"With Stacy, it was interesting because you know he was within all this chaos, all these different lives that were so broken and so much anger and so much frustration and their skating came out of that, their different styles came out of that"
About this Quote
Robinson is sketching a creation myth: art (or in this case, skating) not as polish and poise, but as something forged inside wreckage. The line tumbles forward in a breathless chain of "all this... all these... so broken... so much..". that mimics the very chaos he describes. It reads like someone still trying to hold a messy scene in his head, turning it over, refusing to simplify it into a neat biography beat.
The specific intent is to reframe Stacy and his circle away from individual genius and toward ecosystem. Stacy is "within" the storm, not above it. Robinson is arguing that style is social: you don't just choose a way of moving; you inherit it from pressures, histories, tempers, and survival strategies. That "their skating came out of that" is doing heavy work. It implies the rink as a pressure valve, a place where anger and frustration get translated into form, risk, swagger, restraint - whatever a given skater can manage without breaking.
The subtext is a corrective to the sanitized sports narrative that treats athletes as inspirational products. Robinson insists on the grit underneath: broken lives, not motivational posters. Even the pronoun drift - starting with "Stacy" and sliding into "their" - suggests Stacy as conduit, a figure through whom a whole community's volatility becomes visible.
Contextually, this is the language of someone documenting a scene (likely a subculture) where "different styles" are codes: of class, trauma, neighborhood rivalries, chosen families. The chaos isn't incidental background; it's the engine of aesthetic difference.
The specific intent is to reframe Stacy and his circle away from individual genius and toward ecosystem. Stacy is "within" the storm, not above it. Robinson is arguing that style is social: you don't just choose a way of moving; you inherit it from pressures, histories, tempers, and survival strategies. That "their skating came out of that" is doing heavy work. It implies the rink as a pressure valve, a place where anger and frustration get translated into form, risk, swagger, restraint - whatever a given skater can manage without breaking.
The subtext is a corrective to the sanitized sports narrative that treats athletes as inspirational products. Robinson insists on the grit underneath: broken lives, not motivational posters. Even the pronoun drift - starting with "Stacy" and sliding into "their" - suggests Stacy as conduit, a figure through whom a whole community's volatility becomes visible.
Contextually, this is the language of someone documenting a scene (likely a subculture) where "different styles" are codes: of class, trauma, neighborhood rivalries, chosen families. The chaos isn't incidental background; it's the engine of aesthetic difference.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
|---|
More Quotes by John
Add to List
