Songbird Harry Styles plumbs the depths of surfing’s most head-scratching conundrum

The question that has been debated by the brightest surf minds for hundreds of years.

Ever since man began to get his think on, conundrums and paradoxes have presented. Unanswerable questions that hurt the brain and cause smoke to come out of the ears. If you replace each plank of a wooden ship one by one, is it still the same ship, for example. Or if a lightning bolt strikes a swamp and accidentally creates an exact atomic duplicate of you while vaporizing the original, is the “Swampman” you?

Well, former One Direction songbird Harry Styles just dusted off surfing’s most head-scratching enigma in a sit-down interview with Radiohead’s Thom Yorke for Rolling Stone Magazine.

Though the context is unclear (due paywall), Styles declares:

Someone once described it to me as like surfing, where you can practice getting up on the board. Sometimes there’s no waves. If a wave comes but you haven’t practiced enough, you’re not going to be able to surf it. When they happen, it’s a combination that you’ve practiced being able to capture it, and something is happening at the right time.

And there it is.

Now, every surfer knows that there is no way to “practice getting up on the board” on land. Those pop-up drills adult learners participate in are purely for the mocking entertainment of the surf instructor making them do so. No, surfing can only be practiced in the water, with waves and a board, and herein lies the great mystery.

When we are out in the water, with waves and a board, are we surfing or are we practicing surfing?

The question has been debated by the brightest surf minds for hundreds of years, though we are no closer to any sort of accepted answer.

A real pickle.

Thom Yorke, in any case, replied, “Yeah, you’re ready enough. Or if I’m surfing, you’re not ready ever” for the record.