Hello, Darkness
Meditation, Focus, and Embracing Darkness
Written and Photographed by Rick Perez
Lessons from the Mister Rogers of Skateboarding, Mario Loor
Los Angeles, California, USA
I have known skateboarder and musician Mario Loor for a few years now, having met him during our days of living in New York City. We’ve bonded through skate photography and now both being in L.A., its become a tradition for us to shoot while catching up on our lives.
We shot around his neighborhood of Highland Park, Los Angeles. It’s a quiet neighborhood with lots of trees, alleyways, and hills. We started the skate session in front a store that wasn’t yet open. Mario skated on a concrete block on the sidewalk while I chilled in a corner, waiting to capture the right moment.
Mario recently celebrated his 30th birthday. I wanted to know how he how felt about entering into his 30s and where he is at this stage in his life. He told me that he felt good about where he is and has been growing and learning a lot as a person. Mario credits his personal growth to the practice of meditation.
“To this day I still have my vices,” Mario says honestly. “I used a lot of things to runaway from my problems, my darkness, all the negative and traumatic things that happened in my life. Meditation has made me accept and befriend my darkness.”
I was curious about exactly how meditating allowed him to overcome the trauma in his life.
“Just 20 minutes a day really allows you to have discipline,” he explained. “It’s a moment where you can actually hear your thoughts and become aware of what your own thoughts are. At least for me, what I’ve been hearing for the past several hours is actually dictating my decisions. If I had more of a clear mind, I can focus on what’s important. At this point, I am skateboarding a lot more and releasing music soon because those things are what’s important.“
I know that for me, life can be hectic and I always have a million things going on in my head. 20 minutes of silence and focus sounds great but I wondered, can I truly sit still and focus for that long? I guess that’s where the whole discipline thing comes in. From discipline comes focus and vice versa. I just have to commit.
I was also interested in the whole ‘befriending darkness’ concept. I asked him, why is it important to befriend darkness? Isn’t that the opposite of what you are supposed to do?
“In order to acknowledge the good, you have to have an awareness of the bad,” Mario clarified. “If we had no bad, then there wouldn’t be those excellent, fantastic, over-top, extraordinary moments. We need contrast. In order for us to get over our bad habits, we first have to acknowledge them, become at peace with them, and allow them into your life. Once you allow that into your life, it actually starts to get less intense, bothers you less, and then you scare it away in certain ways. Befriending your darkness allows you to appreciate the great things in your life.”
Mario is the founder of LA Boarding School, a hands-on skateboarding school where he teaches kids how to skate in skateparks around Los Angeles. What Mario learns in his personal life becomes incorporated into his class lessons.
“One of the things I’ve been doing is starting each lesson off with a word from a word bank I call ‘the multi-verse of skateboarding’,’ he tells me. “Last weeks’s word was ‘fun’. It brought me back to the meditation retreat with Ram Dass. This lady gave us cards that said, ‘If it’s not fun, don’t do it. If you must do it, then make it fun.’”
While looking for the next skate spot, I was very intrigued by this statement and asked him to expand. Mario continued, “One of the lessons I discussed with the kids was to think about things that they don’t have fun doing, like chores or homework. Choose a method to making something that you must do into something more fun. For example, you can make a game out of it, if you’re that type. If you are the type that can multi-task like listening to music while you do chores, then that works as well. The point is to fully embrace every task, wether you like the task or not, with full awareness and focus in it. Transferring that into skateboarding, if you don’t go full force on a trick, there’s nano seconds where you aren’t focused and it can open the window to the worst that can happen. “
Was there something in Mario’s life right now that he must do but has somehow made it ‘fun’?
“The business side of releasing music is a little overwhelming,” he says. “Once you get over the initial fear of starting you can get into a flow. I take my time. There’s no real reason to rush.”
As our conversation continued, Mario told me that after 10 years of making music, he finally feels like he’s not an amateur anymore.
“Ive been making music since I was 16 and had a very minimal understanding of it.,” he remembers. “I was drawn to guitar for awhile; I always had a voice inside my head telling me to play but I was lazy and I didn’t take the time to learn it.”
Getting accepted into a music school in Hollywood when he was younger, this Jersey boy was surrounded by people who were much better than him. They helped him develop his skills as a musician and he still continues working towards developing those skills.
“It took many years working towards getting away from being a complete amateur and it really does take that long.” He went on to say that when he was younger, he wanted to make money off music so he tried to make the pop songs that everyone could like. It didn’t really work for him. “It is important to make music for people but it’s very important to figure out what you like and what you feel strongly about. Then relate that to what people find digestible. That takes time. When it comes down to it you want to make the best song possible that you like. For me, it took about 10 years to truly find out what I like.”
I found that very honest and very true. I’ve been photographing for 15 years of my life but it took over half that time to actually figure out my style. Art is more than just producing work; it’s about finding your voice and how to best speak that voice into existence.
As the sun was setting, Mario and I parked at the top of a steep hill and when we got out and looked toward the bottom of the hill, Mario said, “I’m gonna bomb that.”
I was a little nervous to see him try it but mostly excited and got ready. He grabbed a chair that was on the sidewalk and placed it on the edge. He jumped it a few times but didn’t follow through; there was a chance he could get hit by a car or fall off his board while easily going 20 mph.
Finally, in one move Mario jumped over the chair and cascaded down the hill. My heart leaped as I kept clicking. I had this crazy surge of concernment and thrill and I could just imagine the emotions he must have been feeling. Once he got off his board, safe, I threw my arms up and yelled from joy; he did it!
“When I moved back here to California, I started bombing hills again,” he said. “I think that maybe bombing hills is the closest thing to surfing. You’ve got to trust yourself; you got the elements around you like the cars, the rocks, and cracks in the street. I would imagine that surfing has its own obstacles to watch out for. Bombing a hill is like taking a wave and it’s one of the greatest feelings ever. “
It’s always really good to know that a friend is improving and doing well. Mario can’t change what has happened to him or what he has done in the past, but knows he can change who he is now for the better. It’s a concept that we all have to remember. We have to welcome our past traumas, learn from them, and move on. To do that, it can be as simple as spending 20 minutes a day with yourself. Challenge accepted, Mario.
