Is the 11-timer a tragic hero, ageing gracelessly,
losing his grip on both power and reality? And will Pipe provide a
happy end to the Slater psychodrama?
At the risk of kicking a dead horse, or a moribund
GOAT, let us turn our thoughts once more to the
ever-fascinating case of Robert Kelly Slater.
Yesterday, during a four-hour round trip to the surf,
I finally brought myself to listen
to Slater on Joe Rogan’s podcast. They weren’t the two
most riveting hours of my life but actually I didn’t think he came
across too badly, and certainly not as some kind of irredeemable
bell-end.
Oh, I’m not saying he isn’t prone to narcissism, or that he
doesn’t deserve the criticism. I do not mean to defend Kelly
Slater, as such, but to defend the idea of Kelly
Slater.
The world needs heroes.
It also needs villains.
But heroes and villains are crude archetypes, the stuff of
children’s stories. There’s not necessarily anything wrong with
children’s stories in themselves, not even when read by adults.
They can be edifying and life-affirming and all the rest of it. But
to go no further would be to deny life’s depth and complexity, and
to deprive ourselves of so many of its joys.
How much more fun, how much more interesting, how much more
conducive to online speculation and shit-talking, to have
characters who do not fit neatly into either category; characters
who resort to villainous means in their pursuit of heroism, or
attain heroic status in their very villainy.
JP Currie wrote last week that there
is a time when even our deities should “slip away with dignity to
burn brighter in our memories with every passing
year”.
He is right, of course. A man should know when to leave the
party.
But as anyone who has ever had one too many drinks will
appreciate, knowing when to leave the party is far more difficult
than it sounds. “What harm could one more drink do?” you tell
yourself. Or, “Who knows, I might still pull.”
And the party is, after all, where the party’s at. Home is so
boring by comparison.
Speaking of leaving the party, and of burning brighter in our
memories with every passing year, JP’s article put me in mind of
the trajectory of another sporting great. In extra time of the 2006
World Cup final, the game he’d already announced would be his last,
Zinedine Zidane head-butted a member
of the opposing team in an off-the-ball incident, and was duly sent
off. The other player had whispered something in his
ear, and Zidane flipped. It cost France the final. It was
unthinkably stupid.
Shortly afterwards, the novelist Javier Marías wrote a column
for one of the Spanish dailies, arguing that, thanks to the
headbutt, the story of Zidane’s career had been elevated to the
status of great literature, and would linger far longer in the
collective imagination.
“Yes, in a sense it’s a shame what happened,” wrote Marías, “but
in another sense you have to thank the great Zidane, who in his
final hour has left us a story that’s profound and strange, whose
surface is uneven and furrowed, and not a tale so predictable and
polished it cannot be reread.”
Slater has never been the violent type and his final hour has
been drawn out to over a decade. And yet, while his defining
gestures have lacked the cataclysmic poetry, the dramatic finality
of a Zidane head-butt, they have been exquisite in their own
way.
Telling Andy Irons he loved him
moments before a Pipe Masters final.
Unveiling his new wave pool the day
after de Souza won the world title.
The numerous minor incidents that have generated content on this
website and others.
The point is that Slater, too, is a tragic hero. He is part King
Lear: self-obsessed, ageing gracelessly, losing his grip on both
power and reality. He is part Narcissus, even to the extent of
owning his own pool – a pool in whose convex surface he can, on
glassier days, see his own reflection. He is part Achilles, if only
in his vulnerability to foot-related injuries.
Unlike us, he is a freak, physically and perhaps also mentally.
But like us, he is flawed, and thus his is a story that keeps on
giving. He isn’t perfect, but then as his own wave pool has
demonstrated, perfection grows old pretty quickly.
In the late-17th and early-18th century King Lear was
often altered to incorporate a more cheerful resolution for the
benefit of audiences who couldn’t handle the tragedy of the
original.
The Slater psychodrama has not yet reached its conclusion. Pipe
is just around the corner.
One can appreciate the truth and power of tragedy while still
hoping for something approaching a happy ending.
