[[Notes]] - Topics: [[Creativity]], [[Self-expression]] - People: [[Rodney Mullen]] - Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GVO-MfIl1Q --- ## Summary - [[Liberate yourself from that which restricts your creative freedom and self expression]]. [[If you repress you depress. To impress, you must express.]] - Be humble. Be excited. Be yourself. Stay humble. Stay engaged. Stay true. - Cultivate a deep library of knowledge. This allows you to connect and compose new ideas or deepen your understanding of old ones. - [[There's intrinsic value in creating for the sake of creating it]]. - [[The degree to which we connect to a community is in proportion to our individuality, which we are expressing by what we do]]. - [[Take what others do, make it better, and give it back so that we all rise further and higher together]]. - [[The beauty of skateboarding is that no one guy is the best]]. - Focus on being your best. Focus on [[Always be yourself|always being yourself]]. ## Notes ### Be humble. Be yourself. - Be humble. Be excited. Be yourself. Stay humble. Stay engaged. Stay true. - [[Always be yourself]]. [[Always learn. Humility. Keep working hard.]] - (Skating) "These guys, they were just being themselves. There was no opponent directly across from you. And I loved that sense." - "As humbling as it was, I began again." - "I've had so much success that I strangely always feel unworthy of." - "It give you that clarity of perspective of, man, it's just me, and popularity, what does that really mean again? Not much." - Humble yourself. You are not better. You have just lived differently. Recognize that we are all equal - [[These are good people doing their imperfect best to improve the world the best way they know how| human beings doing their imperfect best]]. ### Library of knowledge - "I had a deep well of tricks to draw from." - Establish a deep library of experience, knowledge. techniques, and ideas that you can **connect to compose** new ideas. - See: [[Stacking ammo]], [[Zettelkasten]], and [[George Carlin's foolproof system for organizing ideas]]. - "I had this infrastructure, this deep layer, where it's like, on my gosh, it's just your foot." - Having a deep understanding of something allows you to connect micro concepts by examining the mechanics of things - the nature of how things work vs. the nature of the problem you're trying to solve / overcome. - "The next thing you know, there's 20 more tricks based on the variation." - Practicing technique is not the same as exploring what that technique allows you to do. [[The technique is just your tool]]. ### Evolution - "It was evolving upward, when someone tells you they're a skater today, they' pretty much mean a street skater, because freestyle, it took about 5 years for it to die." - Recognize the evolution of things. Recognize your contributions in it. Choose whether you wish to be a part of that evolution moving upward. ### Compose, create, and share - "And that? An ollie. That's why they call me **the godfather of modern street skating**." - **Create and share** composable building blocks. This allows others to take things further than you could have ever imaged or do alone. - **Pay creativity forward**. Inspire others just like how others have inspired you. - "**Real respect** is given by how much we take what other guys do, we make it our own, and then we **contribute** it back to the community in a way that **edifies** the community itself." - A community-driven creative fly-wheel. ### Community - "[[The greater the contribution, the more we express and form our individuality]], which is so important to a lot of us who feel like rejects to begin with." - [[The degree to which we connect to a community is in proportion to our individuality, which we are expressing by what we do]]. - [[Take what others do, make it better, and give it back so that we all rise further and higher together]]. - Open source ethos - Community is everything. ### Liberate yourself to be yourself - [[There was a really liberating sense about it, because I no longer needed to protect my record as a champion]]. - [[Self knowledge has a liberating quality]]. - "What drew me into skateboarding was the **freedom**, was now restored, where I could **just create things**." - [[Liberate yourself from that which restricts your creative freedom and self expression]]. - Let go of ego. Let go of that external sense of self and embrace your internal sense of self. You are not the character that others perceive. - The character that others see is a manifestation of your [[Authentic self]] - coloured by doubt, ego, and fear. Self expression is a never-ending process removing that colouring so that [[How can I be me? | you can simply be you]]. - "Winning isn't the word. I won it once. **The rest of the time, you're just defending.**" - Defending yourself restricts you from expressing yourself. ### Creative process - "How can I expand, how can the context, how can the **environment change the very nature** of what I do?" - [[Context shapes content]]. - The heart of ingenuity and innovation is to connect ideas in a way that no one expects them to connect. - [[There's intrinsic value in creating for the sake of creating it]]. ### Deconstructing and reconstructing - "All of these tricks are made of sub-movements, executive motor functions, more granulate to the degree to which I can't quite tell you... But every trick is made of combining 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 movements." - Conceptually **break things down** into their mechanical parts. Visualize and understand how they **connect** and work together. Use this knowledge to try something new. Embrace your feelings of [[What if]]. [[Simplify and connect]] concepts to form new ideas or to deepen your understanding of old ones. - "Let the cognitive mind rest back, let your intuition go as you feel these things." [[Don't think, feel]]. - "It's knowing the technology so well that you can **manipulate it and steer it** to do things it was **never intended** to do." ### Self expressions - [[The beauty of skateboarding is that no one guy is the best]]. - [[What makes them great is the degree to which they use their skateboarding to individuate themselves]]. - [[Skaters... they tend to be outsiders, who seek a sense of belonging, but belonging on their own terms]]. ### Motivation for innovation - "What is it that will punch you? To bring it to another level." - "When you've had it all, sometimes guys die on the vine with all that talent." ## Original ![[Rodney Mullen - Pop an ollie and innovate-1.jpg]] ![[Rodney Mullen - Pop an ollie and innovate-2.jpg]] ![[Rodney Mullen - Pop an ollie and innovate-3.jpg]] ![[Rodney Mullen - Pop an ollie and innovate-4.jpg]] ![[Rodney Mullen - Pop an ollie and innovate-5.jpg]]