Stuart Herbert's Blogs

My teacher, Robert Earl Taylor, passed away earlier this week.  He was one of the largest influences in my life, and he will continue to be for however long I live.

I first met Rob by accident.  My wife had decided to take up Tai Chi after moving back from Swansea.  Her step-dad Vincent taught video making through Cardiff’s Adult Continuing Education programme, and every year during the registration fair, his desk had been next to Robert’s.  Vincent told Kristi about this larger than life character who always drew the biggest crowds at his signup desk, and so Kristi decided to enroll for his Thursday night class at the school in Whitchurch.  As Kristi didn’t drive, I agreed to commute over from Bristol every Thursday, pick her up, and take her to the class.  This was in September 1999, before Kristi and I were married.

You only had to watch him perform the art, or listen to the way he spoke about it, to see that he was the real deal.  He’d learned the art in the 1980’s from Dr. Louis Ng, out in the park every morning no matter what the conditions, six mornings every week for seven years.  After leaving Louis’ tuition, Rob had then spent a further three years out on his own stripping the art back to its underlying principles, and rebuilding his own understanding and performance up to an incredible standard.  As I got to know Rob further over the years, I learned that he’d done all of this with the slimmest of information handed down from Louis.  Rob had had to work nearly all of it out for himself.  This he accomplished, and achieved a level of ability in playing the Tai Chi form that I have not seen equalled.  I have come to own many books on how Tai Chi was practised in China at its peak in the 1800s and early 1900s, and without reference to these books, Rob had discovered for himself the same practices documented in these books.  He was a true genius in the art.

For myself, it was like finding a missing piece to a jigsaw.  Four weeks into the course, I was in a car crash on the motorway, one of the victims of someone else’s unfortunate mistake.  I was bed-ridden for two months, but every Thursday I’d somehow manage to make it into the car and head over to Cardiff for the class with Rob.  I told myself that the Tai Chi was helping the back injury I’d suffered, but in reality I was hooked on how Rob was teaching us all to recognise the principles behind the art.  It was the very first time I’d ever seen anyone teach principles as principles, and that one act has been responsible for completely changing my own life in the years since.  

After a year of commuting from Bristol to Cardiff for classes, I bought a house over in South Wales so that I could spend more time studying with Rob.  I never told him about why I’d moved to South Wales, because Rob never had any favourites amongst his students.  Again, somehow he knew that, no matter your personal feelings towards each of your students, you have to love them all the same, and give each of them the opportunities they need to succeed.  This is another example of something Rob figured out for himself that you’ll find only in world-class books on the subject, books that Rob didn’t have access to himself.

He always felt that it should be possible for students to learn the art in less time than it had taken him to learn it.  He also drew heavily on his experience mastering Shotokan Karate as a young man, and he was determined that others would not need to go through what he’d had to do.  Throughout my first year with Rob, I remember him always drawing his students’ attention to one aspect or another where he’d hit on something to make things very simple.  We were all learning from his experience, and his improvements to the teaching of Tai Chi is his legacy to the art.

He had an intensity in his character that most of his students could never get past, so as the years went on his regular students in the advanced class on a Saturday whittled down to a small circle of Corina, Dawn, Paul and myself.  He moved his classes from Cardiff out to Barry Island, where he seemed to be much more at home teaching.  Never one for authority, the venue out on the Island was on the very periphery of the Adult Continuing Education network, far from anyone marking attendance registers or insisting that time was up and we all had to leave. Here he could relax and enjoy his work teaching Tai Chi to beginners.

Rob was a constant talker, and on Saturday afternoon after his advanced class in the Whitchurch Community Centre, we’d normally retire to the Fox and Hounds where he’d hold court for hours.  Sometimes we travelled to see Tai Chi performed by other schools, or to watch competitions.  I’d do the driving, he’d do the talking, and a four hour journey would pass by like nothing.  With me, he mostly talked about Tai Chi, his music, his negative experience of being black and living in Wales, and his pepper sauces.  

Whatever Rob set his mind on, he excelled at it.  He was an excellent self-taught musician, mostly playing the saxophone.  Music was his main breadwinner, and sometimes he’d find himself double booked with both a gig and a Tai Chi class on the same night.  This was how I began teaching Tai Chi, just twelve months after becoming his student.  It was October 2000, and on the one Thursday night he accidentally had both a class and a gig.  He couldn’t afford to miss the gig, and he couldn’t afford to cancel the class either, so he asked me to cover the class for him as best I could.

That was Rob down to a T.  He was generous with his art and with his time for any of us who were willing to show an interest and make the time for him in return.  That never changed, even after he fell ill and had to retire from teaching public classes.  He’d always kept his students separate from the rest of his life, and from his family, but after falling ill Corina, Dawn and I were invited to the house on Saturdays to continue studying with Rob.  On at least one occasion, he made what must have been a terribly painful trip down the Barry Island to see how the public class was going, and to do a bit of teaching himself.  We pushed hands for almost the final time … something I miss terribly.

There’s this much-lambasted line in the film Matrix Reloaded, after the fight in the coffee shop, where Seraph tells Neo, “You do not truly know someone until you have fought them.”  Anyone who has pushed hands knows how true that is.  Rob and I really didn’t have anyone else to push hands with, so I was very lucky to be able to push hands with Rob whenever he was in the mood for it.  Alas, this is one area where I let him down.  My progress was slow, and I never reached a level where we could go beyond master and student.  I always felt he really missed being able to practice the martial arts at a high level with other people.  I can only hope that he’ll be able to look down one day and crack that beaming smile of his when I finally reach that level of skill.

The last time I saw Rob was in December 2007.  I was working and living away from Cardiff during the week, so we had to resort to emails and telephone calls instead to keep in regular contact.  Since hearing of his illness in August, I’d put my efforts into finishing off the work I’d been doing to write down what to teach to beginners.  His last email to me was on the 14th January 2008:

Hi Stu
      I,ve had a look at your draft of the form and have decided not to 
make any personal ajustments to it as thats what they would be is personal. 
I think it would be of more use to you to too help you find your own style
of transmission. Thanks for your help along the way.

Peace and Love 
 

R.E.Taylor

Rob always described himself as a ‘ronin Tai Chi’ player - someone who followed his own path and did not have a master dictating the rules to him.  It’s the approach that he has set in me, and when the time comes, it will be the approach that I will set in my successors too.

I last spoke to him days later, as he was waiting at the hospital to be called in for his regular treatment.  I don’t remember what we spoke about.  As far as I know, this was the same treatment where something went wrong, and lead to the complications that we ultimately lost him to.  That was my last contact with him, six months before he passed away.

In Japan, they celebrate true masters of their arts as National Treasures.  That is the accolade that Robert would have been most worthy of.

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