Realize Zine #9

By Jeff LaPrade It set in fast, only a few weeks in, it had to be. I started skating around that age of 13, it was everywhere around me, and I could not stand up on roller blades, or jump on a bike at all. After a few short summer weeks with a duct taped Muska Kamikazi deck, the whole world transformed. My eyes darted around on every car ride, building a fantasy skatepark out of anything that entered my view. Now everyday ordinary places became tools for unlimited fun. Look at the classic and ever loved example, the red curb.

Slappies are a whole genera of skateboarding maneuvers spawned from the immense creativity in skateboarding, all build off of red curb.

Fast forward twelve years and the part of my brain that wants to turn everything around me into a skatepark just will not stop. Though I may not hold my hand out the window and pretend to be grinding the passing cars as I relax in the passenger seat of a car, I still cannot help but gaze in wonder at the giant skatepark around me. Imagining all of the things I possibly could, completely unbounded by my actual ability, and left up to my creative mind. That is what makes those skateboarding video games so fun, they try so hard to capture that intense creative feeling of skateboarding.

I call this thing that took over me, that transformed my world, “the love”. And for me as a skateboarder it is anything you could possibly grind, jump over, ride under, or interact with using a skateboard in any way imaginable. This mindset is intriguing to me, it brings me into such a blissful state.

In the recent years I begun to see “the love” in a different way. I saw it not through skateboarding but through my other creative friends. The artists I knew gazed at giant walls, mesmerized by the thoughts of what they may paint on it, it was “the love”.

Musicians getting lost in a jam, just trying to express their feelings through the tips of their fingers. I began to see “the love” in everyone around me that was doing what they loved to do.

To me everything is an art, skating, music, health, love, mathematics, and life in general all take an immense amount of creative energy. When humans find out what they productively enjoy doing, what they love to do, they seem to maximize their own potential in what they can do to help the world. Be respectful, be kind, but most of all, strive to do what you love. Find “the love”