The Lime Treatment

You know, this is one of the few surf videos I've seen in a while that I would call cinematic. Also the first I've encountered that looks deep into the tremendous monster lip of Teahupo'o - from the inside. Would George Greenough have dared to go deeper?

Lime juice and the sea! from allan wilson on Vimeo.

inspiration

BIRTHRIGHT from Sean Mullens on Vimeo.

Too Much Rocker

It's been so long I'm starting to have dreams.

My dream last night opened with me lined up on a big wall, double overhead, breaking brilliantly and it looked like I was about to pull the biggest barrel of my life. But somehow I had to decide on the spot which board I was going to ride and decided on my 6'4 thruster with the rocker.

But instead of a board materializing under my feet, I received a banana. The rocker on the banana was a bit too much though, and I quickly had to ditch the fruit and ride on the soles of my feet. I was a little more stable but lost too much speed. I saw the wave starting to break and I had no choice but to dive for the bottom of the wave in hopes of escaping a savage beating. In slow motion, I drew closer and closer to the water's surface and there the dream ended.

Surfing is not counter culture

I would like to take this opportunity to disabuse myself of the myth of counter culture. I am an escapist, by nature and by vocation. Drugsalchoholmusicsexartcrimevandalism, all illusion in the sense that the act of transcendence requires a destination, a place to touch down. Without that it’s just getting high. Counter culture exists only in time not in space. It’s a fantasy for people who don’t really want to leave. For people who are not really serious about escape. It’s like forming a gang in prison as a form of empowerment. The real thing to do is just leave, if and when possible.

I want to leave and the place I want to go is surfing. Where is that? People spend lifetimes trying to riddle that one. So I have no answers but I do know it’s f-king hard to read in the dark. I don’t need surfing to be in the shadows, to be our secret. Just like any of the other afformentioned disciplines, music and art etc…The secret is in the mysterious yet obvious nature of truth.

Counter culture is for people who don’t want to take a real look for themselves. I’m not buyin’ it, stop sellin’ it.

paipo past

Paipo Surfing 1958-1965 from Stig Waidelich on Vimeo.

The gallery of surfing

In following competitive surfing both at the CT and QS level I have noticed that marketing developement of an individual surfer can and does have an effect on how that person is scored in events. At first I viewed this as an unpleasant fact of life. It did not seem fair. Why should one person who is more heavily sponsored and promoted have an edge over his or her fellow competitor. It seemed unethical. But as I myself spend more time seeking out video parts on the net for surfers who are mentioned in articles and other media that function as cogs in the promotion machine I realized that the situation is a bit more complex than it looks at first gloss.

The judgement of a surf contest can seem quite arbitrary. Each surfer is stringing together moves in an effort to paint a line. At the end of the day it is about the preference of the judge as to what aestetic they think is more valuable. But in all fairness some lines are harder to understand than others.

Take art for example. Abstraction can look ugly at first glance. And personally I believe it is the perrogative of the viewer to dismiss what he or she chooses. But if the onlooker has a bit of education on the subject it may further ones ability to appreciate what at first glance is not immediately apparent.

So when a surfer is being promoted through publicity and the use of video sections yes on the one hand its just plain and simple spot lighting but on the other hand it can help judges enhance there sensibilities, advancing the mechanics of scoring by fostering a more complex understanding of the art they are viewing so to speak.

Shifty mind

Riding the subway to work one day I saw a woman who was riding the express 5 train all the way uptown without leaning on or holding something for balance. It reminded of an old teacher I had. It also made me think of the difference between reef break and beach break. In particular the shifty sand bars most of us surf here.

A reef break is a study of experience over time as articulated through a breaking wave. So as different swell directions run through one learns about its behaviour. Where it bowls, what are the lines that can be drawn and this becomes the discipline.

Certain beach breaks seem to be about the absence of discipline. To embrace the spirit of this may hold some potential for drawing more workable lines in unpredictable conditions.

But this gets me thinking of the woman balancing on the subways of New York City. The train must shift in an irregular fashion. And to file the variations of each line at the different traveling speeds of the train would be impossible to index in the mind. But when falling into to a rhythm recognition must kick in.

It might do well in the line up to clear the mind and let memory recognize for itself.