Feeling blue? If you can surf, you've won the
cosmic lottery.
You may have noticed your old pal Longtom, third
favourite post-modern Antipodean surf writer, has been a
bit slack lately.
Productivity down, AWOL below the line etc etc. I think, in
this age of total transparency, an explanation is owed.
Maybe blow up a few mental health myths in the process, in an
anti-depressive way, if that is possible.
Y’see things were cruising along pretty OK in the early stages
of the Covid drama here when it became apparent, at first slowly
and then all of a sudden, that someone very close to me was
suffering a severe mental health crisis, possibly lifelong,
possibly life threatening.
Dante got it just about right in The Divine Comedy: Life is
a vale of tears etc. Seneca even moreso when he said the people we
love are on loan from fate and can be taken at any
time. It brought on a savage realisation straight off
the bat.
It’s hard to suffer. It’s even harder to watch someone close to
you suffer.
Especially when they are lost in an internal world of pain.
I wish this were surf-lit, but it ain’t. It’s my life and those
around me, now and forever.
Despite that I’ve always been the most cheerful pessimist in the
room. And the surf Gods, if there are such a thing, threw down the
most outlandish run of surf in a decade. It’s the fashion, mostly
in reaction to the VAL led kookocracy, to view surfing in
nihilistic terms, understandably.
I have a different view, especially now. Derek Rielly on a recent
Dirty Water ep.called surfing an “old friend” and that is much
closer to the mark.
A corrective of the highest order would be another way to put
it.
Anxiety is worry about the future, depression is the feeling
that everything has gone to shit, dread is that immoveable rock in
the pit of your stomach warning that something terrible is about to
happen. Danish miserablist Soren Kierkegaard might have called them
the three horseman of despair*.
All three march on me during the dead of night. Force me to take
up arms. Leave me awake in the early hours tense and exhausted. The
mind can’t escape the rabbit holes of its own making.
I used to lay awake in the half light before dawn and have a
little waking dream about surfing. It was a little ritual that I
used to fantasise helped me improve.
That went, there was no time to think about surfing. Days were
spent with medical appointments, having difficult conversations,
helping someone get through the day as best they could.
In between I could still get a go out. Ironically, despite the
stress and pressure, I surfed better than ever. The close range
suffering robbed me of white hot joy but even a joy bled white
contains within it enough of a spark to make a life worth living.
It helped me take the three horsemen and give them a burial at
sea.
As far as the corpo takeover of surfing goes, nihilism is a
trap, not a solution.
The raised fist is better than the resigned shrug. Pardon the
French but “fuck you cunts” seems the appropriate phrase to
employ.
I ain’t giving it up.
Why should we?
JP Currie called surfing
narcissistic, effete, selfish to which I would reply: that’s just
the conventional wisdom rehashed.
I’m no emotional champ, marriage caught me off guard, parenthood
has been a minefield I’m scarcely prepared for, let alone having to
guide someone through a crisis I can scarcely comprehend.
I just have to learn on the job, day by day. Keep walking beside
someone, step by step. Surfing helps me be the shepherd and not the
sheep. Helps me face up to life day by day.
To those who would rough up our old friend and leave her
defenceless in the gutter I’d also add, check your privilege
bitches.
If you can paddle out you won the cosmic lottery, even moreso if
you’ve got the skills and sleds to hang when the waves go
alpha.
My comrades in the surf have been magnificent. Kings and Queens
to share the water with.
One stormy grey afternoon when wedges detonated along the inside
sand-bar a local chalkie, shredder of QS standard, found himself
inside me on a wave of the day. He motioned to me to take it and
surviving a free fall drop I got spat out of a stand-up backside
toob. A wave to make a winter.
Fred Nietszche was no nihilist. After the publication in ’84 of
Ecce Homo, on what
he called a “perfect day” he mused, “I looked behind me, I looked
before me, never have I seen so many good things together”.
What was rescued, he claimed, in the process of creation, “is
immortal.”
He would have made the same claim, word for word, after a wave
like that.
Why even talk about it?
Our mental health is fucked. Too many kids jumping off
cliffs.
Why? I don’t know.
My personal theory is the hyper-consumer capitalist model is
profoundly inimical to the human soul. Atomised human beings feel
profound alienation and that alienation leads to dark urges and
even darker actions.
Maybe the spectre of climate change and species extinction; a
world run by AI just puts too much fear into the minds of the young
to function. You’ll have your own take and it’s as likely to be
right as mine. There’s no shame and no stigma putting it out
there.
There’s no shame either in celebrating our old friend, our soul
corrective, our anti-depressive medicine.
Especially if it helps you get through the day, helps you help
someone else.
Suffering has no meaning, other than the one we give it.
Why the fuck should surfing be different?
*He didn’t, but he might as well have.
