Art is not a sport

Dear Blog diary,

My first truest love will forever be breaking. Breaking is the foundation of my artistic self. It outwardly opened my life to so many perspectives but was also inwardly a pillar in my self discovery.

Breaking falls under one of those innately human activities. If you go back thousands of years, people were dancing, climbing, swimming, etc.  They weren’t playing video games. There’s something about certain activities that are foundational to our species.

Climbing has become something I truly enjoy. I always say my “active rest.” It’s fun, I enjoy, and allows me to be closer with my big brother who truly is strong as hell. As soon as it gets hard, I tap out.

I relate breaking to climbing.  Both on the human list. They have much different histories but they share a future. Both have humble beginnings and an essence but both are gravitating towards sport. Both are new inductees into the olympics. Both have a foundation that is being shifted away from.  For breaking, it’s cyphers and more of the party jam vibe. For climbing, it’s actual rock outdoors and trad climbing, ironically.

Now, there are people that strictly climb indoors on human-made routes that have moves that are so dynamic that don’t mimic nature at all. Now, there are people that start breaking and do the same moves because dynamic transitions and power wins competition.

If anyone holds the essence of breaking, I would say Ken Swift. The attitude, the style, the flow. He had an aggression but expressed with finesse. Smoking your opponent but intuitively assumed that style almost superseded winning.

If anyone holds the essence of climbing, I would say Chris Sharma. Here is a guy that goes to the World Cup of bouldering, doesn’t intend to enter, gets pressured because he is the strongest, enters, and then his keys/wallet fall out of his pocket mid competition because he took the comp so nonchalantly that he forgot to take them out of his pocket. He wins! Then gets the victory taken away because he tests positive for weed.

The essence of the two activities are very different. I believe their futures to be the same. All sport, training, formality. The reality is that there’s the NBA and there are also pick up games at the park.  Room for all.

There is a thought experiment called the Ship of Theseus. The question is, as time passes and you’re replacing pieces of a ship, is it the same ship even though all of the original pieces have been replaced?

I will quote rapper Ad Rock from Beastie Boys and say, “I don’t know.”

Best regards,

E