Keeping it all in perspective

A lot of people are starting to jump my ass about getting some videos out. I mean, I am RECEIVING SOME FLACK for not doing more filming. My best friends, close acquaintances, distant buddies and damn people I have never met except in a forum somewhere have formed an alliance of People Out to Annoy Me in a concentrated effort to motivate and expedite my DVD release.

Hah! Bite yer nails, bitchahz!! I pwnez da skillz!

...Sorry, that was uncalled for.

I’ve gone back and forth across the fence with myself about these things over the years, and it’s gone from being a complete ego thing to a complete lack of one. I used to have a plan for what would be filmed, a few of them actually scripted out, and a baseline first draft for the filming.

*SIGH* But I’m disillusioned. Jaded. Soured.

After the past 9 years of running a private martial arts school, I have lost a lot of interest in passing on my knowledge. I can REALLY sympathize with my high school teachers now, and let me say this to any of them that might still be alive and on the off-chance, reading this: I’m sorry. I have no idea how you put up with me and got the amount of work out of me that you did.

(And Miss Chambers, my Sophomore physics teacher in 1987: I REALLY wanted to sleep with you. Back then there was no way it was gonna happen, but these days everyone is doing it and I can’t help feeling cheated.)

I started teaching because all the people I was training with either died or moved too far for me to travel to. Chris Petrilli moved to Arizona. Pa Herman died in March 2000 on the Autobahn, along with his wife and a few students. Augustine Fong and I parted ways. I left Doce Pares of my own accord. There is a very famous Filipino Martial Arts teacher who I would have stayed with, but his students annoyed the living hell out of me. One of the problems of fame is that, in martial arts at least, the people who train with you will eventually use that as some kind of know-all trump card to play in the face of everyone else, and for some reason, it just torques my nuts to hear it. “We train with the Pendekar”, “Grandmaster is my teacher” kack, kack, kack, I’ve heard it all before. But it makes the day to day training difficult with so much fanboy activity gumming up the works.

Um. Anyway, a couple of friends of mine started nagging me for classes, so we started getting together a few times a week. That was back in 2000, and many people have passed through my doors since then. Also, much Advil has gone down my gullet because of this. After a few years, the Advil turned into Chimay. (Like magic!)

I think anybody who aspires to open a public store front martial arts school, and plans on making a living at it, should invest at least five years in just teaching out of their garage. Believe me, you’ll have your eyes opened. It takes dedication, and I don’t mean just to your art. Lots of new schools fail after the first year or so, and I think this could be avoided if a young teacher had a better idea of what was in store for him. To this end, teaching out of your garage for a few years is the better bargain. You get to make your mistakes without too much loss in time or finances, as well as less family strain. You can cut your teeth without making a critical error that leads to financial ruin, or your wife walking out on you. Or both.

Wasn’t I talking about videos? How the hell did we end up here???

I remember the mid 1980’s when the martial arts video bin was empty and desolate. You had a handful of selections from Panther Productions, (usually half of those were arts you had never heard of) and a few random private videos on Tai Chi, Aikido, maybe a shaolin form or two. Nothing really major, and I could usually count on a few people from whatever martial arts school I was attending to own at least half of them.

This was before the days of internet, email, youtube and a gajillion other things that you can use to upload and share your DNA helix with the rest of the world in seconds.

So now the time for committing my ideas to paper and video has come, and I’m reluctant to do it. I don’t want it out there. I get close to filming something, and then back off at the last minute, driving my friends and family berserk because they prepared for weeks so I could shoot something. I need to get off my ass and just do it, I know. Thing is, I don’t want it to become an experience I’ll regret. I have attracted my share of martial art freaks as well as friends, and the occasional internet stalker. You can go HERE to read what a typical exchange between myself and one of these things looks like. And sadly, he’s not the worst I’ve had.

Which brings me to my next topic: Exposure and perspective.

Steve Perry just posted a bit about having thick skin as an author, and its sound advice for anything. For the past year I have been giving myself and my time to the professional end of writing, as well as posting dozens of class videos on youtube. Now, being in the public eye for both writing and martial arts is like swimming in shark-infested waters with a 9-inch gash in your leg and a pork chop tied around your penis while trying to avoid Bosnian snipers, and someone drops a crate loaded with barracudas into the mix.

But the secret is that if you ignore the sharks, snipers and barracudas, you can make it to shore unharmed. Well, unless you bleed to death first.

For every nice comment on my blog, videos or forum articles, I have received about 10 negative ones. Nearly all of them are filled with bile and hatred, and nearly all of them are from people who have no idea who I am or what I’m about. Which is the overall problem with the internet, the kids get to eat at the same table as the adults with no boundaries set. Anyone can say anything with impunity. A person in Australia with 3 months training in Tae Kwon Do can chime in with his “expert” opinion about my 24 years of Silat, and everything is just okey-day. People for other organizations can blast me about daring to learn an art in another country that has the same name as theirs, and then publicly demonstrating it without swearing fealty to whatever charlatan is currently claiming figurehead status (I always wondered, what are they going to do…Fly out to Java and demand every Indonesian stop doing it as well? If the Indonesians didn’t laugh themselves to death, they would kill the foreigners for even thinking such an asinine thing.)

In a way, I’m grateful this happened early. I have fought my wars, screamed my obscenities and spent my spleen before I got too far off the ground professionally. People assaulted my work, and I beat my head against a wall wondering why these people just didn’t get it, but eventually I came to realize (with a hell of a lot of prodding from my friends) that they were NEVER going to get it, and I needed to get on with something else. That’s where perspective comes in, seeing who and where you are as a person, and your progress in becoming the thing you are striving for. People who have no dreams of their own can’t stand someone who does, and even more galling are those who keep getting back up after a fall and trying again. Anyone who was involved with the civil rights movement is familiar with this saying: Keep your eyes on the prize.

Writing is a little different, although subject to the same vehemence. I feel lucky to have such people as Mushtaq Ali, Steve Perry, Jason Jystad and a few others in my life that have offered guidance and support while I iron the bugs out. And, despite the occasional ribbing I get from some of these older-than-dirt bastards, I also get a strict education on critical thinking and writing. Mushtaq does it more “behind the scenes”, pointing me out to various books and gently nudging me in one direction or another. Perry blatantly kicks me in the direction he wants me to go and publicly dares me to be a better writer. Sort of like Gurdjieff and Huck Finn standing over my shoulder simultaneously. Weird, but it works.

But the downside is that you pour your heart into your work, and someone with no works of their own and an axe to grind belittles it with a sneering comment or a spiteful review. Again, your sense of perspective will be your greatest asset to you in these times, knowing in your heart who you are and where you are going will stonewall most of the critics against having a negative impact on what you write in the future. Few people can really write from the heart, and the ones that do must guard it carefully because it’s more easily damaged if left unprotected.

Also, Journalistic professionalism isn’t exactly a widespread virus. I see places where other writers copped out or simply chose the lesser road in the first place. I read articles that present a horribly one-sided point or opinion, and I wonder how they managed to get them published in the first place. I start deconstructing arguments with logical process, and demand solid evidence in one way or another to support the claims of the person writing it, only to be met with dead silence or “Fuckoff noob, I’m the author here.”

I leave you all with Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If”, probably his best known work, outside of “The Jungle Book”. It’s particularly insightful to those struggling along any difficult path of life, and I read it often.

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!