Less Talk; More Rock

Less Talk, More Rock is the name of one of my favorite Propagandhi albums. If you don’t know Propagandhi, they are a fan­tas­tic, polit­i­cal punk band that makes great songs that make great sense. I learned of their exis­tence form Joshua Gargus, a for­mer Tech Taido stu­dent and all-around cool cat. The rea­son I bring this all up is because I think the mar­tial arts world gen­er­ally needs to do less talk­ing and more rocking.

Of course, here I am, writ­ing about not talk­ing too much. Yes, that’s ironic, isn’t it? (and let’s go on and get one thing clear, while we’re at it — I can out-irony just about any­one you know. I was flu­ent in sar­casm before I could ride a bike. But I’ve changed my tone recently to a more earnest approach. For an excel­lent dis­cus­sion of why Irony is a Dead Scene, check out bril­liant writer David Foster Wallace [whose Infinite Jest is one of my five favorite books ever].)

OK, so where was I? Oh yeah — the inher­ent irony of this arti­cle. I’ll address that by dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing two vari­eties of “talk.” There are count­less dichotomies we could make in ver­bal com­mu­ni­ca­tion (though all dual­i­ties are nec­es­sar­ily false), but I’m most inter­ested in look­ing at our Taido talk in terms of con­struc­tive ver­sus destructive.

I feel that mar­tial artists spend a lot more time putting things down than we ought to. Typically, this is not done openly because we have to retain the illu­sion of being hum­ble and respect­ful, as those are highly val­ued in mar­tial arts cir­cles. The trick then, is to appear as hum­ble as pos­si­ble in pub­lic while bash­ing our ene­mies “qui­etly” to a select few who will spread the mes­sage for us. This is the mech­a­nism of mar­tial arts pol­i­tics — give a deep, respect­ful bow, then stab them in the back. Of course, there are much less-subtle forms of destruc­tive talk, such as what we see on most inter­net dis­cus­sion fora, but the Taido uni­verse, small as it is, doesn’t allow peo­ple to get away with such tac­tics for too long. The covert attack is much more com­mon amongst us.

Thankfully, I don’t see too too much of this in Taido, but it is cer­tainly out there — and just in the form I described above. We are all very polite to each other in pub­lic, at big events and online. However, in smaller groups and pri­vate emails, we can count on com­ments like “but he doesn’t really under­stand what Taido’s all about,” or “but he can’t actu­ally fight,” or “he doesn’t really deserve his rank,” etc. These are exam­ples of com­mu­ni­ca­tion that is designed to tear some­one down. It’s destruc­tive and neg­a­tive, and it’s a giant waste of time. Even in Japan, land of humil­ity and grace, I often hear Taido stu­dents and instruc­tors mak­ing com­ments that can serve no pur­pose but to make some­body else look bad. Sadly, the speak­ers often have very lit­tle expe­ri­ence with the sub­jects of their comments.

On the other hand, there is con­struc­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion… Like Taido/Blog, Taido​.net, and World Taido Forum. Yes, I talk a lot. I write a lot of arti­cles, and some of them are quite long. I sure do spend a lot of time teach­ing for some­body with no offi­cial qual­i­fi­ca­tions. But this web­site is about pro­mot­ing Taido, build­ing it up. I’m try­ing to encour­age peo­ple to think about their prac­tice and how to make it bet­ter. I’ll crit­i­cize things I think are wrong or lack­ing, but I’m not doing so in a neg­a­tive man­ner — my crit­i­cisms of cur­rent doc­trine are always accom­pa­nied by sug­ges­tions for improve­ment. There is a spirit of “hon­est par­tic­i­pa­tion” behind my writ­ing on Taido/Blog.

I’m not just try­ing to make myself look good. Taido/Blog is not an adver­tise­ment for me or my dojo. It’s not a cat­a­log of my achieve­ments or a direc­tory of ser­vices I am offer­ing for a price. Taido/Blog is about mak­ing Taido bet­ter. Period.

In addi­tion, I’m not “just” talk­ing. I’m try­ing to get peo­ple to put their Taido to prac­tice. In nearly every arti­cle, I exhort my read­ers to apply some thought process or spe­cific drill in their next prac­tice ses­sion. I also spend a good deal of time writ­ing about apply­ing Taido to real life issues, so we can be “doing” Taido, even when we are not at a Taido prac­tice. This is what rock­ing is all about. Why do they rock so hard? Because they didn’t just rock some­times — they are always rock­ing. Did Miles Davis stop being cool when he fin­ished record­ing the Birth of the Cool? Hell, no. And he didn’t cheer up after Kind of Blue, either.

Taido/Blog is talk by nature, but it’s talk about rock. The likely out­come of the dis­cus­sion that takes place between my read­ers and I is Taido that rocks harder.

When Shukumine Sensei died, there was a lot of con­tro­versy over who was in charge and how things were going to be done. In many ways, these issues have not been resolved (not to men­tion the many issues that were present while Shukumine was still around). Here’s my idea about how to solve all of these prob­lems: less talk, more rock. Taido will take care of itself if we prac­tice hon­estly and earnestly and apply our best ideas to our practice.

It doesn’t mat­ter who is in charge of Taido, because the only real def­i­n­i­tion of Taido is that which occurs in prac­tice and com­pe­ti­tion. Taido is what hap­pens when Taidoka do what they do. I don’t have to wear my dogi to do Taido, and nei­ther do you. It doesn’t mat­ter who wins the tour­na­ments — just ask the guys that win, and they’ll tell you. It doesn’t mat­ter who prac­tices where or for how long. The impor­tant part of Taido is how you apply Taido to what you do.

How much Taido have you done today? Did you rock as hard as you could, or did you just sing some karaoke and call it quits?

Shukumine wrote that a mar­tial art should be judged by those who prac­tice it. In Creative Intelligence and Self-Liberation, Ted Falconar writes that “the mea­sure of a company’s worth is based on the col­lec­tive moti­va­tion, brains, skill, and cre­ativ­ity of its employ­ees.” The same could be said for the worth of a mar­tial art. I believe that Taido is what is done by Taidoka, and our art will be judged on who we are and what we do.

If Taido is going to rock, we Taidoka need to spend more time rock­ing than we do talk­ing, and when we do talk, we need to be talk­ing about ways to rock harder.