Author: harold

I went to France for my shortest trip over there, ever. Three days.

Back, strongly jetlagged. I keep thinking how when we take off at noon local time, we go so fast that we catch up with the night falling on the East side of Earth.

Which is quite amazing when you think about it.

And then how we travel over the earth and not across, using the curvature/shortest route which makes us fly above freaking Greenland. Hi NorthNorth! Planes are outstanding (over 100K flights a day around the world).

Always lovely to land with a supreme window seat’s sunrise from the sky, right before breakfast with family in a rainy, cold and a bit gloomy March in the suburbs of Paris. Lots (but not enough) of delicious food and beverages would follow.

It’s crazy how those 20 hours of cloud gliding are just normal bus, public transportation stuff to me at this point, doing it since 2009. Always the same folks, places, gates. Yet, it’s still wild. 10,000 miles/16k kms in a metal tube, bam. In many ways it will make one wonder about mortality, technical progress, who the fuck farted repeatedly for a hour, etc.

I think I saw Rick Rubin around Japan Airlines at LAX but maybe I’m totally wrong.

Heavy heart. Thankful.

Costing $4,000 AGAIN.

Mario Galaxy is too much fun. And Knoll furniture is too dope.

Hearing re-scheduled to May 17th.

I don’t regret being born and living the things I did at the age I did. But if there’s one thing I’m a bit jealous of the early 20s today, it’s women on skateboards:

Vitória. It’s like, having one around would have totally changed my world. I would be a different person if I had been in a group of skaters including a Vitória, or two. I could see the path to living in the south of France, trying to live off of many things while running a lil skate brand or something.

She is so effortless. I am disgusted and attracted and just so happy it’s so amazing that heel’ is just perfect I love you girl

It’s like, skateboarding still feels new with women around, which is so wrong. I’m seeing some at the park, it used to never, ever, ever happen. Fuck those times for that.

The now though? I’m loving it. More, please. Tryna work on my tre with bad bitches

I love that moment. First it’s so L.A. in every way. They’re both simply trying to do their jobs. They’re both understanding that, yet, have to confront each other. Amicably. It’s something about street skateboarding. That social tension that needs to somehow, flow.

Ishod being Ishod:

He goes for it. Drenched in sweat, not the first try. His body probably hurtin’, tired, ready for food but gotta get some clips! That’s his job and she has to acknowledge that while doing hers. Respectfully disrespectful. It’s a crazy dance.

Ishod being Ishod, he lands on that rail like he’s sipping some mojito. The man is possessed.

Utilizing cities like absolutely no one else does, will always be entertaining to me. Thank y’all, street pros. Much love.

So absurd to read the entry in Wikipedia. “was”.

I had just re-watched everything DBZ last summer. From start to finish, including all the movies. You know, background TV.

Dragon Ball is so deeply entrenched in my upbringing. It unlocked imagination more than everything else, as Akira was just blasting all the doors wide open: talking animals, technology that just “POOF” and exists, flying humans and energy balls (yes, Street Fighter picked that up from him). And, an odd kid with a monkey tail.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Akira Toriyama.

I voted.

Speaking of Eiffel tower (kids asked “have you been there and is it tall?” lmao), it made me wonder which buildings are taller today?

I processed this thinking, “the Eiffel tower is probably barely in the top 30 tallest buildings today.”

I looked it up. It’s not even in the top 100! It was the tallest structure in the world for 40 years. Crazy.

Lakhta Center in Russia, 462m (1,500 feet), 16th tallest in the world.

Also interesting: almost all buildings higher than 330 meters (1,000-ish feet) have been built in the past fifteen years, in Asia. It demonstrates that technology from 3D modeling to the latest structural progress and massive, quite suspicious financing made those super tall structures possible and that mainly a homogeneous population can look forward to living on top of each other.

I can’t stand skyscrapers. I marvel at the technical prowess but I cannot imagine living in a vertical city, spending my time in lobbies and elevators to reach out the pool or the grocery store, for months on end? Absolutely not.

I need the ground, I need horizontality, birds singing. I need normal wind, not that freezing, violent shit on the 87th floor.

I was playing my bass guitar last weekend, as usual. But this time I had a visit from my friend’s son and his little cousins.

When I’m about to play, things get quiet in my mind. No thoughts. Pure focus. Rhythm, I’m holding it. Melody, I’m playing it. Harmony, I’m observing it. I disappear in plain sight, closing my eyes and letting it all out through my fingers while I smile and think about the next 8 bars and hopefully, don’t forget about the break.

The cousins were watching. After my traditional hour of practice, I relax my shoulders and hear a faint and cute “bonjour” outside.

I know it’s them and It’s so I N T E N S E.

Five black children age 5 to 12, in front of me, asking me questions about guitars and Eiffel Towers. The wah pedal leaves them speechless.

What they don’t know is how profound that whole thing is to me. It’s always a challenge to retrieve my speech after playing my instrument. I think music and language are using the same parts of the brain and it takes me a few minutes to get back to actual talk. And, they’re black kids.

I’ve never had black children around me. I was always the only one, and once I was an adult in France, I had white children around me. No more. The default is black now.

They’re standing there smiling and giggling for no reason other than being adorable and I want to grab them one by one, play with them for hours and at some point, hold them hard against me and tell them what I wanted to hear from a black person when I was their age, but never got.

“you’re beautiful” “you’ll be alright” “observe the world” “be good, be nice, be the best you can be” “dude, where’s my car?”

That kind of stupid shit.

Black kids always make me breathe so deeply.