. some people see it as a 'bad word', and would certainly rather not associate things like that with yo-yoing. but that's what caring about something boils down to... and if you want to take anything from yo-yoing (or give anything to it)... there's really no escaping the burden.

do it right. have pride. represent.

yo-yo #'s 61 & 62: diamond specials

how do you feel about your yo-yoing?

are you good at it? what does that mean? does being 'good' enable or entitle you to look down on yo-yoers who 'aren't good'? when you see someone who's just started yo-yoing or someone who's been plodding through the basics for years, do you make secret comparisons? do you, somewhere in the base of your brain, feel a little superior? when you finish top 5 at a contest, do you feel a little bad for the guy that got 23rd? and should the guys who finished top 4 look at you that way? to be a good yo-yo player, do other yo-yo players even have to think you're any good? who's the boss of your yo-yoing? who tells you where it should go? are you being honest?

awhile ago, mark mcbride made this post. mark's one of the guys i've always looked up to as a yo-yoer, and one of the few people for whom my respect has actually INCREASED as i've come to learn more about him. although it isn't a new, hot, trendy topic, i think about the ideas behind this post a lot. in some ways, i feel like it really captures the way i see yo-yoing, though it's projected from bride's lens, which is naturally different from my own.

these are diamond specials: good, simple, beautiful yo-yo's, the both of them. i bought the walnut one from collector/photographer shawn garcia, who knows a lot about wood yo-yo's and has been an inspiration. the blonde one was gifted to me outright by my friend izzy, who found it at an antique shop. a pristine relic from the tom kuhn san-fransico era. i play both of these yo-yo's often. because of the rhinestones, it would border on the sinful to flip them butterfly. out in the sunlight, they positively glow during spins, and when i play them i remember hearing tom kuhn describe the first yo-yo he won, a duncan jeweled which, as it reflected the sunset was "the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen".

... i really want to be a 'good yo-yoer'. i have since i bought my purple fireball from zany brainy 10+ years ago. but like vizzini trying to describe 'the man in black' as 'inconceivable', i don't necessarily think it means what you think it means. recently, i've blathered on a lot about the subjective. i've talked about how contests aren't really the best tools for identifying 'what's good'. i don't think i'm a terrible yo-yo player (though my contest results would certainly suggest it). as a judge, i know that most of the tricks i like best would score poorly even if i hit them cleanly (which i rarely do). some people really can walk the line. they can throw the tricks they love on stage, do ok (or better than ok), and be pretty content. i see other yo-yoers who kind of 'closet' their favorite tricks. instead, they practice tricks that feel less natural and less interesting so as to get good results, by which they go on to define a part of themselves. are they happy that way? dunno. maybe.

i think that some players will always associate success with complexity. a trick is 'good' if it's hard; if it makes the observer think 'never in a million years'. a yo-yoer is 'good' if he can do a whole mess of hard tricks. that's but not how i see it at all.

i'm a bass player, and i used to work really hard to be as progressive as possible. i listened to the most technically incredible bassists and scoffed rudely at the ones who didn't know theory or couldn't blister through apoplectic slap solos. i used to pity the ones who believed it their job to 'support' their guitarist(s). i'd heard people say "the song's the thing" a million times (and i'm not sure when it finally registered) but i don't look at it now as i once did. although in some ways, it was useful for me to learn all the technique and theory, i now recognize that the compulsion to do so reflected MY OWN weakness, and not that of 'lesser musicians'. technique was, and remains, a crutch (which is not a bad thing, if you need it). i had to move through technique and complexity to understand, and to get to my own music, but not everyone does. some musicians are born with the understanding that they can play the music inside of them, and that's enough. it can be sloppy and easy and composed of junk that no one but they and their moms would want to listen to. all that matters is that it's authentic to them. some yo-yo players understand that too. once you dissolve the wall between yourself and what you aim to create... no one can ever again call you 'good' or 'bad' at what you do with any authority.

i'm in the process of uploading a yo-yo video. i'm calling it "new adventures in 'lo-fi'", a play on an r.e.m. album. watching it, i'm sure there are plenty of tricks that people would say aren't 'lo-fi' at all, and that's natural. it's not a term that they (or i) get to define for anyone else. actually, i asked a lot of my friends at tn states to show me a 'lo-fi' trick, and almost everyone interpreted the idea differently. doc brought up the distinction between 'moves' and 'tricks', which are often mistaken for each other. some players asked if there was a time or string-hit limit, but to me, it's way more organic than that. it's more like there's an 'intent-limit'. it's about showing me one idea, one thing you love, as opposed to barfing out your last 3 meals and asking me to pick through it and see what's in there. think simple.

i've talked to my friends drew and mitch about comparing 'low-fi' yo-yoing with riding skateboards. drew revealed a fascinating truth to me; that a lot of my skater/yo-yo friends create tricks that base themselves around a similar rhythm. a skateboard trick is often composed of an 'entry' (usually an ollie), some central feature (maybe a grind, manual, or a gap), and then the 're-entry', or roll-away. it occurs to me that most of the tricks i like to see and create are similarly composed; simple tricks with an objective. tricks that have a beginning, middle, and end... based on one fundamental idea. i'm almost never inspired by 30-second combos with a hundred string hits. sure it's difficult, but to me, it's [usually] empty. it's "please for the love of god, look at ME!!!" instead of "hey, check THIS out."

understand, i'm not trying to say that i'm all about stagnation. i don't see 'low-fi' as sitting around, chewing the cud, doing the same tricks you've always done. if that's what it is to you, that's your prerogative, but i did that for years, and there's nothing there for me. i don't think there's anything 'right' about a punk-rocker saying 'whatever. i can play these 9 songs and that's all i need.' the classical virtuoso who feels superior due to the complexity and difficulty of his repertoire is equally deluded.

i think you've got to push... i think life IS pushing... but if you're letting someone BESIDES yourself decide which way you go, no matter how hard you do push, you're still imprisoned.

in yo-yoing, 'simple' has almost become a derogation, but simple tricks are all i really want to do. i guess playing a lot of wood yo-yo has led me to really appreciate the simple, and as anyone who's played the blues will tell you... simple rarely means 'easy'. i don't think you have to play wood (or even responsive) to know where i'm coming from, but maybe it's easier. i'm definitely beginning to feel that 'lo-fi' yo-yoing is about 'progressive simplicity'; about finding new ways to be simple (which can actually be a lot harder than 'finding new ways to be complicated'). it's about creating tricks that make the uninitiated say 'i could totally.' it's about having the courage to look at your yo-yoing and accept it, and to decide without pretense or comparison, where it SHOULD go next.

most of us will never be 'the best yo-yoer in the world' by any standard. it's easy to admit that to ourselves. what's difficult (and maybe a little scary) is to learn how to say sincerely... that you don't want to be.