I spent another day skating with Tim Tim, Rob G and Nick Garcia down in the ditches. This spot has been a go-to spot for us for the past week now. It’s been fun plus we’re getting good stuff everyday and there’s a no bust factor so it’s hard to complain. Still, I’m looking forward to getting into the streets proper and getting yelled at and chased out and away from spots — it’s been awhile.

It’s funny, it struck me the other day that the last ten years or so of my career has been strictly spent on tour, in front of documentary or TV cameras, doing demos, making appearances and “promoting” skateboarding. That’s what I’ve been doing and that’s what I’d determined to be my job — the work that mattered to me and the work that interested me.

It was like when I got on Black Label at the end of 1998 that I had just put out a hit record that had mainstream appeal and over the next ten years or so I got busy touring, promoting and performing that record to audiences around the world. I enjoyed the journey, I enjoyed sharing it with as many people as possible — I enjoyed being in that certain limelight that allowed me to connect with a larger audience. And I had no problem taking on partners to grow that audience, to put me in front of more eye-balls, to spread my exposure as broadly as possible. The output required it — the work at hand required it — It was right for what it was in it’s time.

But now that time is over. I can’t play those songs anymore or at least not now and I feel like it’s time to write some new music. For the past few months I wasn’t sure if I had any new skating in me. I was waiting for a moment of inspiration that never came. Sometimes you just have to put pen to paper and let it flow — sometimes you just have to put your board down and go. That’s what I’ve done and now it’s flowing out of me.

I feel uninhibited, totally free to create and express.

My skating for this video is not about capturing or documenting — it’s about creating and projecting. My skating isn’t concerned with the way things are but more so with how they ought to be. There is nothing second hand about my skating — I stand at the end of no tradition. It’s all brand new — it’s living.

This new music may not have the mass-appeal that the previous hit record did — this new music may not matter or impact others in the same way my previous output did — and that’s okay. This new music — this new skating is being written selfishly — it’s being written by me and for me. When the “Sole” video comes out — the skating that I’m doing and that I will be presenting in it won’t be done to prove anything to anyone. I’m not trying to make another hit record — I’m just writing the music I have to write — that’s all I can do.

– Mike V