Page 86 - THE ENDLESS WAVE | Skateboarding, Death & Spirituality

THE ENDLESS WAVE | PART ONE
the magazine and let others take the reins. Letting go is a part of dealing with loss.
When I first started writing this book, I was doing it alone. Through a podcast I created, I had the opportunity to meet up with Nathan Ho. Nathan has indeed lived up to his name. Not only did he motivate me to write, but his contrib- ution has made this a much better book than if I’d done it alone. Even this is a new experience for me and having a collaborator feels pretty damn good.
I hope this book becomes a launching platform for you. Death encompasses so many different things including grief, active listening, legacy work and green burials. No matter where you wind up on your research, I hope that in some small way, this book has helped you start that journey.
From the start, I knew that pairing the subjects of death and dying with skate- boarding would strike some as odd or bizarre. But speaking as a skater here, I really don’t give a shit. If the subject of death is something you hadn’t consid- ered before, then this book has done its job. I am acutely aware that there is a high probability of someone taking the ideas found in this book and taking them to a much higher level. That’s ok — the same thing happened when “The Concrete Wave” first hit. If there hadn’t been my book, it’s unlikely that Spin Magazine would have done a story on Dogtown and Z Boys and that documen- tary wouldn’t have been made. It makes me think how many other amazing stories within skateboarding are still buried just waiting for the right exposure.
When I was growing up, I distinctly recall my mother quoting George Bernard Shaw’s famous saying “Youth is wasted on the young.” While I can understand where Shaw was coming from, I’d wish he’d lived long enough to try skate- boarding. The funny thing about skateboarding is that if you stay with it long enough, you will wind up in a wonderful dual world of youthful adulthood. I never stopped doing something in my childhood/adolescence and it has car- ried me through life for almost 5 decades.
Back in the mid-90s, skateboarding looked very different than it does now. I’d like to think that in some small way, I helped to contribute to this change. But
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