February 9, 2012
12:54pm
Dear Wes,
Have you watched the 1960s documentary Endless Summer? After drive-thru at In-N-Out I went home and turned on Netflix. The sunny California male voiceover truly lifts my heart. And I never say lifts my heart. That two surfer friends went around the world searching for the perfect wave is a cute representation of a philosophy of sport or aesthetics of time. Do you know Roland Barthes’ little masterpiece What Is Sport? I wonder what he would have said about surfing.
What need have these men to surf? Why are men called to this particular rhythm? Why are they totally committed to it? Why this useless position? What is sport? Surfing is hardly a sport, yet it is the model and limit of all water sports: idiosyncratic, solitary, and monkish where all man’s knowledge depends on timing.
A man alone, with no other weapon than a slender shiny surfing board, will tease the wave: call out to ancestors…ride it without effort…insouciantly slip away.
The surfers found the perfect wave on a secluded shore in South Africa—one of them ducking in a pipe for forty-five seconds and just riding it for a good seven miles. I thought I understood something profound but maybe I was just feeling romantic alone in the apartment eating a cheeseburger. It’s always a feat finding something honest and true on Netflix, like all the movie options are just tests against the desire for authenticity. I feel more confident searching for a movie alone than in front of somebody. Is that weird, Wes?
There’re just so many good parts in Endless Summer. Like in Senegal when the whole tribe goes out to watch them surf. Everyone got so excited. Kids even pulled off boards from their houses to use them to surf, a pack of men used a canoe carved from a solid tree and collectively rowed to imitate the surfers. Everyone was so overjoyed it made me cry.
It’s sunny out. I should probably walk around. There’s a footbridge nearby but I probably won’t go to it.
Wes, I don’t mean to bombard you with questions. I’m just curious what you’d say.
Yours,
Feliz
