Do The Things You Don't Want To Do - Mark Twight & Michael Blevins - Episode 58

This episode is taken from our most recent trip to the US. Every time we go away it’s a new trip with new insights and new perspectives. Increasing our awareness of the connections between the methods and ideas of the creators. Relentless in their pursuit of the creative endeavor. Their art form if you will. 

This was the midway point of our road trip having come from Colorado, through New Mexico and then across the mid West to Salt Lake City Utah to meet Mark Twight and Michael Blevins. 

For some these names will mean nothing, for others who were climbing in the 90’s Marks name will ring a bell and for others who are fully in the deep end of physical culture Mark created Gym Jones. An idea and philosophy of training, constantly asking questions and testing ideas formed from the depths of pushing and suffering in the mountains. 

Mark met Michael through Gym Jones and these two went forward creating something purer, deeper and richer in the world of physical culture with Nonprophet, an evolving stable of mediums, from publishing and photography (Raze & Refuge),  the Dissect podcast the Fitness is Fucked symposium and where we met, the physical space in Salt Lake City. Combined and individually the mediums have the power to influence and change those who connect and are prepared to do ‘the work’. 

Since we first saw the zine they produced under the title Raze “a fistfight with nature” at Barbers Gym we have wanted to sort this trip out, we are listeners of their Dissect podcast and it’s the perspective and opinions they take, looking through different lenses to most that piques our interest. They are defiantly individual yet share much common ground with the other vanguards we are meeting. So we arrived in Salt Lake City and sat with them in their studio and talked. 

We talked about the common ground we share, of creating manifestations of ideas we have had and the importance of continuously evolving our Selves and the mediums with which we put ideas out in to the world. The latter often being a point of contention for those who are comfortable in staying put and not evolving. This is highly principled non dogmatic dogma.

We change over time and with the right environment we grow and that is the richness of creating and putting ideas out in to the world supported by an environment, which holds us accountable to do the things we need to do but so often put off because they feel uncomfortable. 

As Michael said: “We need someone to push us in the direction we are not willing to go in order to create the change we say we want.”

Change, adaptation, transformation. All create discomfort, all can foster suffering but through the other side we are more than the person we were when we went in.