And those two little words ring like peeling bells from surfing's vaunted hill.
SAMPLER from Marine Layer on Vimeo.
Today the great Marine Layer Productions, supposedly shuttered since last winter, rose from the dead with a super fun, wonky, wild 11-minute mini-film titled “Sampler.”
While it isn’t the “best” surfing we’ve seen from the World’s Best Surfer Circa 2012, it is great fun! And shouldn’t it be?
According to Dane, he emailed it to a friend. That friend said it was “pretty cool.” Which bummed poor Dane out. Can’t the poor new Papa get a break! I mean, did you fucking see Cluster? What do you want from him.
“man… expectations, what a stoke killer.” Dane posted on Marine Layer. “Every time you do something, the expectation is that whatever you do next has to be better. do you understand how unsustainable that is? the pressure caused by this principle has stressed me out, burned me out, i eventually cracked, hid out, dropped out, turned away… but then it get’s to a point where you’re just like ‘fuck it.’ that’s when i’ve done my best surfing. when there is a complete absence of consideration for what people expect.”
Do you hear his conviction? Do you feel it in your cold, cold blood, you fuckers? Behold the Second Coming! A Dane with shoulders light as air.
“so here’s SAMPLER, which is a collection of surfing i’ve done the past year that didn’t make it into ‘cluster.’ Dane continues. “So yeah, it is ‘b sidey’ but that is not a disclaimer, i’m proud of it… fuck it, forget what your sponsors expect, what viewers expect, expect nothing…”
The film opens with home footage of a prepubescent Dane pushing around on a skateboard, throwing himself off a launch ramp, not a care in the world. Might that be what you’ve been trying to find, Dane? That feeling you felt all those years ago, just a toothy kid pushing a chipped skateboard hard and fast, your head full of dreams and possibility
Dane’s post ends: “or as ethan fowler says it ‘do what you want, do it well, or, if you don’t want to do it well, don’t do it well, just do it how you do it, and that shit shines through a thousand times brighter’”
If this is the attitude we can expect to see at Fiji, what a spectacle it could be!