Chasing Wallace Stevens, Adam Brown and Danny Way

Maybe I've been chasing Wallace Stevens all along. I don't know. I'm no expert. Didn't know that much about him, really. But he came to stand for something in my mind before I even read him.

Wallace Stevens is a path, a way to combine the philosophical and the creative; the absurd and the profound; the stars, the Earth, myth and books. From my first times reading him, I've know he was doing something with his writing that I want to do with mine. It's also his commitment to writing, since he didn't write for a living, but still made time, composing in his head on his walk to work. All the same, I don't want to get shoved to the ground by Hemingway or sell insurance like Stevens did.

I like Stevens as a model, albeit an imperfect one. Not a catwalk-turning model, but something to strive for.  I've been thinking about a couple other models lately: Adam Brown and Danny Way. I don't have designs on being a modernist poet, a Navy SEAL or a game-changing professional skateboarder. But at times I've wanted to be all three.

I'm not going to go into detail about Adam Brown's story. I'll let Eric Blehm do that for you in his book "Fearless: The Undaunted Courage and Ultimate Sacrifice of Navy SEAL Team SIX Operator Adam Brown," which I think all human beings should read. What I want to say about Brown is that he has become a model for me for overcoming obstacles. From drug addiction to injuries that should have ended his career, Brown relentlessly and compassionately ran down his dream. He would not be stopped. That's something I want to cultivate further in myself.

And Danny Way represents a couple things. Forging a new path, a new way of doing things is part of it. As I've mentioned here, I've been hooked on skateboarding since I was 13. At that time it was Tony Hawk, Mike McGill, Lance Mountain and the Bones Brigade. It was Christian Hosoi and the Alva skaters. It was Mark Gonzales and Mike Vallely. And then at a time when I had drifted a way from skating, Danny Way started building mega ramps and doing things that make my jaw and stomach drop.

If you want to be inspired by the story of a guy who goes after what he loves doing, watch "Waiting for Lightning" about Way jumping over the Great Wall of China. But it's as much Way's life story as it is the jump itself. And that's where it's most powerful. Way represents for me, figuring out how to make a living doing what you love, even when you weren't sure there was a living to be made doing it. Way didn't become a pro skater in a cookie-cutter manner, he redefined what people thought could be done on a skateboard, and revolutionized the sport. Whereas most people think that work is somewhere you go, put in effort, get paid--doctor, lawyer, teacher--Way invented another way to go, doing what he loves.

So there are three models I'm perpetually chasing. Chasing Wallace Stevens is a commitment to write and a striving for depth and form, marrying philosophy and creativity. Chasing Adam Brown is living up to Brown's example of overcoming any obstacle in my path, while not losing sight of what's important in my life. And Chasing Danny Way is creating a new way to think about, to pursue making a living and doing what I love.

That's a lot of chasing. Time to lace up the running shoes.

Skate to Create

"Skateboarding is not a crime." That was one of many bumper stickers on the blue Ford LTD station wagon that was my first car. From Tony Hawk to Powell Perelta, Alva, they were all skate-related, but that was the sticker that seemed to snag a worldview and spoke my truth 22 years ago. Funny how I've thought about putting that same sticker on my truck today.

I just read an article about pro skateboarder Danny Way in Men's Journal by a writer and skateboarder named Bret Anthony Johnston. As he's wrapping up the article, he throws this out there:

"Think Picasso, Hemingway, Dvorak. Think Laird Hamilton, Chuck Yeager... Consider the likelihood that these men don't possess qualities the rest of us lack, but instead have within them intense voids, empty and expansive chambers of possibility. Maybe these voids--which the men fill with what can only be called art--are innate, or maybe they're the result of damage or sacrifice or failures the artists have endured. The origin doesn't matter. Nor does the medium."

Johnston was talking about Danny Way's approach to skateboarding and life and expanding that approach to other artists; other practitioners of life who become great, distinguish themselves, separate themselves in some way through a sustained effort and focus; seeing something in their field that the rest of us haven't.

I've never given myself over to skateboarding in that way, nor have I ever been good enough to justify doing so. But skateboarding has, from the beginning at age 13, represented a worldview for me. It has been one of the few experiences, still today, where the rest of the world melts away when simply cruising or carving or pumping atop asphalt. Like trail running or writing or meditation, where I can be completely in the moment without realizing it.

At age 15 I remember thinking to myself and saying to a few others that skateboarding would be a lifelong passion and activity for me--whether skating or writing about it, etc. I doubt I would have thought about longboarding then, or  long distance longboarding, but that has been the co-evolution of the sport/art and me and where I find my stoke. In addition to writing about skating and skateboarding a few times a week, Bret Anthony Johnston is the director of the creative writing program at Harvard. He's got a book of short stories set in and around Corpus Christi, Texas, and another on creative writing. Someone who gets and shares the stoke.