Matt L. Roar is a writer and psycho-therapist. He is the author of MY WAR.
If Walt Whitman was a skater he’d be Tyshawn, because they both go huge and artfully destroy the boundaries of what is possible. Mark Suciu with his precision and headiness, would be Gertrude Stein, who skillfully fucked with language and meaning as a concept. All the skaters out there doing finger flips and other illegal tricks would be New Narrative writers because they challenge formal rules and the normies get mad about it. As a writer and skater I’ve found that poetry and experimental writing, like skateboarding, are chock full of different schools and forms and factions and drama. But when you look past the noise everybody is looking for the same things: community, the chance to contribute to the conversation, to be seen, to share their own unique -ism, to get and give love.
Both practices (writing and skating) are about lines and flow, surprise, unexpected movements and connections. Writing poems, you don’t know where you’re going when you start out, and you can end up in a weird place that feels good or strange and unexpected. The poet Toni Mirosevich speaks about “entering through the side door ” while writing. “People would go straight towards writing about something like heading right into a brick wall. If they shifted their focus and looked to the side they might find a less logical and more interesting ‘side door’ into material.” The most compelling skating also “enters through the side door.” It approaches a new type of object, or does something fresh and unexpected within an established framework or spot. When you’re writing sometimes things click and you finish up and you’re like, yes, that’s it. And sometimes you keep trying and trying and it doesn’t work. You have to show up for all of it: the joy, the frustration, the moments of accidental grace, the disappointment. I don’t think I need to explain how that connects to skateboarding.
The poet Courtney Bush writes, “Paying attention is the basic mode of love/ That doesn’t mean it’s easy.” Filming your friend, giving someone a hoot or a tail tap, watching clips and engaging in the conversation of skateboarding, is all giving and getting attention. It’s all love. Same with showing up to the reading and witnessing, listening, “paying” attention, spending time with people’s work. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the phrase is “paying” attention. It can be painful to do but it might be the most generous gift we have to give. Science experiment: next time you’re bummed out/bored during the session, try paying some kind attention to someone who might need it. Maybe it’s yourself.
