What can one say about surfing without being engaged in
thefurther abstraction of an ephemeral endeavor? Is the gliding on the surface
of a collapsing wave something that needs to be defined at all? Should it only
be represented as it is? Is this why the written word pales in light of the
video image? The empirical moving image which needs no wordsmith to frame and
control the representation. The surfing on the screen stands pure in its being.
The image is king.
Without the music that accompanies these images most
surfing films fall quite flat of their lofty aims of merging the art of art and
the visceral nowness of actually plowing the wave through. Sex is much the
same. We would rather watch it than read it and would rather do it than watch
it. This is the dilemma with any type of surf writing. How boring is reading
about meditation or any other esoteric eastern mysticism as it spins a web
around itself? These metaphysical tropes have been ground into a fine powder in
years following the seventies and the circuitous paths of those intrepid
psychedelic surf explorers.
I never again need to read another article or essay or
whatever about the spiritual nature of the mind body collapsing into itself and
transcending the base duality that binds us to the real and on and on. These
sentences are why nobody reads about surfing metaphysics. Who gives a fuck is
my first answer because I am a child of the nihilism of my time. We are
trapped. Why then write at all about surfing? Why then try to transmit anything
without a flashing image pulsing with life and vibrancy making an easy
transmission of feeling and place? Why the fuck not I guess.
When everybody zigs the individual must zag. Find the
mainstreamers and then kill them in the streets. What the fuck am I saying?
What I am saying is this, there is no point in any of it. There is no meaning
hiding from us other than that which we apply. Surfing is just a way to pass
the time and in those moments when we are in the ocean we can let the grip of
linear space-time fade away and embrace the next singular happening as an
eternity. It is important to do it because it matters not. This is why The
Surfers Journal will forever write about the mystical nature of surfing,
because it is fundamentally and deeply true. Surfing is an act of mysticism. It
is an act of mysterious watery alchemy.
As one paddles into a pitching frothy wedge it does not
matter what came before and what will come. This makes those heads that took
the good shit back in the day remember what it was like to see all time
compressed into a single moment and feel that moment inside of an endless
stream of moments and yet pure and truly singular. Roll that shit, smoke that
shit, pass that shit.
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