Participate in the Why So Sad fundraising mission for mental health…
You can find all the details on how to contribute to, and participate in, the Why So Sad? 2019 mission for mental health… here.
Warning:
The following post explores the subject of depression and suicide. If you do not want to read about that, please don’t read on.
A CONVERSATION WITH AUBY TAYLOR:
Themes:
- The importance of talking openly about issues of depression and anxiety.
- The inner-critic we all have a version of.
- Fitting in, or not, in the California skate industry.
- The importance of being able to know and express our true selves.
- Especially the painful parts.
- The process of unlearning certain conditioned thinking.
Context:
The WhySoSad? mission for mental health is the third annual fundraiser I’ve organized in memory of my sister, Katrina, and now more recently, tragically, in memory of Ben Raemers also. But it’s really in memory of every loved one we’ve ever lost to depression and its worst-case…completely unnecessary…tough-but-avoidable side-effect…suicide.
So part of the mission is that I’ll ride my bike many miles and do my own Sad Plant (hopefully finally approved by the grand–masters) and also I’ve been collecting photos of Sad Plants from skaters around the world…I think to ultimately make a collage, or create a show or something.
In the course of collecting photos of Sad Plants from skaters who can already do, or have recently learned Sad Plants, I’ve had some great messaging going back and forth. One of the best interactions I’ve had has been with Texan transitional-terrorizer, Auby Taylor. Auby is a character I’ve admired over the years in skating. He tried his hand at the whole California street scene in the early 20-teens, switch-heeling down triple sets and nollie heel crooking rails, but fairly quickly came to the realization that it just wasn’t 1) what he thought it was as a wide-eyed young Texas teen, and 2) what he even wanted to do or representative of who he felt he even was as a person.
Auby made the commendable — and in my opinion very inspiring — move, to just pack it up, head back to Texas, and try to build something unique and interesting that allows him to invest his creativity and energy back into his local scene in Austin, TX. Currently he is working on landing a better Phillips 66, improving his fast-plants and he runs a small brand called Image Kid Universe.
There are probably 3 main reasons why I reached out to Auby to get his point of view on the subject of depression and mental health.
- I knew just through the grapevine that he’d had a tough time of it dealing with the California industry scene (I can relate)
- I know he has a bit of a hyper-active mind (fertile soil for unwanted weeds we can call that, and I wagered that he’s likely dealt with at least some semblance of mental issues, along with half the human population more-or-less)
- He’s a Texas vert skater at this point, and the story of Texan legend Jeff Phillips is perhaps one of my first encounters as a child with the concept of suicide.
So, with that:
Transcript:
John Rattray: Auby, thanks for taking the time to connect and talk about this subject.
Auby Taylor: This is an important topic I think for myself and a lot of other people, if I can speak for them. I think that’s what we’re doing is speaking about it rather than it being something that I guess … I don’t know. It’s not necessarily always talked about. People aren’t always open about these kind of things.
John Rattray: Yeah, because it’s a tough subject. It’s hard stuff to talk about. We’re trained not to talk about it almost I think.
Auby Taylor: Yeah, we are. We’re conditioned.
John Rattray: It’s true, it does feel like we’re conditioned to not talk about this stuff.
Auby Taylor: I think a lot of it, like I was saying, that we are expected to keep up appearances, where we don’t have any problems. That’s not really realistic. I think a lot of people … It makes them feel exposed to be transparent about their feelings, but that way, the problem is nobody ever talks about it.
John Rattray: Exactly.
Auby Taylor: Communication is one of the most important things at the very base of healing for people that have depression or suffer from some sort of anxiety. Obviously, medication is on the table, but talking about it, having friends or people that aren’t going to judge you for speaking about how you feel, it’s rare for people to do that. To be honest, like we talked about, I almost wasn’t going to do this because my mom in particular, she’s like, “Well, you have all these people that watch you skate. You don’t want to appear like that.” I’m like, “Well, but I think that that’s what I’m good at.”
I’ve learned that being transparent and honest, I used to think it was one of my weaknesses, but really for me, I’ve been able to help people. I’ve been able to help myself. I think talking about it is a good thing. That’s why I’m here.
Communication is one of the most important things at the very base of healing for people that have depression or suffer from some sort of anxiety.
John Rattray: When your mom says appear “like that,” what do you think she’s saying?
Auby Taylor: She’s just looking out for me, being a good mom. It’s the whole thing with having an audience, having sponsors and that whole thing of keeping up appearances. Making sure that everybody that’s looking at you knows that, “Hey, I’m all right. Nothing is wrong. Everything is fine. I’m happy. Everything is good.”
That’s an unrealistic image to project because the kids out there and the adults and what have you…there’s people out there in all walks of life that feel alone or they’re struggling with something. To not be able to identify or relate to someone else that has dealt with these issues, they may feel very alone. I think especially for people that are blessed to have some sort of an audience or some sort of significance to people, even in their small group of friends. If people look up to you or they look to you for some sort of inspiration, then maybe it’s good to be honest about it because then they can look at you and be like, “Well, I’m not alone in this. I’m not an alien. This is normal and it’s okay to feel this way.”
John Rattray: Yes. I’d say that putting on the appearance that everything is fine the whole time is just what you call unsustainable. It’s like, “Hey, you got yourself into a web of lies at that point.” It’s better to just be honest, like, “Yo, life is actually hard. It’s hard. It’s hard for everyone no matter who you are.”
Auby Taylor: It is. It doesn’t matter how much money you have. It doesn’t matter how much fame or fortune or girls or whatever. You could have the whole world and still not be right with yourself. That’s part of the big thing that I work with is something I call the inner critic. We all have this inner critic. What’s worse than anything about the inner critic is that it follows us wherever we go.
Sidenote:
The idea of the inner-critic that Auby talks of is consistent with a concept central to Michael Pollan’s book How to Change Your Mind, which takes a detailed look at the recent resurgence of clinical studies investigating use of so-called Psychedelic Compounds as treatment for depression and addiction among other things. It sounds like the inner-critic is another way of describing the ego, which is thought to spring out of a part of the brain called the Default Mode Network. It’s the part of the brain we believe is responsible for generating the narratives that we use to understand the world and, most relevant to this conversation, ourselves.
What Psychedelics are postulated to do is suppress that Default Mode Network, thus silencing the ego or “inner-critic” so that the required introspection or self-study can actually occur and we can begin to understand where it is that our negative sense of self is stemming from in the first place. It sounds like similar quieted mind-states can be achieved through practicing and becoming skilled at meditation.
NOTE: the research into this use-case of psychedelics is based on being in a professionally guided setting. Please don’t go rushing out thinking you can just take a bunch of acid and all your problems will magically disappear. There’s a little more to it. Use common sense. Thanks…
Back to Auby…
Auby Taylor:That judgment that we place on ourselves is harsher than external judgments from society even. The only thing I can hope for to accomplish with this discussion is that people should realize that everybody has this inner critic. They’re already dealing with it. We shouldn’t add on to that by alienating each other and making people think that it’s not okay to talk about this or shutting them out and making them feel as though they don’t exist because you never know what’s going on in somebody’s head. It can be very shocking and very surprising when you hear about these things.
People that you would never guess. They almost have a mask on. They’re very happy, funny, charismatic people usually. You come to find out that they’re struggling with their own demons. No one’s the wiser because no one talks about it.
John Rattray: Are you thinking about Raemers when we’re talking about that?
Auby Taylor: Yes. I am thinking about Ben because Ben’s passing, it really shook me up. It really shook a lot of people up. I don’t think anybody really saw it coming. I just think that in general, we’ve lost a lot of people, a lot of our friends in similar ways. It’s just something that I think needs to be talked about no matter how difficult it is. If anybody is listening to this and they disagree, I just have to ask, “Why not?” Why can’t we look at this and tackle it head-on? Because it’s not going to change unless we help it change.
John Rattray: Yeah. The only way we can help it change is by acknowledging it, thinking through it and talking with each other about how to best tackle it. It’s not like we have to talk about this stuff every hour of every day. We can make space and time, like right now. We’re making a specific time for you and me to sit and chat about. Right now, this is something I want to talk about. I want to get some ideas together and see what other people are feeling, hear what other people are feeling and get some thoughts and just come to some … Okay. I’ve been thinking about this over the last few years. I don’t know if I told you when we spoke the other day, when we just had our touch base, our little initial conversation the other day. My sister took her own life back in 2011 or so.
Auby Taylor: Sorry to hear that.
John Rattray: I struggled with depression since I was a little kid. I grew up with a terminally alcoholic father that we never knew what state he’s coming in the door… from the age of three to the age of 12, when he passed away. He passed away when he was 39. I’m now 41, so I’ve outlived him by a couple years already, but that-
Auby Taylor: That’s much harder.
John Rattray: I didn’t realize that that was a tough … Not tough, but just a not … An upbringing, a childhood that was not a bed of roses, as you would say. It’s like, “Oh, no wonder I felt depressed as a teenager. I was reacting against something pretty crazy that happened.” Anyway, that’s my backstory. What I’m saying is, yeah, we’re making a time to talk about this. It doesn’t have to be every day, every minute of every day.
Auby Taylor: No. Just to bring awareness to it is good enough, I think. It’s little steps. It’s little things that we can do to help bring awareness and let people know that it’s okay to talk about these things. No one should feel ashamed. No one should feel judged. No one should feel persecuted for feeling this way. Part of it is everybody has most likely struggled with these thoughts. Some less than others, some more than others. It can be from a variety of different things, from someone’s childhood and beyond that. We’ve all had to face life in different ways. I’ve seen and my own career crashed and burned. We’ve all had relationship problems. We’ve all had injuries.
All these factors that we face in life, we feel like we have to face them alone because they’re our own personal problems, but in reality, we’re all connected. That’s what I believe. We’re all connected and we kind of share the baggage that comes with being a human. A lot of these things, it’s just pushed under the rug because nobody really wants to go there, but if we don’t go there, then it’s not going to change. I’m all for it. I didn’t know about your childhood. It must have been really frustrating because you have someone that’s supposed to be a role model. The ultimate role model. Your parents. The people that you look to for security, love, advice. If that’s not present, then yeah. You might have been left with a feeling of a void of some sort. Everybody’s situation is different, but what it comes down to is a lot of us are feeling the same thing.
John Rattray: That’s why I want to get other experiences in an easy to understand way for kids out there that might be struggling.
Hey, let’s back up a little; what’s going on in general? What’s work right now? What are you doing when you’re driving passengers? You Lyfting? What?
Auby Taylor: I moved away from California. I moved back to Texas to my own little personal exile on the vert ramp.
John Rattray: I’d like to talk about that a little bit.
Auby Taylor: I went there and I quit Black Label. I didn’t want to be pro anymore because I just … I wanted to be a part of something bigger, I guess, than just myself really because being pro I guess was … After it happened, I realized that was just a goal that I had since I was a kid, but I wanted to help my skate scene back home and get something happening with the vert scene and start a company. That’s what I do. I have my own board company and that’s Image Kid Universe. We make boards. Yeah, I drive an Uber. It’s not the most glamorous, but I’m happy here. I’ve got all the stuff I need. I’ve got great friends and we have a great skate scene. I encourage anyone to come out here. Maybe not during the summertime. It’s about 100 degrees right now.
John Rattray: I want to get out there. I was bummed. I was at South by South West with a couple of work friends and I didn’t get a chance to come over to the ramp, but next time. I want to get out there soon and skate. I’ve been trying to get a ramp to do a Sad Plant on today. I was trying to get to this little mini ramp that has an eight-foot extension, but we couldn’t get out there. Next week I’m going to just drive out to Hood River where there’s a vert ramp.
Auby Taylor: It’ll be easier on a vert ramp. I’ll tell you that much.
John Rattray: I was trying street plants the other day. It’s so gnarly.
Auby Taylor: Yeah. That was the point of my tongue-in-cheek comment lately. It’s hard. You have to be strong enough to get into an invert on one arm-
John Rattray: From standstill, though. It’s like gymnastics.
Auby Taylor: Yeah. It’s like you watch that one guy Ho-Ho. He can get into a street plant from rolling. Somehow get into an invert from a rolling position. That’s just crazy.
John Rattray: Insane.
Auby Taylor: It’s like that too with guys like Winkowski. They can somehow do an eggplant on something that’s a foot tall.
John Rattray: All right. You were talking about bouncing around. You were on Krooked for a second. You were on Label. I think I remember somebody mentioned you were in an interview once and you were like, “Yeah, I went on Black Label and Lucero thought he was getting a street skater. Then it turned out he was getting a vert skater.”
Auby Taylor: Yeah. I rode for several different companies. I think it was Sugar Skateboards and then it was Stereo. I rode for Dune and then Geoff Rowley called me and I hung up on him, thinking it was a prank call and I ended up on Flip.
I moved to California. I lived in Curren Caples’s room. Then it was Baker and then Krooked. I got some boards from Expedition, but I couldn’t … I just couldn’t line up a home. It was really difficult. When Black Label decided to take a chance on me, at this point, I was 25 or 26 and I had already had Auby’s World come out, which was … I guess I can say it because I don’t really skate street much anymore, but it was probably … That was the best work I could do on street.
It was like everybody, when they saw that, they wanted more. I didn’t know who I was until that came out. I was just like, “I’ve been here this whole time and I don’t really got nothing left.” I was learning inverts. It was just like, “Do I want to jump down stairs or do I want to do hand plants?” It just became this obsession where it started out as a joke, wanting to learn an invert as a street skater and just blast one off the lip. Like, “Hey, look. A hand plant. Tony Hawk shit. Let’s do this.”
After I learned the invert, it’s like, “Okay. Now I want to learn how to eggplant or now I want to learn how to backside air.” That happened in that timeframe, where John was desperately looking for someone to fill a void to work well around his company because he had a lot of guys that would skate Transition, like Omar and dudes like that. Some of the other guys. They didn’t really have a street guy aside from maybe Chris Troy. I show up and it’s right when I’m starting to get this fucking vertical fever or whatever. I’m like-
John Rattray: He thinks he’s getting nollie-heel crooks down handrails.
Auby Taylor: Then I show up with my sleeves cut off and some board shorts on. I’m like, “I want a board with a three-inch nose and no concave.” I put John through so much that … Really, I love the guy and I know that we’ve definitely had our disagreements, but in all reality, I love John and I wish that I had the drive to skate street the way I was before. I was just changing. It was almost as if I didn’t even have a choice. I was just following what my heart wanted to do. There’s no bad blood there between us, but I can imagine for him, he’s just like … He’s one of those guys that has an eye for talent, almost like, “Hey, this kid is a lost puppy. He’s got something to show. Whatever. I’m going to give him a chance.”
Then what he intended to have me become as part of his team, I went a completely different direction. It’s ironic that it was almost like, “Hey, I want to be like you guys were. So you should be stoked that I want to skate vert.” He’s like, “Well, you should do both.” I’m like, “Well, I don’t really want to do both. I just can’t.” I don’t know.
John Rattray: Yeah. Hey, thinking about that, how much did you look up to the old Texas vert heads back when you were a little kid? I mean Phillips and Craig Johnson, right?
Auby Taylor: Yeah. Well, there was guys before them that … I always hung around the older guys that skated because I wanted their approval. They seemed like the had more wisdom than the kids my age, and I looked up to a lot of the guys that grew up going to the skate park, to Jeff Phillips’s skate park. A lot of these guys rode vert, but at that time, vert was all but completely dead. Let’s be real. It’s like late 90s or early 2000s. My inspiration for these guys, I always knew who Jeff was and we always heard about him and Craig and Johnny and all those guys. We already had this mentality that these were the guys that did it for Texas back then. I didn’t really start appreciating what they did until I started doing it myself, if that makes sense.
John Rattray: Yeah, that makes sense.
Auby Taylor: It wasn’t really just all about Jeff either. It started out that way because he just had such amazing ability and I was really inspired by that, but it just turned out … There was so many other skaters. I didn’t know about Brian Pennington. I didn’t know about. These other guys. Cory Thornhill. People would pop out of the woodwork. I’d see footage and I’d be like, “Holy shit.” We had so many good riders. We had so many strong riders from Texas. It was such a vert staple. Texas was up there with California in the ‘80s.
John Rattray: Yeah. I remember I’d watch Brian Pennington in those speed wheels videos, like Speed Freaks and Risk It. Brian Pennington was sick.
Auby Taylor: Dave Nielson.
John Rattray: Nielson. Yeah.
Auby Taylor: The list goes on. It wasn’t so much necessarily even about those guys to me. It was also about Texas’s history as vert county and the whole “Shut Up and Skate” thing. That whole deal. The friction between Texas and California that has always been and always will be. I’m sorry, but it’s there.
John Rattray: Yeah.
Auby Taylor: It’s there. It’s been there. I’ve always been a Texas boy. Whatever. I wanted to get back to my roots and skating vert was something I never thought I would do. It took me three years of going to the skate park to finally drop it on the vert ramp when I was a kid. Then I just never really touched it again and I went off and skated street because that’s what was happening.
John Rattray: That’s what the cool kids were doing.
Auby Taylor: Yeah. We looked at those guys almost like, “Why would you want to do that? That’s so dangerous. You’re just going back and forth and this and that,” but then we always … We didn’t think we could ever do it, so we just never tried.
John Rattray: Yeah.
Auby Taylor: I think that’s how a lot of street skaters think, but you’re starting to see people change that now. A lot of people that are skating street are turning into more well-rounded skateboarders.
John Rattray: I’m all for that. Going back to what we’re trying to get at with this stuff, thinking about Jeff Phillips, for example, last time we spoke, you were like, “Jeff’s passing was a taboo subject that nobody would really speak about,” which is sort of relevant to what we’re saying. What do you think about that?
Auby Taylor: Yeah. I think the reason I said that too is because if you grew up in DFW, in Dallas, you knew who Jeff was. You knew about his presence and what he did for Texas skateboarding. We’re all the better for it, but I guess we never really talked about how it happened with any of his friends. We just didn’t talk about it. This is going to stir up a lot of emotions, probably. I’m not the best person to speak on this subject because I didn’t know him personally, but he was a big inspiration to a lot of people that I grew up looking up to, like the guys that … Damien Rowe, my good friend, family, pretty much. He opened a skate shop in Dallas that I rode for for 10 years, Index Skate Shop.
John Rattray: Okay. Yeah.
Auby Taylor: He grew up going to Jeff’s park. If it wasn’t for Jeff giving everybody a place to go … He had one of the first, if not only indoor skate parks in Dallas at that time. He was very involved in making his scene better. That’s a lot of the inspiration I got from Jeff was not just from his skating, but some of the things he tried to do and just some of the things he did do for Texas skateboarding. As far as talking about it, we just … The people I grew up with, the people my age, we just tried to be respectful. It’s one of those things that it’s still hard to talk about I think for everybody.
Growing up for me personally, we were just … I don’t know how to explain the feeling. It was just like we have this amazing skateboarder. It was tragic. It affected our scene very badly for many years. It’s a terrible thing when that happens.
John Rattray: Ok. Let’s just talk about what’s going on here and now. I guess back to … You’re going to the hospital to get your heart checked out last time we were speaking. You were saying maybe it’s related to anxiety. You deal with that stuff? You want to talk a bit about that?
Auby Taylor: Yeah. It’s something that has been happening only recently that I have these … I didn’t know what they were at first, but I guess they’re anxiety attacks or panic attacks.
A lot of that is probably due to stress and stuff like that. Factors that everybody experiences. We’re trying to make a living. We’re trying to pay the bills, trying to take care of our families. It can really weigh on people. For me, it was just like I’m sitting in my car or something. Doing something completely normal and all of a sudden, it’s just like, “Something is wrong.” I get scared and I thought that it was a heart attack because it felt like that. Turns out it wasn’t, but those kind of feelings can really shake you up. For me, it was strange because it had not really happened until the last year or so.
John Rattray: When you think back about when those start, do you remember if there’s anything in particular that triggers it? Some thought that you had or something?
Auby Taylor: I’ve always been a hot air balloon. I’m up in my head everywhere. It can be hard for me to ground myself and just stop thinking. It’s mostly maybe triggered by just the intellectual thoughts I guess that I get, where I go inside my own self and I’m doing it because I’m curious about the self. I’m curious about the ego. I’m curious about what goes on inside of my mind and other people’s minds, I guess. I think that sometimes I think it’s so intense that I get scared. It’s something that I’m working on. There’s different things that help. It sounds cliché but I go to a Zen Meditation Center.
I wouldn’t say I have a particular religion I identify with. More of a belief system, but Zen has really helped me in overcoming a lot of those anxiety attacks and also writing about them and trying to find the cause, but finding the cause doesn’t necessarily fix the problem. A lot of these problems are inside of us. The issue with doctors of today is that they don’t really acknowledge those kinds of things. They can prescribe you medication to deal with the symptoms, but they’re not necessarily going to be able to get rid of the problem itself. I think it takes that kind of internal, I guess for lack of a better word, exploration to get to the bottom of it.
John Rattray: Yeah. Like you said, wherever we go, we take ourselves with us. You said that in the beginning. It’s always with us. It’s just learning to work with ourselves and give ourselves that break of, “You know what? It’s okay.” We feel these ways because of reasons. These reasons are probably not going to go away, but at least if we identified them, it’s something more concrete to work with than feelings of dread, where you’re not sure why you feel that way. That’s when depression can again get out of control, basically.
Auby Taylor: Yeah. I think a lot of people don’t think about the … The reason may be life choices. Habits. It can be situational. It can be a number of different things. I’m all for people talking to doctors and getting medication. I’m not saying this is a … Excuse me. A must do alternative, but I’m saying that a lot of people automatically think, “There’s something wrong with me. There’s something wrong with me,” when in reality, it’s not necessarily that there’s a malfunction. It could just be something inside yourself. A lot of it honestly can come from making bad choices. Maybe someone just doesn’t feel secure for different reasons. Maybe they don’t have the best job and they don’t have enough money. That can make them feel insecure. That can trigger those episodes.
The reasons for what goes on inside that causes these problems are vastly different with every individual. That’s the thing. Where I look at it as personal issues, a doctor would group it together in one category and say bipolar manic or schizophrenic or whatever. There’s all these different labels. What happens is you take someone in this culture. You take someone that has some problems like this and you say, “You’re sick. You need to go to the hospital. You need help.” That only reinforces their own self-doubt. Then they take them depending on what the issue is. Maybe you get taken away to a place where you have to go get leveled out or go get treatment.
I’ve never personally been, but I can understand that they’re very sterile and scary sometimes. I think that a lot of the answers to these issues could be worked out with people that understand versus people that put a label on you and say that you have a problem and you need help.
I think that’s a cop out judgment.
John Rattray: Yeah, I agree. I think this is about, hey, flipping the thinking. It’s like, “You know what?” When somebody gets the idea, “There’s something wrong with me. There’s something wrong with me.” Maybe the way to think about it is, “You know what? Yeah. Yeah, there is and that’s okay. There’s something wrong with every single one of us.” At some point, that something wrong gets gnarly and we have to deal with it. It doesn’t happen to everyone all the time, but everyone has something wrong with them.
Auby Taylor: This is what I call the internal work with the critic, where the cure is found in the problem itself, where you approach it. Whatever it is. Whatever insecurity. You approach it because you can’t really run from it. It’s always going to catch up to you. It’s your shadow essentially. What you do is you dance with it. You greet it. You work with it. You try to make it better. I don’t think that there’s a lot of emphasis in the world today on how to deal with our own inner critic… we all have it.
The external part is other people around you, though. The way that society operates with this… because society is very cruel in a way that they can spot and pick someone out and say that they’re different or that they’re strange or they have some sort of issue. They’re crazy because they don’t understand. A lot of people don’t take the time to get to know people because there’s an emphasis on being a cool guy, being detached, being … Having your armor up.
there’s an emphasis on being a cool guy, being detached, being … Having your armor up.
That’s the real issue is it serves to divide us more than unite us. We all talk about how great it would be if the world was united and everybody understood each other. Everybody got along. Well, you’ve got to start with yourself and the people around you first because the more you say, “Oh, we shouldn’t call this guy to go skate. We shouldn’t include him. Let’s act like he doesn’t exist.” You don’t know. He might already think that he doesn’t exist and he’s hard on himself about it. That’s not any kind of positive reinforcement to treat people that way. I think that we lack great understanding of ourselves and people around us. It’s terrible.
John Rattray: I totally agree. That was an amazing way to sum it all up right there.
Auby Taylor: Thank you.
John Rattray: We’re on the same page with all that. Taking it back to your own experience in the skate industry, would you say that … Reflecting on how what you just said played out maybe in some of your experiences working with some of the teams you were on. I don’t know if there was any particular … You don’t need to name names if you don’t want to. We can take it out. We can change names to protect the innocent or whatever, but just think about those experiences. You know what I mean?
Auby Taylor: Yeah. The names aren’t important. It’s not anybody’s fault really either. For me, I came to California from Texas with this idea of how it was going to be and that dream I guess that we all have when we’re young.
John Rattray: I came from the northeast of Scotland. I came from the farthest place you can come from, practically. I might as well have come from Siberia.
Auby Taylor: Yeah. It’s almost like people from Europe or other faraway places do better than the Texans because we’re just looked at like honky freaking cowboys that have no manners.
John Rattray: At least I have some element of being exotic or something.
Auby Taylor: Yeah. We’re not very exotic over here. We’re just like, “Whatever.” That’s the thing. I lack that gene, I guess. The marketability. I just couldn’t play the game. It was all about skateboarding to me. I don’t know. It was hard for me to jump in there and be like … Come from this little tiny town in Texas and try to be a part of the cool guy table at Long Beach Skateboard Middle School. It was all these different groups, all these different cliques. Where I come from, most of us, if you skateboarded, you already knew each other by default. You were friends with each other whether you wanted to be or not because there was nobody else that skateboarded.
John Rattray: Right.
Auby Taylor: Most of my friends, we hated each other, but we skated together. It was just that brotherhood. When I got to California, I’m like, “Man, if you don’t dress a certain way, you don’t fit in with these guys. You don’t skate a certain way, you don’t fit in with them. If you don’t act a certain way, you don’t fit in with them.” It’s like, “Okay, so who do I want to fit in with?” I don’t know. This affected my skating, for sure, because when I got on … I would try to play the part for every team I rode for. I rode for Flip, so I’m like, “Okay. I’ve got to get gnarly. I’ve got to jump down stairs.” Reynolds called me to ride for Baker and I was just like, “Okay. Straight to Hollywood 16.” I tried my best to fit in and do what I thought these companies wanted me to do, but I just didn’t have it.
John Rattray: There’s almost an analogy there for the bigger conversation we’re trying to have here. It’s like putting on the face. Putting on that brave face to society. Like, “Yeah, I’m good. I’m all right. This is me,” the reality being different. The inner reality being like, “You know what? I’m not good,” or in a more positive way, “You know what? I actually just want to re-live and emulate the Texas vert scene,” which is the positive spin on it. You know what I’m saying? There’s an analogy.
Auby Taylor: Yeah. That was the thing that came about more naturally than vert skating did because the whole time I was skating street, I was working towards something. I didn’t really know what. I wanted to be successful and I just woke up one day and I was like, “You know, I don’t care if I’m a part of this table. I don’t care if these people understand me. I’m tired of trying to do what everybody else wants.” That was the big deal for me was I’m tired of skating how everybody else skates or everybody else wants me to skate.
Anything I did, I did it because there was a camera there. That made no sense to me. I could never get over that. I don’t know. It all fell apart then. I was lost to vert at that point. I’m not going to say I was skating for the wrong reasons, but something more pure came to me at that time. That’s the path I wanted to go down. I wanted to totally immerse myself in that path, and not just do it halfway. It was always the people that didn’t care. They’re the ones that bitch now. Like, “Why don’t you skate street anymore? We want to see a switch-heel down a triple set.” I’m like, “Well, I already did it. It’s all there. That doesn’t matter if I’m doing it now. I’m doing this now. Sorry.”
John Rattray: Yeah. It’s like, “Hey, why don’t you want to just see a Phillips 66 done, bro?”
Auby Taylor: I don’t know. Everybody’s kind of doing it now. You go to the skate park and kids are doing a kick flip, back tail, big spin down the handrail. Not only can I not keep up with that, but I don’t think I want to because it’s not … It’s reached the zenith of I’m not impressed when I open up the magazines. I can’t grind a freaking 999 sextuple kick handrail like Nyjah Huston, but I’ve seen him do it so many times. I’ve seen other people do it so many times. There’s so many amazing skateboarders that it’s almost making it less interesting to me.
John Rattray: That’s why I’m quite excited to try and see the perfect Sad plant. I’m waiting for it. I think the perfect one might be already done in 1985, but I’m going to try and see if we can find a new perfect one. I’m working with James from Labor Skate Shop in New York. I was like, “Yo, James. You think there’s any skater kids in New York that can do sad plants?” It can be a street sad plant. I don’t give a shit. Ideally on vert, but … Hopefully he’s going to help try and put the word out there for New York kids. I want some of those cool New York kids doing sad plants. That’s my next mission.
Auby Taylor: To get someone on Supreme to do a sad plant?
John Rattray: Yeah. Imagine Tyshawn Jones does the best sad plant ever. That’s who I want to see.
Auby Taylor: Jeez.
John Rattray: That’s a mission.
Auby Taylor: You have a high request there.
UPDATE: None of the young New York skaters did a Sad Plant. But this guy did one in Brooklyn in 1986 that was very rad.
John Rattray: Okay. I don’t know, man. I think we’ve talked about a lot. One thing I have written down here, I’ve been reading another book lately. It’s called Waking Up Alive. I said my sister took her own life a few years ago. This book is by a counselor and psychologist who did a series of case studies of people that have actually tried to take their own life, and then failed the attempt and come back and gone through therapy and spoken about it. There are three themes that pop up with every single case. The people have experienced traumatic loss, extreme family dysfunction and a sense of alienation. Those are the three common themes in every single case ever.
I think those themes probably apply to not just people that have tried to take their own life, which is what prompted me to get interested in this stuff and obsessed by it. I’ve been in that state of mind. My first real depressive episode, where I was thinking … I was in San Francisco, losing it and imagining walking to the Golden Gate Bridge and all this. It takes you through how your brain … How that inner self critic is, yes, so fucking gnarly when you get down this rabbit hole. You get into this trance. It’s interesting. There’s three simple themes that crop up. Just being able to identify those. Like we were talking about, when you know the reason, at least that’s something you can work with.
Auby Taylor: The feeling of what you speak of with alienation is I think I would say that’s a very common thing that a lot of us feel. It doesn’t matter even how popular you are because some of these people that have successful careers, they’ve played the game. They’ve worn the mask. They might not even have any real connection to people because they’re not necessarily opening up. I think that that’s a shame because like I said, if more people that had … I guess in positions of power or whatever. If more people were open about their own battles, then it would help a lot of people because that’s what we’re here to do for each other is help and inspire and love.
I guess going back to Jeff [Phillips] for me, I think a lot of people don’t really … They don’t really understand what the hell I’m doing or why I did it, but for me, it was just I think that growing up in the Dallas Fort Worth area around that scene, feeling that energy that he had, I just wanted to skate vert. I wanted to learn how to do tricks I didn’t know how to do. It was all part of me healing from I guess … I had a traumatic experience where I felt alienated for all the years I was in California because I was … I am weird. There’s that inner critic. See, I should stop saying that.
I was strange, awkward, morbidly shy. If I wasn’t being shy, I was being way too loud or pissing somebody off. God. I’m not an angel. I just had to be dealt with appropriately. I needed someone with patience. When that all came to pass and I started to realize that I wasn’t really cut out for this kind of career, I guess that I just wanted to skate for fun. I wanted to skate what I like. That was a healing process for me, too. Jeff was definitely the inspiration because he made it look really cool. I had struggled with my own problems. I won’t get into those specifics, but it’s a lot of different things that I had to deal with, where I wasn’t sure if I could hold it together.
I’m really lucky that I have such a good network of friends and family that I can talk to because it’s not really like I ever expected it to go away. It’s just daily maintenance for me. It can be very trying at times to keep it all together and not feel like the whole world hates you or not feel like you hate yourself. It appears to be such a shitty place, but it’s really a place for development because now when those feelings hit, I go, “Ah-ha.” That’s a sign that’s something I need to work on in my life or that’s something that needs to be changed or fixed.
It might not be the same for everybody. I would like to add at the end of this that anyone who experiences or has thoughts of suicide or they feel depressed, reach out to somebody or a doctor. There is medication out there for people and they can benefit from it, but also your friends and your family. If you have someone you trust or I even encourage kids, if anyone is listening to this and they want to message me, I’ll talk to them about it. I want to open that door for anyone that has those kind of issues because it helps me with mine. It helps me to help someone else. It really does. Yeah. It’s the first time I’ve really even talked about it publicly. It’s difficult and it takes a little bit of bravery, but I think everybody can do it, I really do, if they’re made to feel comfortable.
…anyone who experiences or has thoughts of suicide or they feel depressed, reach out to somebody or a doctor. There is medication out there for people and they can benefit from it, but also your friends and your family. If you have someone you trust… or I even encourage kids, if anyone is listening to this and they want to message me, I’ll talk to them about it. I want to open that door for anyone that has those kinds of issues because it helps me with mine. It helps me to help someone else. It really does.
John Rattray: I wonder if we can build some sort of support network or something. A skate-based one. That would be cool.
Auby Taylor: Yeah. I don’t know. Hopefully people react to it well. I don’t know. I know it’s going to cause some stirred up emotions about different things, but like I said, I just think it’s wrong to make anybody feel bad about talking about this. I guess I don’t know if I feel comfortable always with details, but just talking about it is good enough. For me, it was more that I struggled with suicidal thoughts for a decade or more. There was a period of probably three or four years where I thought about it every day.
I don’t know what it was about Jeff, but I guess I just wanted to have the strength to get through it myself for the people that can’t skateboard anymore. I just felt like I got stronger because of it. I don’t know. It’s a weird thing. I don’t talk about that with anybody because it was real close. I got close, definitely. For sure. I haven’t been in a long time, so I think I’ve improved. I have my good days and I have my bad days, but I don’t have those days anymore. Thank god.
John Rattray: Yeah. We all have our good and bad days. That’s the whole thing. It’s like, “Hey, we all feel shitty sometimes.” Sometimes it gets gnarly, but it’s okay. Just hold on, don’t let go. Hold on and you’ll ride this out and get through it. Like Cardiel said.
Auby Taylor: Yeah.
John Rattray: What do you think it is that really … Can you put your finger on any particular thoughts or moments or experiences that helped you get past those real dark times?
Auby Taylor: The experiences that helped me the most were having people around me that I could talk to, but also making myself go out and be a part of life and do things because this is a common problem with people that feel depressed for different reasons. They tend to lose energy. You start to feel lethargic, unmotivated. The kind of thoughts that float around are, “Why bother? It doesn’t matter. This all sucks.” Blah, blah, blah. Then you end up staying inside and that’s exactly what that inner critic wants you to do. It wants you to stay inside your head.
For me, going outside and doing stuff … Going out in nature, going skateboarding, washing the dishes. I don’t know. Just doing something. Being active, staying active, writing it down and having deep personal friendships with people that I can really trust and understand. There was a lot of people in California that I thought were my friends, but the minute shit hit the fan or whatever, they never came back to me. That was real difficult because it made me feel even worse to not have their support. These are some people that I looked up to very much. When I decided to move to Texas, everything got better because I was around my kind of people that were more genuine. I realized that they were lifelong friends and I could trust them to talk about the things that bothered me and vice versa. I don’t know. It’s all about the company you keep and the work you do on yourself. You do have to work on it. It’s not something that ultimately can just be shoved under the rug because these are in a sense versions of yourself that you have to work through. Basically as painful as they are, it can be done. There’s different techniques.
It’s all about the company you keep and the work you do on yourself. You do have to work on it. It’s not something that ultimately can just be shoved under the rug because these are, in a sense, versions of yourself that you have to work through. Basically, as painful as they are, it can be done. There’s different techniques.”
Auby Taylor: For me personally, on the safe side was just writing about it and talking about it.
John Rattray: That’s fine right now. Part of my research so far, I just read a book. Have you heard of Michael Pollan? He’s an investigative journalist. He wrote a book Called The Botany of Desire about agriculture and our relationship with the food that we make for ourselves. His most recent book is called How to Change Your Mind. He’s done a ton of research into the resurgence of clinical trials and the use of psilocybin, the use of LSD, the use of DMT and MDMA to treat depression and addiction. It’s a lot of research that was going in the ‘50s and ‘60s that then got defunded in the War on Drugs that the Nixon administration initiated in the ‘70s when the Vietnam conscription dropped off.
John Rattray: Timothy Leary at Harvard University was going nuts with his whole “turn on, tune in, drop out” stuff, which resulted in all research being shut down.
That research has started again. There’s a group at Harvard led by a researcher, Roland Griffiths, it’s really interesting stuff. They’re getting really good results. It turns out that they were on to something. It’s a really amazing body of work that’s worth investigating.
Auby Taylor: Yeah. I have an author that I really liked as well. His name was Dale Pendell and he recently passed away from cancer, but he was my favorite author on … He wrote a trilogy called Pharmako/Poeia. It’s about plant teachers and what he calls the poison path. Primarily chapters on all these different plants and how to work with them. It’s great. I really think that plants, on this other side of the coin, that plants can really help with people as far as that self-exploration that I talk about, but it is like mountaineering in a sense. It’s dangerous territory and the pitfalls of the mind can be deep.
John Rattray: Yes.
Auby Taylor: I think use caution when exploring because … Be mindful. It’s just like skateboarding. You don’t want to go straight to the biggest ramp in the park and go to drop it or maybe you do. I don’t know. It’s just one of those things. It’s hard to recommend.
What we work in is the process of unlearning certain conditioned thinking. Dismantling the ego, dismantling the self to build back up in a new way. The problem is a lot of people rule by fear and that’s why these drugs are scheduled and made illegal because they don’t understand them. No one is willing to do the field work except for us freaking hippies and plant people.
John Rattray: That’s interesting. I think you’d get a lot out of that book I’m talking about. I’ll send you a couple of bits and pieces I’ve been reading lately in case you get a chance to check them out. I think you might get something out of them, it sounds like from what you’re saying. Okay. Last thing. We’ve been talking for like an hour, an hour and 12. I’ll let you get back to work. Last one. When you’re talking about having friends, like longstanding friends and deep, trusting friendships, is that mainly do you think people that you’ve met in your life through skateboarding?
Auby Taylor: Are you asking who are they or just-
John Rattray: Yeah. Do you think that your friendships, your good network of friends are all skateboarding or is there a variety? Or mainly skating? For me, my best friends in my life are through skating. That’s what I’m getting at. That network, we’re lucky to have.
Auby Taylor: I think that they’re definitely through skating, but I’ve diversified. I’ve made friends that are artists. I’ve made friends that are writers. I’ve made friends in different areas. I think that’s another thing that people should do as well is try to diversify and make friends that aren’t just in one general group.
John Rattray: Yeah.
Auby Taylor: Just because we’re skateboarders doesn’t mean we have to always prowl around with a bunch of skateboarders. If we do that, then our car will get trashed and we’ll probably loan everybody all our money because you know how skateboarders are. Jeez. Most of my friends, yeah, they’re skateboarders and they’re people that I can relate to with that. You can find meaningful friendships anywhere if you look hard enough, if you have an open mind. If you’re not antisocial.
John Rattray: Fair enough.
Auby Taylor: A lot of people are.
John Rattray: All right. Well, I think that was good. I’ll let you get back to work. It’ll take me a minute to write that up. I don’t know. We covered a lot there.
Auby Taylor: Yeah. Hopefully it doesn’t come out too bad on my end.
John Rattray: Hey, what’s that inner critic doing right now?
Auby Taylor: It’s attacking me.
John Rattray: Exactly.
Auby Taylor: No. This is the time where I go, “Thanks for your unsolicited opinion,” and then I stick a flaming piece of incense in this … I created this big clay statue of a Buddha giving the middle finger. I’ll stick a piece of incense with all these notes on it. Like, “You’re doing it to yourself. You suck. You can’t do this. They’ll hate this. They won’t like this. She’ll be hurt,” or whatever. Yeah. You can see it. That’s cool. I can’t even see it sometimes. It sneaks up behind me and it’s like, “You know what? You should apologize for John for sucking at this interview because you sucked.” It’s like, “Oh, man. You’re always there, aren’t you, [inner-critic]?”
John Rattray: Always is. No, this has been great.
Auby Taylor: Yeah. Thanks. I appreciate the call, John. Thanks for working with me. I’d like to dedicate this to all of our friends, family members that are no longer with us. May we continue to make this a better place for this generation and the generation after it. That’s all I can hope for.
John Rattray: Hell yeah.
Auby Taylor: A more communicative, open, connected generation of people that understand.
John Rattray: Agreed.
John Rattray: All right. Thanks, Auby.
Auby Taylor: Thanks.
John Rattray: Good speaking to you.
“A more communicative, open, connected generation of people that understand…May we continue to make this a better place for this generation and the generation after it. That’s all I can hope for.”