Feel the electricity of the subhuman redneck scum
who reports every day of each WCT event. Steve Shearer aka
Longtom.
Steve Shearer is Bribie Island subhuman redneck scum who
writes surf at the Grit under the name Longtom, after a
Pacific Ocean fish with a long snout full of needle sharp teeth
that once attacked his friend in the lagoon at Lennox Head and made
the front page of the local papers. He subscribes to the losing
doctrine of anarcho-primitivism, feels zero kinship with the entire
body of surf writing published to date, is in fact deeply ashamed
to have been ensnared in it. Without the existence of
BeachGrit he probably would have been able to make a clean
getaway.
A guiding light is the statement: “There a
thousand paths that have never yet been trodden, a thousand forms
of health and hidden islands of life. Man and Man’s Earth are still
unexhausted and undiscovered” which will surprise no-one by being
attributed to German philospher Fred Nietszche.
He has always had a real job, usually something backbreaking
like commercial fishing or banal like bus driving which has allowed
him the great luxury of never having been fatally compromised by
commercial considerations in writing about surf. Fucking stupid
though, because in so doing he missed many paid trips to Indo and
elsewhere.
He has always had a real job, usually something
backbreaking like commercial fishing or banal like bus driving
which has allowed him the great luxury of never having been fatally
compromised by commercial considerations in writing about surf.
Fucking stupid though, because in so doing he missed many paid
trips to Indo and elsewhere. He managed to fund 20 years of round
the world surf vagabonding by serial working binges and low level
hustling of varying degrees of legality. He harbours great fidelity
to the people he met along the way and considers them his natural
readership.
He is father, husband and stewards a small goat
herd, as well as chickens and vegetable beds in Lennox Head; which
used to be a working man’s paradise but is now under the jackboot
of the developer’s bulldozer. He rockfishes religiously in his
spare time, which, when surfing, writing and family duties are
subtracted is minimal – usually solo and at night – and is
currently working on two books: a memoir titled Big Tits, Blue
Water and a book on the reality of surfing with sharks titled
Predatory Disruption.
On the the thrill of surfing: Different thrills, on
different days. Sometimes it’s just habitual, transactional, daily
bread stuff; to get to Y I do X…. X being a go-out and Y being a
whole range of things to taking my daughter surfing, scrubbing the
edge off a bad day, splashing around in babyfood on a new board,
grabbing a half-hour on the right tide etc. It rarely fails on that
practical level of making the day go better. At the least, you feel
clean for having gone in the ocean. Barrels, bigger waves, epic
days can elevate the thrill to any number of
ecstatic/transcendental states. Then there’s all the peripherals:
the oceanography, meteorology, natural history, surfboard design,
carpark bullshitting, small-town politics, phenomenology blah blah,
ad infinitum. Riding a wave is a tiny thrill, which is why the wave
pool interests me not at all.
On what he’s trying to hit with his words: Something
thats feels good to write, or sometimes that feels terrible to
write, because you feel so exposed, and that others get something
from reading. Who knows, really, where that comes from? Where does
an idea come from? A word, or sentence? It just arrives like a
song, so most of it might be just paying attention. Trying to gauge
how something might be received doesn’t work. I’ve wrote things I
thought were awesome that stumbled in public like three-legged dogs
and other things I thought were bland which took off. No point
overthinking it.
On what repels and excites in writing: Michel Houllebecq said
the unique thing about writing was it gave direct access to the
interior life of another person… so anytime I gain access to a
place where someone has bothered to develop a lively mind with a
point of view, a reason for writing in other words, I dig. Even if
I disagree with the points expressed. I despise the neutral tone in
journalism. Nothing is more phoney. Houllebecq also said the reason
he wrote was to put down in words the scenes that played out in his
mind which he found moving, or which gave him pleasure. Something
like that, the interview is behind a paywall now so I can’t check
exactly what he said. That’s a fair enough assessment on what
excites about writing.
