A movement is learned when the body has understood it, that is, when it has incorporated it into its ‘world’ …

This image or dream is not a cold, indifferent speculation about the mechanics of the maneuver … it must be felt intensely – as vividly and as anxiously as the jump itself will feel … Imaging must be performative – a performance in which one take’s one’s body along.

- Meleau Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception, 1992, p. 232.

There was never a place for them at the beach then, ever. They interfered with our game, they changed our priorities and introduced into us a fathomless longing for something other than a shallow ride on a wave  – and in so doing they played a wholly inconvenient game with many of our sensibilities.

Girls consumed our daylight with the same limitless hunger as homework did our night. These puresome waifs, they drifted in and out of the tightest male cliques with an enviable insouciance.

In transit.

Girls, in their feminine contrariness, fed on our immature inadequacies with the same lethal enthusiasm as a fox’s hunger does when its master capers about a fat rabbit.
Forever drawing closer.

Girls had no appreciation of the technical aspects of, say, successfully handling a steep take-off; they would certainly listen to us blustering away – coyly perched on those ancient sun blackened boulders at south Bondi – as the subject was discussed at great length, but their eyes were not associated with their ears, and the discussion faltered from time to time whenever one of us looked over and was lucky enough to gaze into, and meet, if just for an instant, one of those dark and watchful pools of light.

Girls couldn’t travel, wouldn’t travel, they were unable to throw four weeks kit into a duffel bag, tie a board onto a roof rack, and vanish off up the north coast for a month or two.

Girls would rarely drink in Beer Gardens, and never in Public Bars, they avoided the beach at night and were always in time for the last bus home, from anywhere. They knew the value of a goodbye, and they slipped in and out of our Saturday nights like tricks of light, leaving us wondering what to grasp of them.

Girls were never alone, they moved about in knitted up alliances with other girls, and they developed an impenetrable cross communication of half-words, sharp glances and subtle gestures that confounded us all.

Though it all made sense later.

A short provocative clip by Chase Burns entitled: “shhhhh”

Contrasts with this:

But this is too funny:

Being the account of 10,000 miles in the saddle through the Americas from Argentina to Washington by A.F.TSCHIFFELY. (circa 1930)

‘ The vastness of the ocean, and the regular roaring of the waves on the seemingly endless and glittering beach, and the rolling sand dunes, gave the impression of eternity. Thousands of sea birds hovered silently over our heads.

Century Publishing Co.

In your eyes one sees a new brightness shining

Through the patiently colored fiery rays,

Your limbs, skillfully glided under the sun,

Seem to be alive with a new flame.

- General Matton, “Bronzage,”  (1933)

Every work of art or science, however large or small, consists in catching the wave just right, and following it all the way down the line, for as long as possible, riding the crest, surfing, until we come to the inevitable final fall. If inspiration is in short supply, we fall straight away, or don’t get moving in the first place; but a masterpiece travels fast, moving but immobile, in a long horizontal plane, just slightly off-balance, on invisible lines of force that are etched imperceptibly on the wall of water …

What flux or current is it that draws out or follows a successfully musical score and provides it with continued uplift? The delicate, fine tuning of the surfboard to the curling wave is what enable the surf artist to maintain his equilibrium and surf on it, and to follow the flux.

- Michel Serres

Angourie, yesterday, Friday 25 June, 2009 – Image by Kim Satchell.

Well, I am in Sweden. It is a land of korvs, trolls, sailing, snapps, Falcon beer, Igelkottar, and midsommar:

Kurungabaa has run an article on ex-pat surfing in Sweden by Tyson Ballard. See here (It is available in Swedish too).

I am in Asa, on the West Coast. It is known for kite-surfing and windsurfing, not so much surfing per se. That isn’t to say there are not surfers in Sweden.

There’s a bunch of mad bastards called the “Midnight Runners” who surf the Baltic when big storm systems spin across on their journey to Estonia, Russia, and Finland and send swell north past Stockholm, into nooks and crannies of the north coast. shhhhh – good luck finding the spots anyway. There’s also Toro (Stockholm – don’t bother), Otland, Simrishamn, and Gotland. But good luck – you want cold and very windy conditions (20 meters per second for two days) and a lot of patience.

On the West coast November is the best month. Winter storms whip up some wind swell – no ground swells here buddy, and the body of water separating Sweden and the Danish coast, known as the Kattegatt, is deep enough to allow a little  bit of punch. There’s also the Skagerrak that connects the Baltic to the North Sea, check out Orust for some more punch to the wind swell. The wind is far more consistent on the West Coast than the East Coast too, of course. It’s cold but, in the middle of winter it’s 0 degrees in the water and freezes over sometimes. Bring the hoodie, booties, and a battery-powered wetsuit. The vikings get out there in the slop with an enthusiasm that would put most of us to shame. The frequent West Coast spots like Molle, Vik, and the entire Skane coast. Asa also get a few mentions, off the harbour. There is a cove around the corner that breaks like a miniature Angourie, if only it would get over 1-ft. I lay on the ground and mind surf it. In fact, I have come across a few setups here, if you have the right eye to spot them. The other spots get crowded, funnily enough. No rush to get wet either, sun doesn’t really set.

Anyway, enough rambling: here are a few of the better videos that show, despite the odds, the crew in Sweden do get to surf and love it as much as anyone.  Most of the waves are West Coast waves:

When a man [sic] dives, his heartbeat slows down – not by any means as dramatically as a seal’s, yet undoubtedly in human beings such a mechanism at some stage did at least begin to evolve.

- Alistair Hardy,  1960, Will Man be More Aquatic in the Future?, p. 120.

The true history of The Stomp has never been written, until now.

We have TCN 9’s Bandstand to thank for the banal easy to digest interpretation of this short-lived, violent and wholly male 1960’s Hypno-Trance Industrial Thrash Dance. Bandstand, perennially fronted by that obsequious little newsreader, would have us believe that the mediocre melodies of Col Joye and his Joyboys were able to provide the maximum guttural percussion and wolf-like vocals necessary to create the right conditions for this dance.

Sarah Knight of the ABC interviewed a couple of members of ‘ The Yeoman ‘ in 2005, and they were happy to provide her with what they though was a faithful demonstration of The Stomp (pictured here, and looking like complete idiots)

The Stomp was born out of the surfing era because in the sand the rock and roll and jive was pretty tricky. (Quote: Sarah Knight)

Now here was a professional woman, no doubt fully equipped with all the Arts degrees necessary to score a well paid lifetime job with the national broadcaster, giving out with this low level brain-dead hearsay tabloid bullshit about something she new nothing about, and no little thanks to the advice from the ‘ Yeomen ‘, whoever the flaming fuck they used to be.

Sarah Knight BSC AG. ABC Spokeswoman for the 60’s Surfing generation – aged about 25.

The Stomp was never a dance; it was a stamping grinding deafening assault on the integrity of whatever building was, unwisely, hosting the event.

The Collaroy Surf Club had the best stomp floor in Sydney; being a second floor venue, and having been built in the shady days of the old Warringah Municipal Council, the one that was sacked for indulging in a little too much capitalistic opportunism and a little too little in overseeing the local building codes.

The floor of the timber Collaroy SLSC responded with an elastic complicity at those happy times when the 200 young men crowded into that darkened cavern managed to get The Stomp right – in other words, when every stamp by every foot was done at the same time, a thousand times, and a thousand times again. It didn’t even matter if the band was on a break, or had packed up and gone home, the Stomp was on. Music was purely incidental, girls were unable to make a contribution and fights boiled out everywhere, and above it all was the sound of this massive tribal and rhythmic foot percussion.

Dozens of youths milled outside the venue drinking beer and abusing anyone in authority and the local Police were always very busy somewhere else.

Nobody inside ever wanted to come out, and everybody outside wanted to get in, and everything got broken.

Those were the salad days.