For me it’s time signatures in music. I grew up playing instruments, played in several orchestras, etc. But no matter how many times someone tries to explain time signatures to me, it makes no sense. I don’t understand why people place such importance on it. To me, notes have a pitch and a duration, maybe some dynamics. That’s it. I don’t understand why people try to needlessly complicate it. It doesn’t give you anything.
My wife will hear a song and go “Oh neat, it’s in 5/8.” And I’m like “How tf do you know that, and why does it matter?”
Skateboarding. None of it computes for me. My brother has been a lifelong skater and still rips it up at almost 40, and I see him do shit on the board and I just can’t figure out what the fuck is happening. It breaks physics, it’s like bee flight, none of that crap should be possible.
I watched him go up a very steep incline and do the thing where it’s a kickflip and a pop shove it at the same time, which is enough on its own to break my brain, but he and the board went up and landed at the same angle of the incline like it was flat ground, he and the board went up and down perpendicular to the incline without any vertical drag on the drop and landing. Gravity doesn’t fucking work that way! And how the fuck do their feet and the board just get back together after the board is seizuring mid air and just fucking land and keep going like there are magnets on their feet or something? It’s gods damned wizard shit.
It is just physics. Obviously. Getting the intuition for it is pretty difficult without actually doing it. It requires practice but it’s also not just muscle memory. You can figure out a lot of the techniques by thinking about it. It is important to be able to visualise a trick before you have any chance of doing it. It’s a constant process of thinking, trying, thinking, trying, and suddenly you just feel it, and only then can you do it.
As for the physics, it’s always a battle of opposite forces. Gravity does win, but you can fall with style in the meantime. I guess most people can juggle a football a few times simply by kicking the ball and then get in the position where the ball lands. A skateboard is the same, only with less room and you being on top of it. The secret is the Ollie. Your center of gravity is not at your feet, so there’s some room to juggle the board underneath you.
Strapping a snowboard to my feet was pretty intuitive, just keep the downhill edge up. Hard agree, I even wore skater shoes but a basic Ollie was something my brain and limbs just…don’t do that