REST IN POWER MARC JOHNSON

WORDS FROM THE PAST FOR THE FUTURE

The people who interest me the most are timeless. They aren’t timeless like a pair of Levi’s 501 dungarees. They’re artists, they’re musicians, they’re writers, they’re people who tap into what they love it and share that in way that’s so compelling that you become invested its origins. They use their talent to unlock more for those who connect with it. That’s depth, not the performative depth we’re so used to.

Marc Johnson was timeless. He was a rare person whose mind existed beyond and before the years he was with us.

He was one of the most prolific skateboarders ever and he shared everything with skateboarding. He loved the Velvet Underground, a band who broke up years before he was born. He loved Charles Bukowski’s Ham on Rye, a book published when he was five years old. He spoke openly about everything. He was interested in the physical and metaphysical: history and the future. You could see this in his graphics and his tricks, specifically the references and breadcrumbs he left for us.

As much as Marc Johnson was present, he was always seemed to be somewhere else. And when he had the opportunity to communicate, it was often with a flurry of ideas, culled from the things he was fascinated by.

Like most of us, I’ve been thinking about Marc Johnson. My marathon viewing and reading led me to a full interview excerpted from Lucas Beaufort’s DEVOTED: A Video Documentary On Skateboard Media (2017).

I like to read old record reviews to see what people thought about music at the time or old news articles, written shortly after something significant happened. Released in 2017 and most likely filmed in 2016, Johnson’s commentary is possibly more relevant and poignant than it was when he and Beaufort originally spoke.

I transcribed some of Marc’s thoughts from the past on the future.

All quotes from Marc Johnson via his DEVOTED full interview by Lucas Beaufort and edited for brevity and clarity.

50 to 75% of online content is throwaway. It’s a race to get the most worthless, pointless filler because if all you posted was amazing, you wouldn’t be posting very often.

How fucking boring is the climate in skating?

It’s almost hard to continue to appreciate what you’re seeing because you’re seeing so much of it. Every day, every five minutes, a new video comes out, and it’s like, “Oh my god! He nosegrinded a 35 stair handrail! He nosegrinded a 36 stair handrail! He nosegrinded a 37 stair handrail! After a while you’re like, “Eh, seen it.” Still amazing. You can acknowledge it for being as mind-blowing as it is, but it doesn’t get you sparked to go skate.

You got to post something. TBT to something I’ve posted four times in the past two years. I’m gonna repost this thing I posted six months ago because nobody’s gonna know. Nobody has an attention span anymore. How could you remember that when you see a thousand images and fifty videos a day? There’s no room in your hard drive.

Every video that goes in, every photo that goes in, pushes an old one out.

[Instagram] People use it for different reasons. It’s like, “Look at me, I’m at this restaurant with these people. I’m at the bar with these people.” It’s not real. They construct a fake idea of who they are. “My life sucks, but I went to Six Flags with fuckin’ Eddie Murphy… one time.” Get your likes and comments, but nobody’s life is that fuckin’ rad.

In the future, there is no future. It doesn’t exist. If people want print media to exist, they will fuckin’ make sure print media exists. Just like somebody invented the internet. How crazy is that? The future is something that you build and you’ll never see the future.

When I started skating, this gnarly connection was made. It was like a language that I learned how to speak. You’re learning and progressing and changing and getting better at something, and it becomes more precious to you. Skateboarding saved me from my life before skateboarding. That’s so special to me. It made my life so much fucking better.

It’s something I hold on to. I fucking value it. You go play on a toy with your friends, that’s all it is in reality. What it’s done for me…. forever.