The guy was a menace, nothing less. And yet, for all his petulance, for every barbed comment he spat at the weekend crowd at this known and frequently zooed-out surf spot in the southern Cape Peninsula, I couldn’t take my eyes off him.
As he paddled through the throng you could see the bile rising in his throat as he negotiated another blow-in on rented mini-mal. His leathered, sun baked complexion was not that of your average city worker. His matted maine of long blonde hair, weathered through several decades of ocean use, coursed out behind him as he muscled and barged his way to the top of the line up, openly mouthing obscenities at every man, woman and child that dared stop his relentless charge.
His surfing was neither Zen nor Zeitgeist, more as you’d imagine it to be; a gritty charge down the line with the express intent of annihilating anything that moved. Grim but effective.
And yet, for all the negative energy he purged into the water and those around him, I was transfixed. Not out of respect, or admiration, nor even disgust though I felt my pulse rise as he neared me. I was fixated as in him I could see my own frustrations, borne out so obviously before me in all their unsightliness.
That I could empathise with him made me all the more uncomfortable. That I could appreciate and even relate to this gown man’s petulant display of anguish, kicking and screaming like a child asked to share their favourite toy on this breathless and balmy southern hemisphere afternoon, made me distinctly uncomfortable. I had to leave. Had I become as jaded as him?
A weekday morning some weeks later and I found some great waves at a reef somewhere in the Deep South. Surfing alone but for a couple of other guys the mood was lighter with empty chitchat filling the lulls between the sets as we waited out patiently. As a wave would swing in, any conversation would abruptly end and we’d focus and pull away, each to his own wave, reuniting some minutes later sometimes tying the thread of the previous conversation, other times starting on something completely intangible. Filling the void.
As long as the euphoria lasted, the comedown from that high was an altogether more protracted affair and I began to think more and more of the interactions I had with the surfers with whom I shared that session. As I pondered, I realised we hadn’t shared so much as we’d each conceded a little ground so we’d each get our fix. There were enough waves to go round, yet there was still the occasional scramble when the real sets pulled through. A mute point maybe, but there were no heartfelt goodbyes as we caught our last waves in, no handshakes and little recognition of a moment stolen from the crowd. No names remembered. I recognised the hollow feeling creeping back into my stomach.
I remember when I first started surfing and the excitement of making it to the back and just sitting amongst the other surfers feeling a deep sense of belonging. In surfing I had found something, and through surfers I could relate. But somewhere along the way something changed. I lost that sense of belonging; the sense of community had vanished. Why?
Surfing has always proclaimed itself as being a step ahead, as being more than just a sport, with a focus on freedom of expression and championing the surfing tribe as one enlightened mass riding an endless wave to spiritual nirvana. And yet in so many ways I feel surfing is now so far behind. The dream has been co-opted and sold out and surfers are no less enlightened than they are selfish and jaded.
Why? Increasingly I realise that surfing not only has the capacity to indulge the most negative of human emotions, but it gives them a name: localism, giving carte blanche to brainless acts of brutality. Validating a wave-lust which has obscured our sense of common courtesy and decency, even reality. Why does common sense evaporate the moment we hit the water and why do we never call the perpetrators (all too often the ‘big men’ of surfing) to account?
But this isn’t about localism. The roots extend far deeper and end up at the base of the corporations that now drive the sport. The same corporations that are using surfing to boost the coffers of their multinational clothing empires, empires that are grinding the profits out of surfing’s now soulless core from their faceless clothing warehouses in the far east. Corporations whose soul interest is themselves, who willingly take from a community they purport to support with no intention of giving back: exploitation.
This is about the corporations whose advertising budgets drive and obliquely control the surf media that we surfers so happily and blindly consume. A skew-media that all too often sensationalises acts of stupidity and censors out the ugly and potentially damaging. Why, for instance, were Rip Curl able to put a gag on media following Rip Curl golden boy Mick Fanning’s anti-Semitic outburst a year or so ago? Poor example maybe, but check what happened to Mel Gibson.
More recently, when late World Champ Andy Irons quit the world tour to enter rehab, his sponsors did little to encourage their chief representative and worldwide teen idle to publicly account for his addictions and instead paired him in a marketing campaign with Metallica which championed Irons as ‘punk rock’, anti-establishment, screw the system. A marketing campaign which validated his decision to quit the tour and which made a conscious decision to brush potentially damaging problems deep beneath a heavy blanket of advertising and spin to keep selling board shorts: A decision that was neither punk, nor rock, just more corporate manipulation of a star whose light is now sadly extinguished.
Just as the ageing hippies of the 60’s sold out their own revolution by packaging and selling their counter-culture aesthetic to fund their increasingly comfortable and mainstream lifestyles, so it’s happened to surfing. The sport’s growing popularity has been crudely manipulated and raped by its leading exponents to the detriment of the sport as a whole. You want to find the surf culture of yesteryear? Look no further:
‘Repeat after me’ goes one surf clothing tag line. ‘I am free’.
Now buy the t-shirt.
Surfing for me was always a choice against the mainstream, of acting authentically and involving myself in a sport that championed innovation, independence and grace. But increasingly so I see surfing, and myself, merging into the mainstream. The more I can relate to idiots in the water, the more I realise I too have become jaded and co-opted – forgetting the reasons I started surfing in the first place. And for every branded t-shirt I can pull from the bottom of my wardrobe, I can see the paper trail to where it all began. So I pull back, I buy fewer brands, support independent retailers and try to smile more. It’s easy and way more enjoyable. Oddly enough, I once again find myself in the minority.
These are not times to blindly follow. Obama said as much at his inauguration. It’s a time to act authentically, not just for yourself but also for the guy sitting next to you. Time to open your eyes and make your own judgement as to what you want to gain from this world, not what you think you should want as by then you’ll never have enough.
And you don’t need to surf to read this. Take a look around. If you can see yourself in the driver of the BMW flipping off the learner for wasting 30 seconds of his day, something is wrong. If you see yourself in the banker extracting his million pound bonus as the economy rots around him, something is wrong. If you see yourself in the bigot, the racist, the misogynist, the hate mongerer, the cleric…the list goes on. Something is wrong.
And it’s time to pull back and question.
I got my kick from surfing. Yours can come from anywhere, if you’re eyes are open.
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