“Cold, deep, sunny and windless days near Lake Tahoe, CA, can be a rare find in the current climate. Here, Garrett carpe diem’d and handled several fun backcountry lines with his friends. His free-flowing nature and style on the board come together to take advantage of these moments we dream of. Backside 360 seen here.” Photo: Chris Wellhausen With snowboarding, skateboarding and surfing, I might not be the best guy, but I could always hold my own. At music school, I didn’t have that. I was feeling like I was stepping on people’s toes, as far as my playing went. All the other kids picked things up by ear after hearing it one time and that was not the case with me. I did get to meet a bunch of awesome people that were super motivated, which was another eye-opening thing. It’s easy to complain about how hard it can be to make it in snow-boarding, but the people that are going after music are on an-other level of motivation. There’re times when I’m not thinking about snowboarding but my buddies in music school, the ones that are truly trying to make it with music, I don’t think there’s ever a time they’re not thinking about it. My piano teacher from music school, Dave, his whole world is jazz music. You can’t separate him from jazz music. He is jazz music. Sounds like a whole other level of commitment. For sure. I mean, with snowboarding it’s a small ocean. So, to be a big fish in a small, white, upper-middle-class-dominated scene isn’t that hard—relatively. But when you change snowboarding to something, per se, football or music, where people around the globe are all interested and your pond is now the entire world, to be good in that field is on a whole other level. Can you talk a bit about your pop’s musical awakening, too? Yeah, what he’s doing is super cool. My dad got diagnosed with prostate cancer. He’d already been involved with some Eastern stuff but more on the outside looking in. After the diagnosis he jumped in full bore. He got involved with a sort of yoga, Eastern religion/philosophy group. He started playing this music called kirtan on a harmonium, which is a one-handed little keyboard instrument. He’s been playing these yoga classes, and he just went to India to start building a music studio for this Mother Miracle school. This was all roughly the same time that I got interested in music, which is hilarious because our approaches couldn’t be further apart. My dad says that you’ve got to sing from your heart, but to me there’s absolutely no point in singing a single note unless you know the exact rhythm and pitch. We get to play together now and then. We played in Leavenworth [WA], re-cently. Our friends have this prodigy camp and they played music together in this little talent show. These people are super cool. There’s this one dude there and he has a PhD in peace. That’d be a degree worth going back to school for. So how else can you apply the lessons you’ve learned at music school into your snowboarding? With snowboarding, it’s always been about just figuring it out. More aggression, more this, more that, go faster, go bigger, hike faster, whatever it is. Piano is always the opposite. It’s about go-ing slower, taking your time. But more than music, it was a good time of personal growth for me. It was the first time I was mov-ing somewhere totally on my own. I knew Justin and Kate, but I wasn’t relying on them to be my friends. I didn’t really know anybody, and nobody really knew who I was, which allowed me to be a new me. I feel like everybody should do that for a time in their life— get away from what you know and be on your own two feet for some amount of time. Another thing that was so helpful was to be the worst at something and still have people like me and want to be my friend. Your value had nothing to do with your ability. Yeah, but in November when my school and snowboard season were overlapping, I would sometimes leave music class at the end of the day and go straight to the mountain to splitboard, just so I could feel good about something because I would sit in music class all day and suck. I craved that release you get from being good at something. But we don’t want our identity to be wrapped up in just how good we are at something. Everything that I needed to do to become a better musi-cian are the same things I need to do in life to become a better person. Like, listening, but it’s like a whole different type of listening. It’s listening with every ounce of everything you have, which I never do with people in my life, and I should. It’s being truer to yourself, not being self-conscious, knowing that if you play that note that you’re gonna be OK. Finding that flow state in an activity that’s monotonous. It’s a frustrating combination because on one hand I just want to practice and get better and be sick. But music really makes you look at yourself. Because I’m never going to be this machine, this awesome player, unless I’m able to slow the fuck down, breathe through this, and listen with all my intent. GARRETT WARNICK 055
The Snowboarder's Journal The Snowboarder's Journal 21.4: Page 55
