Art for Hermosa punks Black Flag and new book Point
Break.
Iconic punk-era artist Raymond Pettibon’s
new book “Point Break” hits surfing and waves, “His world is a
messy, raunchy tangle between excitement and terror. For those who
have been in serious water, it’s familiar.”
By Steve Rees
"When looking at a Pettibon, you get the sense that
the ocean isn’t a playground but a compulsion, where the chance of
drowning is very real."
JP Currie pushed me into trail running but it’s raining
and I’m a baby. So I cracked open Raymond Pettibon’s
new coffee table book Point Break.
It’s a doozy.
Blue-black waves with massive, braided lips about to crash down
on tiny pen and ink surfer bodies. Deceivingly simple, reductive
high school notebook doodles, dark and tense.
When looking at a Pettibon, you get the sense that the ocean
isn’t a playground but a compulsion, where the chance of drowning
is very real.
His world is a messy, raunchy tangle between excitement and
terror.
For those who have been in serious water, it’s familiar.
All others, please wait in the foyer.
The book is accompanied by an essay form seven-time world
champion Stephanie Gilmore and an interview with writer Jamie
Brisick.
Pettibon tells him that “there’s two kinds of surfing. There’s
big-wave surfing, and there’s the surfing that is changing out of
your wetsuit in the parking lot, the kind of locker-room jock
culture…
“Big-wave surfing separates oneself from the parking lot and
flashing some Gidget, changing our of your trunks. In the lineup
it’s between you and the wave―that separates the men from the boys,
it separates Greg Noll from Fabian.
“I used to have dreams―almost nightmares―of waves when they were
so big, and being caught inside and it’s like a washing machine,
and as far as you can dive down, you can get your eyes full of sand
and you’re still being tossed and turned…”
As if Severson went mad with honesty.
Drizzled onto Pettibon’s paintings are handwritten notes:
“Lived, loved, wasted, died. P.S. ― Surfed.”
“That would be the perfect wave, if there was not someone on
it.”
“My road homewards lay through Waimea Bay.”
And my favorite, scrawled atop an image of a single, erect
surfer taking the high-line on an impossibly steep right:
“What more could I have asked?”
But some are trickier to decipher:
“We let ourselves believe that we see a surface flatness there
even as we pray for his soles. Borne forward mostly on the arms of
in the curl of her kind nature alone. Born nekkid. There was really
only one way to go.”
I’m too dull to get it and that’s why it’s worth staring at.
Pettibon has long forgotten his censor.
His works try make sense of his experiences in the water. Sort
of like Calvino meant when he said that dreamy thinking is “like
jam; you have to spread it on a solid slice of bread. If not, it
remains a shapeless thing, like jam, out of which you can’t make
anything.”
Pettibon’s bread is canvas and his ink spreads smooth, baby.
You become a great dancer not by standing at the front
of the class looking at yourself in the mirror, but by standing at
the back, giving yourself space to dance, and by watching those in
front of you. At this point, Griffin Colapinto’s dancing has made
me sit up and take notice. | Photo: Pat Nolan/WSL
Buddhism big winner at Surf City El
Salvador Pro, “That’s four contests, including the last three in a
row, that have been won by two young surfers leaning heavily into
Eastern philosophies of meditation and mindfulness!”
By JP Currie
The more they win, the less it seems like an act.
The more buzzer beater victories they have, and the greater
composure they show, the more we might begin to wonder if they have
unearthed a secret.
Call me ignorant, but I don’t follow
the news.
Most of the time I have no idea what’s going on in the
world. I know nothing about politics. I’ve voted exactly once in my
life.
I have no social media aside from a Twitter account I
opened six months ago, a necessary evil to find and promote
writing, but I hate it. I enjoy neither self-promotion nor
self-doubt.
I want to keep my world simple, do my own thing.
But I struggle.
I’ve never felt satisfied for any length of time.
Forever I’ve felt like I’m falling short of some unidentified
purpose.
Life is a speeding thought train I can’t get off.
Things flash into focus and are gone again before I’ve really seen
them. I never really know what to dedicate my time to. When I do
try to stop, all I want to do is get moving again, to find the next
thing.
I think often
about how other people feel about their lot, how they approach
things.
Generally I’m
envious of those who seem able to focus on singular goals or
passions.
I think that’s why I was drawn to writing and reading.
To immerse myself in different worlds, to know things intensely and
love them fiercely, if only for a short time.
It’s like a series of joyrides. I’m having the most
fun imaginable, but then I walk away and leave them, upside down
with wheels still spinning.
I wonder sometimes if life is easier for people who
don’t think too much.
And if you don’t have a wandering mind, and you can
find something to love, do you have greater capacity to dedicate
yourself to it?
Is it easier to empty your mind if it’s not very full
in the first place?
That’s four WCT competitions, including the last three
in a row, that have been won by two young surfers leaning heavily
into Eastern philosophies of meditation and mindfulness.
Griffin
Colapinto and Jack Robinson.
The more they win, the less it seems like an act. The
more buzzer beater victories they have, and the greater composure
they show, the more we might begin to wonder if they have unearthed
a secret.
Our only real cause to doubt them is the hamming of
their methods by Joe Turpel and his ilk. But let’s face it, they
have the capacity to make anything sound disingenuous.
Colapinto
noted yesterday that he has been learning from watching Jack
Robinson’s approach.
Good artists borrow, great artists steal.
You become a great dancer not by standing at the front
of the class looking at yourself in the mirror, but by standing at
the back, giving yourself space to dance, and by watching those in
front of you.
At this point, Griffin Colapinto’s dancing has made me
sit up and take notice.
Honestly, I wasn’t convinced we would see a repeat of
his Portugal victory anytime soon. The waves were sub-par, his
meditation seemed juvenile. It seemed like the kind of win a
talented surfer might get when he catches a vibe, but not
necessarily one he could repeat.
But repeat he did, today in El Salvador. And though we
might question the quality of the waves throughout the event, and
the consistency of the scoring in the final, we cannot question his
overall performance, nor the quality of his opponents.
Jordy, Kanoa, Gabby, Filipe.
If you beat those men in the course of an event, in
any conditions, you deserve the win.
Most
impressive is his fearlessness, especially when faced with
Toledo.
Just imagining the sheer speed, power and amplitude
Filipe conjures is enough to diminish most competitors before
they’ve even reached the water.
Not so Griffin.
Yesterday he virtually called out Medina when he
claimed he’d been a boy the last time he saw him, and he was
looking forward to facing him as a man. Another statement that
marked a changed in his psychological makeup and perception of the
world.
Today, in the post heat interview after manhandling
Medina, it was Filipe he called for. He’s been the best, he said. I
want him.
In the aftermath of his victory over Toledo he gave a
brief interview with Strider from the water.
“Comeback performances, those are what I dream
of,” he said. “If I’m in that position, I love it.”
We know from past commentary that he’s referencing
literal dreams. The surfers Colapinto sees in his visualisations
are those he defeated here.
Medina has made two semi-finals in his first two comps
back, and in both he looked like a potential winner.
His recent happy-go-lucky persona was more muted today
post-loss. It was good to see that tension. Make no mistake, he
wants to be in the final five. He’ll need to win at least one of
the last three comps, and he can, as we know.
He feels his
scores have been a little lowballed recently, and I think he has a
case. (Not that my objectivity is reliable when it comes to Medina
and the amount of money I have riding on him.)
I didn’t bet on Filipe, but he, too, might have cause
to grumble about his scores. Along with Gabby and Italo, his aerial
maneuvering is still scored lower than that of other surfers.
It’s not surprising. Think how much of their surfing
the judges have watched. If they were without bias and expectation
they wouldn’t be human.
The fight for the top five is shaping up nicely. With
Rio (I can’t believe it starts in a week!), J-Bay and Teahupo’o to
go, there’s still a bit of meat on the bone.
Here’s a thought exercise I’ll leave you with, does
the fact the finals are at Trestles give some surfers a
psychological advantage from the off?
Griffin could
relax from day one, as could Filipe, as could Kanoa. Not only are
the finals taking place at a wave that’s pretty much their local
spot, but it suits their surfing.
It’s a mind game.
What if the finals were scheduled for Teahupo’o?
Who would be off the leash then?
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World number one Filipe Toledo, second to
Griff in El Sal.
Brazilian surf fans apoplectic following
Californian Griffin Colapinto’s “shock” win over world title
favourite Filipe Toledo at Surf City El Salvador Pro, “World Shame
League! This event was a joke!”
By Derek Rielly
“The champion was already decided even before the
heat begins. World Shame League.”
Brazil is famous for many wonderful things, the happy
pre-op trannies with their cocoa butter skin and pecan shaped eyes
(like Kai Lenny!), a dazzling soccer team, its brilliant adaptation
of the Japanese martial art Jiujitsu and as the last country in the
west to end the enslavement of human beings, its slave
markets ten-fold that of North America.
It also has, let’s be said, the most devoted sporting fans in
the world.
Therefore, when the Californian Griffith Colapinto defeated
Filipe Toledo at the Surf City El Salvador Pro, and clearly so in
my opinion, apoplectic Brazilian fans hit the WSL’s Instagram
account en masse to voice their fury.
A very small sample of the eight thousand comments.
“World Shame League”
“…and the World Shame League strikes again.”
“WHAT A SHAME! WORLD SHAME LEAGUE! This last wave never will be
like 8. This event was a joke.”
“SHAMEEE!!”
“The champion was already decided even before the heat begins.
World Shame League.”
“If the judges do that again in Saquarema, the jiuripoca is
gonna pew.”
“What a joke… Not any credibility left.”
“World SHAME League, World SHAME League, World SHAME
League.”
And on and on.
Thoughts on the matter?
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Open Thread, Comment Live Final’s Day of
the Surf City El Salvador Pro, “You want a lesson? I’ll give you a
lesson. How about a geography lesson? My father’s from Puerto Rico.
My mother’s from El Salvador. And neither one of those is
Mexico!”
By Chas Smith
Let your fingers dance!
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The jump-off looks sorta similar to J-Bay, water colour
not so much. | Photo: WSL/Thiago Diz
World tour veteran Jordy Smith shatters
WSL’s wall of positive noise at Surf City El Salvador Pro, “Someone
has to be slapped every time they call this J-Bay!”
By JP Currie
"The end of the elimination round was brutal. Nat
Young sat forlornly in the murky water for a full half-hour in a
loss to Jordy without a wave to ride."
Today I taught fourteen year olds a dramatic monologue
about a disaffected teenager who takes a breadknife into the
street and stabs someone.
It’s a poem that was erased from textbooks and banned from
schools in England during a period when knife-crime was on the
rise.
It seems unlikely that knife-wielding teens were plunging blades
with couplets on their mind, but there you go.
The speaker feels alienated from society and ignored at school.
The language of education is one he cannot understand. The language
of violence he can.
The opening line is unequivocal.
“Today I am going to kill something. Anything.”
It’s sinister. The character is no-one exceptional, and that’s
the point. He might be sitting next to you on the bus, momentarily
eyeballing you as your shoulders collide in the street, or watching
sullenly from a doorway.
The point is that life can be shit, for all of us. It’s how we
respond that’s important.
We could choose darkness. Choose to blame everyone and
everything. Condemn the world around us. It’s not my fault…
Or, we change our perspective.
We can be like Jack Robinson or Griffin Colapinto and master our
minds, understand the kingdom’s all inside.
Or we might hand our fate to a higher power, like Filipe or
Gabriel, have faith.
I don’t have faith in anything in particular, and I’m not in
control of my mind, but I know I need to alter my perspective
sometimes. After the first few heats today I’d jotted down a few
negative quips and acerbic barbs. But that was too easy. It’s too
easy to dismiss it all – waves, Kaipo, judging, commentary,
Kaipo…etc, etc, the usual.
So I won’t.
But allow me one, before I renounce.
Fuck, if I hear Mitchell Salazar say Poooonnta Rrrrroooka one
more time…
We get it, Mitch. You speak Spanish, along with about a billion
other people.
He’s like a kid I once taught who wanted to show the class magic
tricks he was learning. It was a low ability class (it’s not all
poetry and Good Will Hunting, you know) and they were poor souls.
And so I said yes to indulge him and kill some time. Bless him. It
was awful, god awful. Neither magic nor tricks. But we made the
mistake of ummmming and awwwwing regardless, pretending to be
astonished, as if he were David Blaine. After that the poor fucker
wanted to do magic every day, and I didn’t have the heart to say
no. And so the end of every lesson consisted of pretending to be
wowed by tricks that got ever more elaborate, increasingly
ludicrous, and neverendingly shit.
That’s what I think of every time Salazar rrrrrrrrolls some
rrrrrrrs and badgers his co-commentators into trying to speak
Spanish.
This morning we marched through men’s elimination then round of
16 with overlapping heats. The waves were fairly grim – if you’ll
allow me a little reality – and I wondered if it was contestable,
nevermind suitable for overlapping heats. But Miley-Dyer’s hand had
been forced. With little time and much to do, we had to march
on.
The end of the elimination round was brutal. Nat Young sat
forlornly in the murky water for a full half-hour in a loss to
Jordy without a wave to ride.
Miguel Pupo, a surfer who has been superb all season, thumped
his board in fury as the hooter signalled his loss to Jake
Marshall. Until the final seconds all he had was a 2.97 and a
0.90.
Meanwhile, Shannon and Laura chirped merrily in the background
like we were all having a wonderful time.
“So, so contestable,” said Laura.
Jordy was graceful and honest in his post heat interview.
“Luck,” he said, when asked how he won. Salazar trotted out the
J-Bay comparison, clearly expecting Jordy to stick to the script.
“Someone has to be slapped every time they call this J-Bay,” he
snapped, forehand smashing the inane comparison right back into
Mitchell’s taco.
Jack Robinson looked roundly trounced by Jackson Baker for the
majority of their round of 16 heat. Bizarrely, waves appeared, and
Baker picked the best ones, building a solid and deserved lead.
But with four mins on the clock, Robinson found a wave and shook
it like a terrier with a rat for an 8.93. The aggression was
arresting. It’s the most impressed I’ve been with Robinson in three
comps. The camera cut to Julia on the beach, gesticulating wildly.
We couldn’t hear what she was saying, but I imagine it was
something along the lines of “Any of you fucking pricks move, and
I’ll execute every motherfuckin’ last one of you!”
Jack sat in the water, composed himself, then turned and paddled
in. There’s something vaguely psychopathic in his demeanour, like
he’s scared to lose control. He surfs like he’s possessed, yet
talks like he’s half-asleep.
Robinson and the other key players (plus Callum Robson) advanced
to quarters, and that was fortunate because Punta Roca finally
showed some of the quality we’ve been hearing about.
Medina vs Robinson was the heat everyone wanted to see. Jack’s
board snapped on his first top turn, sheared by the lip. He got
back out quickly, but was out of rhythm. The waves were better but
not spectacular at this stage. Really, Medina dominated even though
he once again looked chronically underscored with mid-sixes.
In the post heat interview, Laura asked him whether he pushed
Jack deep on purpose for the last set. “Just testing these guys,”
Medina replied, like a grinning assassin.
Yes you are, Gabby, and they’re being blown away like dust in
the wind.
Some of the quarters were still plagued by lulls, but it was
eye-rubbing in disbelief stuff to watch Filipe standing tall and
eyeing long, double-overhead walls before obliterating the lip on
every turn, when just a couple of hours before Carissa Moore
couldn’t find a wave in her quarter final loss to Caroline Marks. A
couple before that it had looked unsurfable.
Filipe dominated against Robson, as you might expect on clean
right point waves. He was never threatened, always in control. He
seems more composed than ever.
Kanoa and Colapinto both registered excellent heat totals.
Either would’ve been a worthy victor. Kanoa had the wave to steal
it at the end, had he not fallen on his closer.
Griffin will face Medina in the semi. He’s looking forward to
it. He feels he was just a kid the last time he surfed against
Medina. “Now I’m becoming a man”, he said.
He’ll need to be more than a man to advance through that
one.
Ethan and Italo battled an excellent heat to finish the day. The
waves were nothing short of pumping and perfect, if a little lully
towards the end.
Italo took the win, trading 8s with Ewing. Just as well, for the
sake of justice. Ethan’s scores weren’t so much inflated as Italo’s
were squashed. He continues to be undermined by the judges. His
8.80 was the highest score of the heat but still lowballed. What
else could he have done with that wave on his backhand?
Today was far from perfect, but there were glimpses that made it
all worthwhile. Really this is all we can hope for.
I found myself enjoying the imperfection, relishing it even.
When the good waves came, I appreciated them all the more.
“Why is everything we study about death, pain and tragedy, Sir?”
a pupil asked today, justly.
Good question.
It’s because happiness is the dullest state you can find
yourself in.
Contentment? No thanks.
Negative emotions challenge us.
They help us create.
They help us to connect, to know that others suffer, too.
We learn to appreciate what we have. We see silk purses in sow’s
ears.
Above all: without sorrow, how would you recognise joy?
And if all you know is happiness, what of ecstasy?
It seems unlikely there’ll be an ecstatic finish in El Salvador
tomorrow, but that’s ok. There’ll be other days. It can always get
better.