
Dropped (2014) - mhb
http://grantland.com/features/anthony-gatto-juggling-cirque-du-soleil-jason-fagone/
======
hownottowrite
"But then came a guy who wasn’t interested in lying, who wanted to do stuff
that was hard because he could. This was his power in the world and he wanted
to exert it — the basic impulse of any athlete. Yet he never really found his
audience, even though he conquered juggling’s demands like no one before him.
Gatto learned how to stand calm and straight-backed beneath sick, dizzying
multitudes of spinning, arcing objects and conduct them with model-train
precision into his hands. He also learned to charm people, even though it
didn’t come naturally to him, as the kiss-the-ball video shows. He gave in. He
grew to accept the necessity of kissing the ball and lobbing it gently into
the crowd with a grin. He also learned to make hard tricks look hard, to
pantomime the exertion and self-doubt of a man working at the edge of his
ability even though his ability stretched on and on. He learned to entertain,
because for some reason, even though we exist in a physical universe defined
by the relative attractive powers of massive objects, the mere demonstration
of a lush and lovely control of gravity is not enough. He labored to please an
audience that could never appreciate his greatness. Then he got older and
watched a new wave of jugglers abandon the stage for the flicker of computer
screens, sneering at the bright-light mastery he’d worked so hard to gain.

That’s my impression, anyway. Gatto didn’t talk to me. Maybe he wants to focus
on running his business. Or maybe he got so used to performing for people who
couldn’t understand his gift that when he decided to back away from juggling,
he felt no need to help them understand why."

~~~
bambax
Two paragraphs before he says this that explains a lot of his frustration
IMHO:

> _Jugglers don’t have to perform difficult tricks to entertain people,
> because audiences generally don’t know what’s difficult. Juggling five
> objects is 10 times harder than juggling four, and six objects is 10 times
> harder than five, but to most people, five objects in the air looks like
> six, and six looks like five. A truly difficult juggling trick doesn’t
> necessarily register intuitively as difficult. It just looks like a bunch of
> weird shit crossing in the air._

That I think has two consequences (that the author alludes to btw):

1- You're working hard to please a crowd of clueless chumps that you have no
respect for.

2- You're vulnerable to hacks who can impress the public with easy tricks and
are a hundred times or a thousand times less talented than you, and who don't
even work hard.

Sometimes being too good makes it impossible to go on.

~~~
zardeh
> You're vulnerable to hacks who can impress the public with easy tricks and
> are a hundred times or a thousand times less talented than you, and who
> don't even work hard.

This I think has led to something interesting. Most proficient (and by
proficient in this case I mean capable of juggling more than 5 balls) jugglers
are either young, or relatively old. The top 10 this year were all born after
1990, and some are significantly younger (<18).

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ebiester
Last year, he posted a youtube video of something he had found:
[https://www.youtube.com/user/ator1a1m/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/ator1a1m/videos)

He said, "Not sure if this ever got uploaded. All I can say is Damn I was
good. Not missing it. Keep the dream alive."

Sometimes, you just get burned out. It's hard to stay the best in the world if
your heart isn't in it anymore. I'm glad he found something that works for
him.

~~~
the_cat_kittles
this is so fun to watch. thanks for the link

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AceJohnny2
I juggle. I started when I was 30, 6 years ago, because I felt I wasn't
learning anything new in my life and job. I grabbed three crummy balls that
were gathering dust i my room, and for 20 minutes a day, I practiced. It took
two weeks of daily 20-minute stints until I had a stable pattern. It reminded
me that I could learn, and that was essential for my well-being.

20 minutes was a good length for a training session. I'd start out energized
and motivated, I would fail and get frustrated, but would push on until I felt
I had measurably improved. The best advice I have if you're in this valley of
despair is to practice above a table in front of a wall. You won't have to
bend over to pick up the balls you dropped on the floor :)

When I moved to where I now live, I didn't know anyone here. Luckily someone
at a local hackerspace started a little juggling group once a week, so I
joined them to meet people. They're now the core of my friend group here, and
it's how I met my girlfriend. They juggled clubs, so I had to learn to juggle
clubs. After a couple months of weekly frustrating sessions (I'd have a beer
at the start to force me to relax), I finally got the hang of it, and then
started learned passing with them.

Once you get the hang of it, passing clubs is a lot of fun. It's a social
exercise in a way that only dance compares.

I still can't juggle more than 3 balls or clubs. Anthony Gatto is amazing, but
I completely understand his frustration with difficult juggling not being
intuitively impressive.

I still juggle in short stints almost every day when I'm frustrated with a
piece of code. It's wonderful to take your mind off things, because you have
to let your hindbrain take over.

------
ErikAugust
To labor tirelessly at a craft that has a low market value and/or is
relatively obscure can be maddening at times.

I have found you eventually say to yourself, "If I applied this level of focus
to X, Y, or Z I would be much better off in a number of important ways. And
you end up right about that.

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davidgerard
This reminds me that I'm a sysadmin primarily because there's no money in
music journalism [+], and in relative terms I now get paid by dumptruck.

[+] still potter with it at [https://rocknerd.co.uk](https://rocknerd.co.uk)
for what that's worth, but art criticism in general is completely fucked in
all directions. You think the internet did a number on the record _labels_ ...

~~~
ianai
And why I work in IT after studying economics after studying mathematics after
studying philosophy. IT is pretty much dominating the world.

~~~
stale2002
Same here!

The joke I tell people is that "Economics majors know enough about Economics,
to know that they should be getting the hell OUT of Economics and INTO Tech.
Thanks Economics! For telling me why my decisions were wrong, and that I
should be doing something else!"

~~~
ianai
Seriously. Though finance may pay better. I still use economics for personal
decisions. It helps to be able to understand leading data points and put
together some data.

------
gumby
Lovely metaphor buried in the middle: "like the words in a short story that
slivers through you and leaves a melon-size exit wound."

------
rando444
This was a fantastic read. Thank you so much for (re)submitting this.

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adhksafds
Is there a freaking link to the videos Gatto and Galchenko did of the five-
club five-up 360s in a minute? All I find is this and a couple of other
articles describing them, but no links. And it doesn't seem to be on Gatto's
current channel.

~~~
dmn001
I found some of Vova's videos:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zG_QpwbV3E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zG_QpwbV3E)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9csBR4AcSAQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9csBR4AcSAQ)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfGbWbWSr00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfGbWbWSr00)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_08RmjLVrpE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_08RmjLVrpE)

I think I have Gatto's videos saved somewhere on my hard drive, I'll try and
upload them somewhere if I can find them.

edit: found one of them, I think there was another video before this:
[http://juggling.tv/16257](http://juggling.tv/16257)

brief timeline of events:
[http://www.galchenko.com/oldsite/news,_2008.htm](http://www.galchenko.com/oldsite/news,_2008.htm)
[http://www.jugglingsubculture.com/?p=112](http://www.jugglingsubculture.com/?p=112)
[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/rec.juggling/5up3...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/rec.juggling/5up360|sort:relevance/rec.juggling/Y_sbWNQK1FY/Xf7LN3veVzwJ)
[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.juggling/OcYsxJC...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.juggling/OcYsxJC79wI%5B1-25%5D)

~~~
adhksafds
thanks a lot. lmk if you happen to find the other gatto video. props.

Edit: I love how Gatto's record-break is just buried in a practice video. Very
Gatto of him.

Edit2: God, he does a 7 clubs 7 up pirouette:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uPoToK4xOY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uPoToK4xOY)

~~~
dmn001
I don't think I have the other videos, IIRC he removed or made private the
previous videos shortly after the later ones were uploaded and that was the
impetus for downloading them in the first place.

Btw, here is an another video of Gatto in the BJC uploaded very recently that
I'll think you'll enjoy:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtsaTMdKVTM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtsaTMdKVTM)

------
gallerdude
Interesting article. High art in strange mediums.

The thing about high art is that in order to be high art, people have to
understand it. Writing or filmmaking lend themselves to high art because
you've read a lot or watched a lot of films.

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psychometry
I miss Grantland. Fuck you, ESPN.

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automatwon
_In the ’80s, a few jugglers with academic backgrounds had developed something
called “siteswap” — a mathematical notation for objects in motion._

Makes me wonder what other activities academics have / will invent notations
for

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voltagex_
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7671214](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7671214)

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zardeh
If you're interested in seeing the state of juggling now, the top 40 jugglers
of 2016 just came out [1], this was the first time since the list started (in
2003) that Anthony Gatto was not on the list.

[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M22bYjTWJw0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M22bYjTWJw0)

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intrasight
I enjoyed the article enough to go look at some of his juggling videos and
also at several other jugglers.

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coldshower
That's the funniest first paragraph I've ever read. I'll probably be laughing
for days. Great stuff.

