Martial Arts, Swing Dancing, Graffiti, and Banana Peels: Steve Grody

Join us for an exciting episode featuring Steve Grody, the "Master of Flow." Steve's diverse passions in martial arts, swing dancing, and LA graffiti have shaped his remarkable journey.

We delve into Steve's martial arts background, from his training in traditional Chinese Daoist systems to his experience with Jeet Kune Do and Inosanto Kali. Discover the philosophy of embracing what is useful and rejecting what is useless that has driven his training.

In addition to martial arts, Steve is a talented swing dancer who has honed his skills in Lindy Hop, East Coast Swing, West Coast Swing, and Freestyle Foxtrot. We explore his dedication to improvisational "social swing" and his experiences learning from renowned swing instructors.

Furthermore, Steve's passion for documenting LA graffiti since 1990 is an integral part of his journey. We discuss the technical and aesthetic aspects of graffiti, the social dynamics within the community, and the ethical and legal considerations associated with this expressive art form.

This episode offers a unique perspective on creativity, discipline, and the fascinating intersections of diverse passions.

For more on Steve:
http://stevegrody.blogspot.com/
http://graffitila.com/

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Transcript

Steve Grody
[00:00:00] Steve: Keeping a kind of openness to what's the field? The field of possibility. Ooh, the field of possibility. 
[00:00:06] Intro: Welcome to Everyday Masters, the show where we seek to understand mastery. People who have it, people who try for it, people who struggle with it, and how we all manifest it in our own lives. Welcome to Everyday Masters. 
[00:00:21] Song: Everyday Masters, everyday masters. Everyday. Everyday Masters. Everyday Masters. Everyday Masters. Everyday Masters. 
[00:00:35] Maury: Hey, welcome to Everyday Masters. I'm Maury Sterling and I've been an actor for the last 30 years. You probably have no idea who I am.
[00:00:42] Craig: And I am Craig Diamond. I've been in marketing for 30 years. I've got a master's in psychology and for sure you don't know who I am. 
[00:00:50] Maury: We came up with the idea for this podcast because as an actor, one of my favorite things is getting to talk to the specialists they bring on, set all the people who come to set to help us actors look like we know what we're doing.
[00:01:03] Craig: And for me I've always considered myself to be a jack of all trades, but master of none. I'm pretty good at a decent amount of things, but not a master at any of them. I'm excited to learn how to become a master if that's possible.
[00:01:16] Maury: The aim of the show is to absolutely talk to people who are obviously experts, but we also want to talk to the everyday master people who've been doing things in their lives for years with passion and discipline, and nobody may think of them that way, but they are absolutely masters. And now welcome to this episode of Everyday Masters.
[00:01:40] Craig: Hit it. What's up Craig? How are you doing? My friend Maury. 
[00:01:46] Maury: I'm actually great. My mastery challenge of the week was dealing with other people's energy and how not to get caught up in it, which then I realized applies to social media, news, all kinds of stuff, but how to keep my cool in the storm. I think I did. All right. There's a lot of room, a lot of room for improvement, but I think I did all right. 
[00:02:13] Craig: Wow. That sounds unlike you, very positive and unlike you and centered, is this Maury? Oh, sorry. Oh, hey, it is you. Wow. I wasn't expecting that. Mastery. Mastery working. I can relate. We're in the same place.
[00:02:29] Maury: No, we're not. 
[00:02:29] Craig: I got, I. Emotionally, we're in the same place. And I got some interesting news today around, money and stability and things like this. And I feel a little anxious, I feel there's a significant change happening in my life. I. I learned about it today not long before we're recording.
And what's fascinating is that we are about to talk to your buddy. And one of the big things I picked up in, in this talk was about flow. Like being in the flow. Being in the flow. And what you were just talking about is, I just got this news. I'm just trying to breathe. I'm just trying to say, relax, open my mind, just, things could be okay, be in the flow of my life, but wow.
When life is lifeing, that is not my first inclination to oh, be in the flow. But that's where I'm at. 
[00:03:22] Maury: I think it's great that we've got our guest coming today 'cause I think he's an expert in my opinion in that area. He trains in it, he practices in it, in in a couple different aspects of his life.
[00:03:34] Craig: So the master of Flow, a guy with mastery in martial arts, swing dancing, and La Graffiti. Our friend Steve Grody.
[00:03:47] Maury: Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. Welcome. 
[00:03:51] Steve: Thanks. Thanks for having me on. 
[00:03:52] Craig: When Maury asked you to be on a podcast called Everyday Masters, what did you think? 
[00:03:58] Steve: Now I feel comfortable saying I have expertise in several different areas, but mastery is one of those words that has a huge.
Charge and an implication, which is it's, but it, what does it mean? It doesn't mean you have arrived. Wish when I was first training in martial arts and I thought, oh, my teacher's a master. This guy's a master. I thought, oh, that's so cool. And I, I'm embarrassed to say that meant in my mind they had done the training and now they're just hanging out and they don't need to keep training or they couldn't improve or.
They couldn't slip on the universal banana peel, which is always at our feet. There's a word that I really like authority, and I don't mean lording over other people that, but that just means owning something. For example taking it away from martial arts for a moment I'm also have been documenting graffiti in Los Angeles for the last 32 years.
One of the things I've been researching is gang writing in Los Angeles, and that has its own particular history and really amazing telegraphic things. I know how to make a bunch of those letters. I could show you those letters, but my letters don't have authority. I look at them and I go, who are you kidding? As opposed to somebody who has had a certain intensity that comes out, that's an intrinsic part of gang life. That have done those letters thousands and thousands of times sometimes while they were in lockup. And authority, the authority meaning that you really own something.
And again, none of the people that own it, that have that authority are resting on their laurels. They're still pushing. They're still pushing. So it means I was thinking about getting on the freeway in my car, and it takes all this energy work and it goes through the gears to get to the cruising speed.
We'll call that expertise. And you're still moving somewhere. You're still going somewhere. You're not static, but you've made this effort and now you're cruising. But that doesn't mean you're still not going somewhere or trying to get somewhere. 
[00:05:55] Craig: Question for you. Take us back to the beginning, how you were introduced to martial arts. Was it informed by how you grew up, or how did the whole passion start? 
[00:06:06] Steve: I didn't feel particularly safe as a kid, even though I wasn't in a dangerous environment. And so the idea of martial arts early on, or, in high school, There was judo and there was karate, and you would see the occasional demonstration, but it just didn't appeal to me.
And the karate thoughts with the screaming and the, it just seemed stiff and I just wasn't interested. And then in the seventies I became in interested in Daoism when I was in college and studying a course in Chinese philosophy. And then, plucked onto a very interesting old school teacher. When I say old school, I mean he was raised at Dao Temple before the revolution in China.
So we're talking old school. We're talking mountaintop temple training. The original thing that I started to train in was called Daan Pi or Dao Elixir style. Okay. And that included. The martial arts forms and a certain, the training and the very importantly to me the internal work, the breathing exercises, nu whatever you wanna call it, which is still part of my daily practice, but there were things that were missing in that training.
And so in 1979, I started training at the college academy under Dan Inosanto. 
[00:07:17] Craig: For those not familiar like me, Dan Inosanto is a big deal in the world of martial arts. He is a first generation student of Bruce Lee, a four-time black belt hall of fame inductee, and one of the world's premier martial arts instructors.
Our humble friend Steve Grody, studied with Dan Inosanto for 13 consecutive years. 
[00:07:39] Steve: That was a very different thing and gave a very practical base to things and a perspective. And then when I was over at Dan Inosanto's house one time in 1990 He gave me as a gift, a his private lesson that he was about to have with Edgar Sulite.
[00:07:55] Craig: Edgar Sulite is another martial arts legend. He was in fact Daniel Inosanto's instructor, and he is known for founding his own martial arts style called Lameco Eskrima . And my new best friend Steve here, studied with this gentleman for seven years. 
[00:08:12] Steve: Dan was already bringing Edgar Sulite's Marshall Methodist stick work into the class, but when I worked with Edgar, it was his feeding, the way he fed that. I just said, oh man, I gotta get me more of this. 
[00:08:28] Maury: Part of this pursuit that Craig and I are doing, and admittedly I don't think I ever feel authority, I feel, and that may be my perspective on what I'm doing. So Steve, is there a moment where, in your training, whether it was your practice in martial arts or dance, maybe I'd look at those two. How did you know that you'd gotten to a place of authority? 
[00:08:51] Steve: First of all with the martial arts stuff, the moments that are feel the best of me are not when I do something that I wanted to do, but then when I have a really efficient response to something I wasn't even expecting. And I know I'm in the moment that I know that. All those things that require you. To be right there, are there the mind, the body, the emotions. That's, those are the moments I love. And half of my curriculum comes out of those moments of going, wow, thank you brain. I'm just gonna reach in there and give you a little pat.
Because you just did some, you came up with some solution to something. I'd never even thought of before. And the same thing with dancing is when after being terrified in class for months, I didn't want to go into the circulation of the class because I was like just too nervous and too self-conscious.
There was this beginning class, I finally went into the circulation, and because the people the women I was dancing with were complete beginners, I had to step up and give them the energy that they needed to guide them. And I realized, oh, You can communicate, you can. It's not memorizing the moves or remembering the moves.
It's knowing how to communicate the grammar with the proper pressure. And when I could communicate, that was a threshold moment for me in terms of swing dance. 
[00:10:13] Craig: So you were inducted into the Marshall Arts Hall of Fame. Did you go and receive the award? 
[00:10:20] Steve: I did go. I did go. 
[00:10:21] Craig: How did it feel to win that, to get inducted? That sounds huge. 
[00:10:24] Steve: I, there was a bunch of people that were inducted for one reason or another. I was in, I was nominated by this friend of mine who's a martial artist and involved with that stuff, and I just thought, okay, that's nice.
I don't. With social media, for example, I'm not always sure what, why I'm doing it or what it's supposed to lead to, because it seems very vague to me. And it was that I did it.
[00:10:42] Craig: When we talk about mastery, we're because, again, Maury and I consider ourselves to be masters of nothing.
So we like to suck the experience from other masters is the moment somebody says you're in the hall of fame for something that feels like a moment of mastery. 
[00:11:01] Steve: My re you could quote me on this, eh here's the thing. Here's the thing. I feel there's, there are two aspects to this. One is as a practitioner and one is as an, as a, I don't even like to call it a teacher these days, a coach, a teacher, a coach, an instructor.
I feel really good about my ability to, Interact with somebody in a way where I'm addressing their brain and their body that can get them to move in a way that feels, that is spontaneous and is real and is adapting to the moment. And it's not about memorization. 
[00:11:35] Maury: I'm gonna speak to that because I think it's what's changed for or in this pursuit of mastery in these things of which I'm really think is just how are we in our daily lives?
What are we doing to just be better in the day with others? A lot of the time. You really do have a gift. What of being able to introduce the unpredictable, which then cognitively, I realized is completely predictable because this idea that things are gonna go exactly as we think they should go with a predictable order that I created.
Is not how it works because then like Craig and I started today, there's information Craig got in his life that's pulling the rug out a little bit and this wasn't what he thought was gonna happen on this Thursday, and I'm dealing with other energies that again, wasn't so it's. If there's a tidbit that somebody who maybe isn't a martial arts practitioner who's just listening today, a practice or something they could do that's real time, something you could play within your day.
[00:12:32] Steve: Maury to answer your question, the thing is do something and don't feel like it has to be the perfect thing unless it's clear what that you have a deadline or what that perfect thing is, but do something because it's a very contemporary thing to get, feel overwhelmed and paralyzed.
And so you end up looking at cute cat videos on Instagram, of which there must be two or three couple.
[00:12:54] Craig: By the way, that's an excellent, something to do. By the way, don't not cat videos. Do a bit on the banana peel. I hear you guys doing the banana peel, so I'm gonna make this assumption from the outside that in your training be on the lookout for something that, that you're not prepared for.
[00:13:07] Steve: When you see a technique, Being shown demonstrated either in video or in a photo sequence. The embarrassing thing to me is that it is, it's so chock full of assumptions. That everything is just going to go like this as though you can again, as though you can predict the reality of the future.
By just doing the simplest motion of, okay, here's a straight punch coming there. At this point, there are all these different things that you can do and then I can do in response to you. And so having some part of your brain, With a broad field of attention rather than just focusing on this one moment and assuming what that moment is gonna be.
That is the great cognitive skill. Keeping a kind of openness to what's the field of possibility. Ooh, the field of possibility. Hmm. There are times when I predict I do something with the intention that something will happen and the problem is that can actually go like that, and then I'm thinking, and then I'll try and predict the next moment.
Then it doesn't work out. So it's interesting. Just having a certain kind of like with opinions. Okay. Let's talk about opinions. Maury was asking about this real minor.
[00:14:20] Craig: Mine are better than Maury's. That's the first thing we'll say.
[00:14:23] Steve: Everybody knows this. We don't need to mention that. 
[00:14:25] Craig: No, don't mention it.
[00:14:27] Maury: I have mediocre opinions. 
[00:14:28] Steve: The thing is we all. Have a difficult time not coming to the proper conclusion politically or socially. And I'm not saying that we shouldn't have an opinion, but hold them lightly enough to always let new information and new perspective come in.
Some years ago, they realized, they kept saying, okay, what's water? But there are these molecules what's under the molecule? Oh, there's these atoms. Wait. There's something beyond the atoms. There's the now there's the particle physics. But at a certain point, real people, scientists realize that no matter how well you understand the underlying elements of something, you can still never predict the ultimate expression of its qualities and behaviors, or it's properties and behaviors. 
[00:15:11] Craig: So I. I was raised by a father. I'm also from la. I grew up in the Valley. I think you did too, right? 
[00:15:19] Steve: Where in the Valley?. 
[00:15:19] Craig: I was in the West Valley in Woodland Hills. I'm a Woodland Hills guy. 
[00:15:22] Steve: I hate you people. 
[00:15:23] Craig: Yeah. Yeah. I could feel that. That's fair. That's fair.
[00:15:25] Steve: Woodland Hills Landers. 
[00:15:27] Craig: Yeah. Yeah. No, that's fair. That's fair. So my dad grew up in Boyle Heights in East LA and had to fight a lot. And when he raised me it was very interesting. He went the route of saying Craig, You never need to fight. I hated every fight I was in. My dad made me fight and I promised myself, he said, you will never hear one thing from me if you don't fight.
And it created in me a guy that, I'm definitely a lover, not a fighter. I think in my own way, learned to survive, with my personality or humor or o other things, right? And so I'm curious, just, to ask somebody who spent your life in the pursuit of a martial arts or something like that how big a loser am I?
[00:16:12] Steve: Not at all.
But here's the thing that I would say, doing martial arts, there's some people, I run into people now and then say I never wanna do martial arts because it'll make me aggressive, it'll make me get into fights. And I'm like, no, you're missing the point. If somebody has a predilection to get into fights, they're gonna get into fights no matter what they do.
And so there, there are people that that's their jam. It's a cultural thing around the world. It's the fight club. 
[00:16:35] Craig: Yep. Yep. 
[00:16:37] Steve: It's a thing that a lot of dudes in particular do to stay alive feel alive. But to me, doing martial arts means you have more options. It means you walking away because you can.
Not because it's the only option. I don't feel more aggressive because I do martial arts. 
[00:16:56] Maury: Steve, I have a tendency to take myself, very seriously how, 
[00:17:01] Craig: I can attest to that? 
[00:17:03] Maury: You can, you're an expert witness on that actually. How does the dance martial arts go back and forth?
Because in, in another discipline I was in, one of the guys I was sparring with was like, go take a dance class. 
[00:17:15] Steve: They're both about flow. They're both about just going where things go. But in one case, you're trying to dominate the other person. For example, in martial arts, if you're gonna throw a jab, the jab just goes straight.
You don't pull back. You try not to have a tell. You try not to have a tell. When you punch with in swing dance or any kind of social dance that's improvisational, you try to have a tell you, try to let your partner know. There's something about to happen. You want your partner or you're sharing the moment with your partner rather than trying to dominate your partner.
But they're both about flow. I will say one of the important things Craig, in a lot of martial arts training is what's called sensitivity exercise. And that means where you're learning to feel the pressure, the contact with somebody, and you're reading you're feeling what is the best response to do according to the pressure that you feel when you're in contact with somebody.
And in swing dance it's just the best sensitivity exercise in the world because you're constantly, there's this feedback loop between you and your partner, and it's not just one way. It's not just, I am leading you or following, there's this feedback loop. Some women want more openness and some women want more.
Just leave me and I'm fine. Others want more in, input in the process. So it's a, it's your, there's this personality, the dialogue. It's a, it is a conversation that's non-verbal. 
[00:18:42] Craig: Be honest, have you ever had a partner step on your toe, and you just smash 'em in the face out of instinct?
Like they get confused in the two. You just knock 'em. No. It doesn't happen. Sorry. 
[00:18:51] Steve: No. 
[00:18:52] Craig: Okay. No. It's just a question. I don't know a lot about this. 
You're not just a guy who likes to dance. As I went and did some research on you, it's a bit more than that. Can you tell us a little bit about your relationship to swing dancing and maybe some highlights or a bit about you as a swing dancer?
[00:19:10] Maury: You have permission to brag.
[00:19:11] Steve: I don't know what, how, what age, but early. I saw on late night tv, some of the Marx Brothers movies, either A Night at the Opera or A Day at the Races where they had Whitey's, Lindy Hoppers on there. Frankie Manning was the main choreographer for Whitey's, Lindy Hoppers, and they that did all the arrows.
He's the first person that did an air step. In other words, we threw somebody over his back. I saw that and there was this freedom and this joy that just knocked me out, and I was this shy kid. That never left me that impression of that joy. Things come around again. And then in the mid eighties there were people in Sweden and England and the United States that were saying, wow, there was that, that Lin hops stuff that happened where?
Where is there any of those old dancers still alive? And my teacher, Erin Stevens, went to New York as a teenager as you can. She was 16 and went to a phone booth. Started calling everybody named Frankie Manning. 
[00:20:07] Maury: Wow. 
[00:20:07] Steve: Until she found Frankie Manning, and she and her partner brought him out of retirement. I finally found a woman that knew where this stuff was being taught in 19 93.
And so I started going to the classes and I was like, I felt so it's gonna be impo. I can't get there. I don't know how to learn this thing. But I kept working at it because I wanted to get there until finally. I felt oh yeah, I can speak this language. And then it was like one week I calculated I was out between classes and dancing like 30 hours that week, 
[00:20:37] Craig: wow. 
[00:20:38] Steve: Which was much more than I was working. I was dancing more than I was working. At a certain point in the mid nineties, I started doing a little instructional thing. Peter Weir, the director, saw it and he, Peter Weir, reached out to me. Because he was doing the Truman Show and he and his wife Wendy said, listen, we would love you to come in and work with Jim Carrey and Laura Linney for this prom scene.
And Peter Weir and Wendy Weir thought that our, that me my partner and our dancing was so nice that they brought us into the dance scene as the teachers. 
[00:21:09] Craig: Getting back to how cool you are, it sounds to me 'cause Maury is a very important actor. That Steve you're like some cool consultant that comes on to tell Maury how to look like he knows what he's doing when they roll the camera or something like that. And tell me a little bit about the experience of doing that. 
[00:21:27] Steve: I don't do that at all. 
[00:21:28] Craig: Okay. Good. I'm happy I got that right on. 
[00:21:30] Maury: Good question, Craig. 
Steve, we've talked about we've talked about two amazing things in your life, which are things that I'm floored by one. I know you through the martial arts training.
I. But also that you're a swing dancer. But there's this third piece that was this other amazing thing about you, which is that you have a huge passion for studying and knowing about graffiti in Los Angeles on the streets of LA. You've done a Ted Talk on the subject. You have put together books on the subject.
You've had exhibits in museums and hear about just how you got into it and where it all started. 
[00:22:02] Steve: In Zen Buddhist practice. The reason that the lotus is the symbol of enlightenment is because it grows in mucky water. In dirty water. It doesn't grow in clean water. And I think that's where so many things in life and in culture happen in environments where things are mixing and the borders are porous.
And so I go to places that most people will don't want to go. My degree. Is in painting, drawing, and photography. I've always loved letters. In elementary school, long before I knew that there was such a thing as a spray can, I worked out the alphabet in bubble letters that looked, like balloons.
But then my generational art was the psychedelic poster ballroom, San Francisco ballroom art, but I loved letters. And studied the the great poster artists of the late 18 hundreds Muan Beardsley. And then, so when I saw graffiti starting to pop up around Los Angeles in the mid eighties, I thought, wow, this is interesting there.
But I, I wasn't looking to document anything. And then finally I had moved down to the Arts district in 86, and it just so happened that in 1990 I was taking an alternative route somewhere and I passed the Belmont. What was formerly where the subway, when we had a subway that came outta the Belmont Tunnel, and that was this yard that was, it had a 20 year history.
Anyway, I went down and it was just after this battle, this graffiti battle where one crew goes up to next to another and people just, just the graffiti community decides who won the battle. And so people aren't fighting. They're battling on the wall, which is one of the wonderful things about graffiti.
It just blew me away. And I thought, okay, this is ridiculous. This stuff is amazing. It comes and it goes. It's an, it's a very distinctive human expression, and, there needs to be a record. I wasn't thinking about doing a book, I wasn't thinking about doing shows. I wasn't thinking about doing anything professional.
I just thought there should be a record of this. So I went down there and I started to take pictures and I ran into a graffiti writer. And once she realized, no, he's not a cop. She told me about this other yard and I started getting that yard. Then I would hang out there and take pictures and people would trust me there and I started to get around.
There are other people that have taken a lot of pictures, but I don't know that there is anybody in Los Angeles that was not a graffiti writer that was trying to document it with as much commitment as I was. Over the years, my archive is probably, if it's less than 75,000 images, I'd be surprised. 
[00:24:41] Maury: Wow.
[00:24:42] Craig: Wow. 
[00:24:43] Steve: There was a discussion early on, I if you seen that old guy skulling around taking picture, what do you think? And the originally people thought there's only one or two possibilities. He's crazy, or he is a cop people. 
[00:24:54] Craig: Which one was it? 
[00:24:55] Steve: Yeah. They finally realized there was a third possibility and that's a wow. He actually is interested and he is being respectful and he is, he's not fronting, acting like he knows what's up when he doesn't. And Yeah, we'll tell 'em where else things are going on 
[00:25:08] Maury: For folks listening, there's some great clips of Steve talking about one, his TED talk, but two, just talking about street art and is that an okay term street art? And that's what I'm using. 
[00:25:17] Steve: No. 
[00:25:18] Maury: I dunno if that's, yeah, 
[00:25:18] Steve: It's actually, it's a, there's a big distinction. There's a different tradition and a different route to, between graffiti art and street art. Even though the borders can be a little bit porous. But if you went up to a graffiti writer, You said, oh, I really love your street art.
You would wonder why they looked at you like you just said, the worst thing possible about their mother. 
[00:25:40] Maury: Then thank you for correcting me. 
[00:25:42] Steve: And it's interesting because we all stereotype, we stereotype whatever we don't know, but graffiti writers, stereotype street artists as somebody that is going to art school and drives their mom's Prius to the local safe arts district and does their vacuous little noodle.
On the wall so that they can now try and develop a T-shirt line and say, I'm a great street artist. When they have never been chased by or shot at by a gang, they've never taken the risk to climb on a bridge or climb on a building. They haven't taken the risks that the average graffiti writer has taken.
That being said, there are street artists that do stuff that's more interesting, but there's a lot of, there is a lot of vacuous street art and graffiti artists. Graffiti writers consider themselves graffiti writers. They don't consider themselves, they feel it's demeaning to consider themselves , or for somebody to call them a street artist.
[00:26:35] Maury: You said know what you don't know, and there's always more to the story.
[00:26:39] Steve: Yeah. 
[00:26:40] Maury: I love that and I do think it, whether you may think of yourself as a master or not a master, I do think it takes it seems to me like a process in this is appreciation. Whether it's a master appreciating a master or just for all of us, the real value of appreciation of something which I think you have to know what you don't know to really appreciate something. 'cause you'll see it. 
[00:27:01] Steve: You really gotta, you gotta live with something for a while to really understand the nuance of it. 
[00:27:06] Craig: Steve, I in your TED talk, something that stuck with me was, it seemed like you came for the art, you love the art, you love the letters you have a art background. But it sounds like you found like a culture that's it seemed like you came for the art, for the visual and what you found was so much more in terms of the people and the culture. Can you speak to that a little bit? 
[00:27:29] Steve: Yeah, if somebody was to say these people these vandals that are out there, what do you really think of them? And I would say just between you and me, I really like 'em. They're like any group of people, there are people that you really that are thoughtful and that have standards, and there are other people that are knuckleheads and that are absolutely the the very paradigm of thuggery.
Destruction. But they're lively, they're thoughtful. As a group, I find that there's great sense of humor. They have a great sense of humor about themselves. And then there's of course thumbs, those that take themselves way too seriously.
[00:28:05] Craig: Hey, Steve, what was the reaction of the graffiti artists to the book and to being in museums and stuff? How were they lit up by that? 
[00:28:13] Steve: Lit AF. Okay. They they, I really stressed in the book to make sure that I had two audiences, people outside of the world of graffiti that wanted to understand it more, that weren't just pissed off about it. Number two, the graffiti writers in LA and, the broader worldwide graffiti community representing LA, but also the LA writers.
 I wanted them to be able to read the book and recognize themselves in it and not go, I. Who are these clowns? This guy is writing about, this is not us, but they felt represented East Side, West Side, South Side. They felt that the, that I wasn't just jocking one crew or write jocking. This is a hip hop term for writing too closely.
I'm not, it's funny it's a whole thing about, I'm not sure what hip, hip hop terminology as part of the general culture. If I was to say somebody was biting somebody, what would you guys think that meant? 
[00:29:07] Craig: Ripping 'em off? Copying them. 
[00:29:09] Steve: Yeah, exactly. Plagiarism. 
[00:29:11] Craig: Yeah. 
[00:29:12] Steve: But I wasn't, sometimes when I use that term, I'm not sure if that's a general enough term for people to understand. Is he saying, bite me? 
[00:29:19] Craig: No, I'm in, I'm incredibly hip. You realize Maury didn't know what that was, but I knew it instantly.
[00:29:23] Maury: My face was, my face was neutral. 
[00:29:25] Steve: You have very serious glasses, Craig. 
[00:29:28] Craig: Yep. Yeah.
[00:29:28] Steve: I got a lot of love. I got a lot more love for the book than I expected to get 'cause I was just trying to get it right and I wasn't thinking, oh, they're gonna love me. But man, I have gotten a continual love for that book over time. And then in terms of my show at the MOCA Art in the Street show, there were so many graffiti writers that were so stoked.
Blown away to have them or their crew mate represented on a wall in, that's cool. They just never thought they would be, have their work represented in a major museum and they were just knocked out. And for a lot of those graffiti writers, that was the first time they'd been in a museum show.
And so that, that felt really good. 
[00:30:12] Maury: That's one of the things that's coming up for. Sort of the hierarchy of not just art, but in terms of this theme of mastery of sort of the gatekeepers, right? So people are out there in their lives pursuing things with an amazing amount of discipline obsession, passion, love skill that just might never get seen because of the way society is built.
And people are gonna drive by graffiti and dismiss it or criticize it or say it's this, that, and the other thing. That, that moves me. 'cause I think that's a lot of what I think this is about is just how so many of us are in our days, maybe already doing things with a great deal of passion that also may never get recognized that you maybe you won't get the stamp of approval of the Hall of Fame or this, that, or the other thing.
But I think it's amazing what you did there to appreciate it and then elevate it 'cause it is, it's great art. 
[00:31:01] Steve: Even if people. In general may not appreciate graffiti. That's not a problem for the graffiti writers because they're doing it for themselves and for the graffiti community, and that's their big paycheck. 
[00:31:16] Craig: We've talked about the banana peel. Is there a failure that happened along the way for you that felt major in the moment, but looking back was a very important thing for you, and you might even say it's a success looking back. 
[00:31:30] Steve: There's no way to learn how to do something right without learning how to do it wrong In swing dancing, there's no way to learn it without doing something, embarrassing or the wrong move.
In terms of martial arts, what keeps me humble easily is that no matter not knowing about all the great martial arts out there, but knowing that no matter how much I ever know, I'll never be untouchable, and that I could still get sucker punched, I can still get hit. With the most basic strikes possible because it's the, your tolerances for perception are so small that I'll never be perfect.
And so it's reality. Reality is humbling. But that's what it's, that's what spurs growth. 
[00:32:10] Craig: If you're gonna weave the three main components of Steve Grody martial arts, swing dancing, and graffiti. How do those things connect? What's the intersection of those three things? 
[00:32:24] Steve: They're all about self-expression.
And they're all about disciplined flow, a flow that takes cultivation a. Let me screw up another saying that all expression and no discipline leads to incoherence and all discipline and no expression leads to sterility. I think that the jazz analogy is a central thing. A jazz musician, an improvising musician, they work on their chops, they work on their chops, they work on their chops and their skills.
Their skills, and then when they get to. The band stand at the recording session. They let it flow. If you're flowing without the discipline, it's gonna be just nothing anybody cares about. And, and vice versa. Swing dance requires understanding the grammar and how you communicate, and then you just let it flow and that flow and connecting with somebody with that share, bringing somebody in that flow, sharing that flow with somebody is a gas.
Same thing with martial arts. It's a different kind of flow, but it's about being in the moment. And the flow and are you in the moment or not? You get feedback right away. And graffiti, even though I'm not a participant, that's what excites me about it, is that it's about flow. It's even though all the graffiti writers work on their chops, like a jazz musician by working in with sketches and sketchbooks and black books and stuff, once they get to the wall, most of them don't try and exactly recreate a sketch. 'cause they're saying, they step back, they say, How do I feel today? These letters need to reflect who I am today and how I feel now. And they're in the flow. They talk about being in the flow and then when they're finished, they step back and look out. They go, wow, I don't even know how I got that.
But there it is. It's about being alive and being alive through being in the flow, which means there's a certain momentum and you're taking some risks and you're just, you're going. 
[00:34:12] Craig: For people out there. Interested in gaining some mastery or expertise in anything? 
[00:34:20] Steve: Yeah. 
[00:34:20] Craig: What do you think are the three ingredients of mastery in your opinion?
[00:34:23] Steve: Aha. Three. Ingredients. I thank you for saying the three because that just that will tie into our final thing, which is the three pillars of Zen. 
[00:34:32] Craig: Oh, perfect. 
[00:34:33] Steve: Which is to achieve what you wanna achieve requires absolute doubt, absolute faith, and absolute persistence. If you only have absolute doubt, you're not gonna even try.
If you only have absolute faith, you're not gonna have any self criticality, and you're just not gonna really grow because you're just, oh I'm. So all that, and the final answer is absolute for persistence. No matter your doubt or your faith, just keep plugging at it. Keep chewing at it. And that will lead to something good.
[00:35:03] Maury: That's awesome. 
[00:35:04] Craig: Steve what are you terrible at? 
[00:35:08] Steve: Oh, consistent work discipline. 
[00:35:11] Craig: Oh, really? What is work in that context? 
[00:35:15] Steve: There's a good question for you. We'll put, we'll have to get Dr. Phil on here. 
[00:35:20] Craig: So anything that is, doesn't related to graffiti martial arts or dancing, we'll call that work.
[00:35:26] Steve: Things that's related to regular job type. If Freud, there's all sorts of stuff we can critique about Freud, but if what he said is true that the essential ingredients of mental health are the ability to love, the ability to work and the ability of to ability to play, then I have two and a half out of three.
I can work when there's a deadline, but if there's not a deadline, oh man, I slide because I'm interested in so many things. I flow. I flow, baby. 
[00:35:54] Craig: You do flow. You're a flow-er. You're a flow-er. And that's what makes you incredible. 
[00:35:58] Maury: Do you get bored? 
[00:36:00] Steve: Never. No, never. That's a sin to me. Being bored. Not a chance in hell.
[00:36:06] Maury: In case people wanted to get a hold of you, study with you, talk to you anything to direct them towards website, just Google you, is there a, 
[00:36:15] Steve: stevegrody.com is the Marshall page and graffitila.com. They wanna see some of the graffiti documentation. Can find me on, they can find my Marshall thing on Facebook, my personal thing on Facebook. They can find my Marshall thing on Instagram. Personal thing on Instagram.
[00:36:32] Craig: You know where, you know where they could find you in the slow lane on the freeway. On the 10? Yeah. 10 west, the slow lane. 
[00:36:37] Steve: Probably with a smile on my face. A smile on your face. 
[00:36:39] Craig: Yeah. With a smile on your face flowing. 
[00:36:40] Steve: Who's the guy, in the slow lane with a smile on his face?
[00:36:42] Maury: That's awesome. 
[00:36:42] Craig: Steve what a pleasure to meet you. You're a fascinating guy, amazing to talk to. Like we say to everybody, we will definitely be having you back to check in on our pursuit of expertise and mastery and flow and all these wonderful things, so thank you. For taking the time. We really appreciate it.
[00:37:01] Steve: Thanks for having me on guys. Talk to you later. 
[00:37:02] Maury: Thanks Steve. Alright, bye. 
[00:37:05] Outro: And now it's time for the "Wrapper-Upper". 
[00:37:09] Craig: Wow. Wow. Maury, Steve Grody, that guy is not what I thought. I thought one thing and it became three and more. 
[00:37:18] Maury: No, he's been one of those people you meet who, you go to him for one thing and you experience this unbelievable wealth of knowledge, expression, skill.
And then, somewhere, in conversation it comes up. Oh, and yes, I also do this with an and oh, and by the way, And in each instance there's a high level of achievement, all of which he wears with total humility. He's not there, just thinks he's done.
[00:37:45] Craig: My wrapper-upper is obviously around flow.
I loved how he tied that in, flow in the martial arts flow in the dancing. The fact that the artists are in flow in graffiti and just that seems like an essential tenant of who he is. So I love that. What'd you get? 
[00:38:04] Maury: I think I keep circling this authority thing that he talked about this moment where you know what you're doing because I think that's something that's alluded me.
Like I said earlier, I feel like that's something that's alluded me in many ways. I don't know why, there's no reason, but this. And then that led to him saying in his swing dancing I loved how he said he he found authority in swing dancing when he started to help other people that really hit home.
In relating to the other is when the best of you starts to emerge and you contextualize what you're good at and what you're bad at, gets filtered out and now you realize oh no, I know how to do this, including all of that. 
[00:38:44] Craig: I'm thinking about other masters we've talked to now and definitely resonant themes around perseverance.
Yep, you gotta put in your time, you gotta hang in there. Yep. It definitely sounds like mastery isn't solitary. It seems like it's in community. It seems like it's with others, it's in communication with others. Yep. And I really got that from him as well. You can't be a master without failing. 
[00:39:07] Maury: And it's not even a necessary question, right? I'm gonna ask it because I think it's really interesting to see how people who've lived through things and have certain things they study and apply different lenses, the way they look at life, how they talk about.
Failure or mistakes or the banana peel. But it does feel like the people we're talking to, it's like yeah, I spent a lot of time saying things like I'm not perfect. And I think I'm gonna stop saying that because who do I know that thinks I'm perfect?
Like I need to, I do not. I do not. No you're perfect. I do not think you're perfect. 
It's these things we say as if I'm trying to be. Accurate and honest, and yet it's really redundant. And in that sense, you're creating more problems. They're like, yeah. That's literally how Steve, when you're practicing with him, he has this unbelievable way to throw the banana peel at you, but it's fun.
[00:39:58] Craig: Yeah. He's fun too. He's definitely got a smile to him. He is fun to talk to. He is got a, like a sweetness and a. And a light energy. You could tell he brings a smile to everything. Yeah. Alright, Steve Grody, master. What a great guest you got there Maury. I will see you next time. See ya. 
[00:40:18] Maury: Goodbye.
[00:40:23] Song: Everyday Masters. Everyday masters, everyday masters. Everyday Masters. Everyday Masters. Everyday Masters. Everyday Masters. Everyday Masters.