I saw this first on Jenkem Mag
Also, Mr. MacKaye did a interview with Atiba Jefferson in the May 2010 issue of the Skateboard Mag. RadCollector.com reprinted this interview online. Here’s a chunk from that interview…
What I can say about skateboarding is that I really learned how to reassign properties to the world around me. This was not a conscious practice, but still it was occurring. Suddenly the weather means something completely different to you. Swimming pools take on a new potential reality. You’re not just taking a swim anymore. If you go into a parking lot and there’s a little bank on the side of it, you make a mental note of it. The surface of the streets, are they rough or smooth? There are any number of lines that you start to see.
I think when skaters walk down the street, they’re looking at it with an entirely different grid in their minds. I think this practice enabled me to redefine the world around me—to take what was given and then readjust it to make it work. When I got into music, specifically punk rock, that sort of redefinition was central. I would look at a situation, the circumstances that had been presented, and think, “Okay, I’m just going to change all of this, or at least change the way I’m thinking about it.” I come at things from a different place, and I think that’s something I really developed through skating.
To this day I swim to the bottom of swimming pools just to check out the transition. It just feels good; it makes me think about how nice it would be to ride.
One last thing—and I’ll be straight up about this—I was never a great skater, but I rode and I don’t think that experience will ever leave me. Whether or not I step on a board again, a part of me will always be a skateboarder.