We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jim Galli a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Jim thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.
I learned about ropes when I started slacklining 8 years ago, when I started rigging Highlines that’s when things started to get more serious. I think I could have gotten some certifications sooner to get myself in professional situations quicker. I think having a good sense of coordination and balance were helpful, being able to manage fear pretty well from my background in skateboarding was also a plus. Over all I think trusting myself was crucial. The sooner you commit to things the more you will start to learn about those things with a more serious interest. Having fun and doing things as a hobby is cool but it won’t necessarily get you to your truest intellect about what it is you actually are pursuing.
Jim, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I started slacklining in Santa Monica 8 years ago and the community was very welcoming, I was hooked and was able to go highlining a few months after learning how to slackline. Highlining changed a lot of things in my life because it made me travel more and meet more people who have the same passion. It also made me realize that I could do performance and make some sort of money becoming a professional Highlines. Along the way I met people who were rope access technicians. Some of them became my good friends and taught me some things about the industry and how things work. When I decided to switch careers some of them said that I should consider becoming a rope tech since I already knew a lot about rigging and I wasn’t really afraid of heights.. so I went to get my SPRAT and IRATA level 1 certificate and quickly applied for a job in LA. This building maintenance company Ray Access ended up being a great fit for me. I’ve been with them for over 3 years and I love the work we do. From providing rather simple solutions to also very intricate and hard work maneuvers. We do many things for different clients that other people and companies can’t do. We use our rope access program to access areas that are simply not reachable with standard construction techniques, from waterproofing to painting to inspections. We are able to do our work safely, quietly and faster compared to other industries. I’m really proud to become the technician I am becoming, there’s a lot of joy that comes from making your client happy and knowing that their way of life has been improved from your services. I also love that I get to supervise a team of technicians who actually really enjoy their job. I never thought I would hang in a harness for a living and now I can’t imagine doing anything else.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
I think for me, the most rewarding aspect of it is that the journey never ends. With every step I take on a line or every rope I rappel from, it’s never going to really be the same experience and I’m always going to have something to learn from it. I love that I can go into everyday with a sense of curiosity and a feeling of knowing that I’m going to learn a new lesson from what I choose to put myself through. And if at the end of the day I can share my experience and have someone else feel a similar sense of joy from what they are doing, that’s even better because i am growing with other people, not just on my own.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
There’s a few stories that come to mind but one of them for me was when I was learning the double Buddha roll on a highline. In highlining we have a discipline called freestyle which is when you bounce up and down on the webbing and perform a variety of tricks. It’s basically a bunch of flips and spins similar to gymnastics but on a one inch piece of fabric. Anyways i was attempting the double Buddha roll and it was taking me a really long time to land it. At one point I had a pretty traumatic accident on the line where my neck rolled back and whiplashed as I fell. I thought I had broken it and I would need to get rescued off the line. But I got really lucky because I didn’t brake my neck, it was only the cartilage in between my vertebrae that got hit and cracked intensely. My neck was fragile for a week or two and I thought I would never try that trick again because of the fear of something like that happening again. It had been a year of me trying that trick, the accident happened and then I started trying that trick again for another year. After hundreds and hundreds of attempts, many different sessions on different types of Highlines, I finally was able to land it, when I landed it, I think one of the first lessons I felt was resilience. There’s something so personal that comes from not giving up. At that point it didn’t even matter to me anymore that this was a worlds first freestyle trick that no one had ever done before. What mattered was that my inner battle with the trick was done and I could finally put it behind me. The journey was worth it I was happy that I didn’t give up. Now I can look back on it and reflect on the lessons that it taught me.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: _jim_galli_
- Facebook: Jim Galli
- Youtube: Jim galli Slackline
Image Credits
Kat Nebrida