Zaturdays: Heath Kirchart and the Paradox of Rising Expectations

Picasso gets credit for saying that “good artists borrow, great artists steal.” Hopefully the same theory applies to skate bloggery because I’m stealing most of this stuff. Like today’s topic which comes to us by way of the guy who writes Seth’s Blog, which is a blog about I’m not sure what exactly. Regardless, a few weeks ago Seth made a fantastic point about Heath Kirchart. Seth doesn’t know Heath by name, I’m pretty sure, but try to think of a more fitting example for Seth’s claim that “good work will lead to higher expectations. And the paradox is that this will sooner or later lead to disappointment.” A couple things first: Heath didn’t do just good work, he did the best work ever. And to be clear, he never disappointed any skateboarder besides himself. He did however do a pretty amazing job of painting himself into a proverbial corner, raising the bar too high, putting himself over a barrel and that sort of thing, as demonstrated in his Stay Gold B-sides and that last Thrasher interview he did where he announced he was done. It was terrible and awesome all at the same time. Heath’s not the only one who set himself up to dissapoint, but since none of the others have really had the grace to out themselves like Heath, don’t expect me to be the one to do it. It makes me wonder about the future of a kid like Chris Joslin though, who couldn’t have arrived any harder on the scene in the last what, six months? 15 stair minimums, multiple mindboggling parts, TSM’s Year’s Best Am, and on a bum knee. Where does he go from here? Kind of makes you wonder what could be next doesn’t it? Well, Seth would suggest Joslin combat rising expectations by doing “what Bob Dylan has done several times—destroy them. Veer left when everyone expects you to veer right. Launch something that makes no sense. Reset expectations instead of raising them.” That is sage advice. So like, instead of heading out to El Toro Chris might want to invent some new manuals, get hardcore into ditch skating, practice his fingerflips, maybe take up slalom. I don’t expect he’ll go that route. Something to think about though. - Paul Zitzer