Lenny-lit: “Imagine if Kai Lenny not only died while holding his GoPro but it kept filming while his body rotted in the open ocean!”

A fabulous and biting what-if… 

On day fourteen of Kai Lenny’s inadvertent live-streaming of his own decomposition the debate continues to rage across the world concerning the ethics of Instagram’s continued broadcast of, and thus capitalisation on, the unsightly but also in many ways very natural gradual consumption of Lenny’s body by various North Atlantic marine life.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CHIfLxMB2sa/

Although a search for his body immediately after that fateful incident at Nazaré proved fruitless various oceanographers and tech experts alike claim Lenny’s body should be discoverable through the study of North Atlantic currents and Lenny’s GoPro GPS capability.

But is that what the formally highly accomplished Hawaiian waterman and formally Disney prince-featured but now dead Kai would have wanted?

Kai lived in the water throughout his life, and it seems somehow fitting that his body should be commended, however unintended and untimely the circumstances might be, to the same waters and waves he rode and 360’d the faces of with less apparent difficultly than you or I might take a piss on a moving train.

Likewise, the live broadcast of his body’s gradual surrendering of its wholeness to the ocean and its inhabitants.

Sure, Kai never could have guessed that the onset of rigor-mortis would freeze his hand and wrist into the perfect angle whereby we as a species,  as a people; surfers and norms alike, could log-in and share the experience of watching an octopus suck out his left eye (day five) and a hake nibble off the tip of his nose (day seven).

While he might not have aired any support of the idea when he was alive would Kai have been completely adverse to it?

He hung onto that selfie stick during all those hold-downs for a reason: he loved to document his life and broadcast it to the world. He loved to share so many aspects of his surfing life, so why not this final chapter?

What could be more of an intimate moment than watching Kai’s skin change from the mocha-coloured glow of the chiselled twenty-something athlete to the pallid grey of a bloated and rotting cadaver?

Why not air his literal giving back to the ocean?

Forget for a moment the segments of wetsuit no doubt destined to choke some unwitting marine mammal to death, but instead focus on the little bits of skin and flesh detaching and floating off to become individual particles in the constant exchange of nutrients and minerals that is the earth’s natural equilibrium?

Sheer poetry.

Meanwhile the feed continues to act as something of a digital vigil for surfers, celebrities, and brands to leave their own emoji-laden tributes to the deceased surf hero as well as links to their homepages and relevant socials.

Lenny’s sponsor Red Bull continue to host the stream on their website, alongside limited-edition caps, shirts and sweaters available only as long as Lenny’s head remains connected to his spinal cord.

BeachGrit will continue to monitor the situation as it develops.