have love for what they do

One day I will go to Fiji and rip like Coco Ho

the mac and the ross

this is what the programme did to my picture. Seriously, it's the computer. I didn't do a thing. We might be pissed with the machine, but maybe it was just doing some happy glitching, who knows. Some artistic freedom, fair enough. Or as the subliminal Bob Ross said, and I quote: "We don't make mistakes. Just happy little accidents" Perfect lyrics for my mac as it sleigh rides into dementia. 

have love for what he does

modes of existence - modes of surf

Surf movies are mostly about showing muscle. It's about recording achievements, raising admiration. In short, being a romanticised man-dream of heroism. Lots of those films are completely interchangeable, images are from wherever. It's pretty boring.

An exception is the documentary about the Bra Boys, which I'm not sure counts as a surf movie because it's way more of a social portrait than some visual to accompany the sunday evening bbq. It was intrigueing, the tribe-ist behaviours of this group of hooligan surfers in Australia. But it only made sense when someone marked: "Of course, there is something immanently territorial about surfing."

That got me thinking, it's exactly this. It's about individuals occupying space, always. Whether it's you and fifty others, or just you and no one else. In case of the Bra Boys, it's not just taking that spot in the water, it's also a spot in society, which resonates in the way they surf. The story is quite painful, the boys are constantly getting rejected and prejudiced by all sides of society. After the trial that finally releases the two brothers of very serious accusations, they surf the most dangerous wave in Australia, Cyclops.

From the Woodshed Films stable comes a different type of surffilm. After the Bra Boys I'd say, it's on the exact other side of the spectrum, it's outspokenly hippie. Very romanticised (some films were shot entirely on 16mm film) reminiscent of early surf movies like Endless Summer, touches much more on the individual experience that is surfing. Needless to say that all their films are aesthetically beautiful and worth watching.

Woodshed films always make a portrait of an environment, a place on earth, and what it means on your human body to be there. Their films are somewhat educative. Every place they film I immediately want to visit and experience, and surf. Like Patagonia in Chile.

Woodshed goes around the globe. To Indonesia, but also Chile, Jamaica, Senegal and their latest on surfing explores the waves of Canada (Groundswell). The surfing is never done to get the biggest barrel, or do the nicest trick, it only serves the purpose of showing how enjoyable it is to ride waves on that particular beautiful spot on the earth. Exploration is by all means a way to occupy space. One that's driven by curiosity rather than the necessity to survive, though.
Surfing is a sport, which has not a singular character. It can be done in so many different ways, it can exactly express where you're coming from. Film is an excellent medium to give form to such messages. Hopefully more outspoken surffilms like these will be made, but rather unlike these, to contribute to the culture and show how surfing is meaningful in different ways.

Time, is never time at all

you can never ever leave

without leaving a piece of youth

Smashing Pumpkins: Tonight, Tonight

It's shitty how quick one forgets. Impressions and experiences which should lead to world-changing actions, ever so often echo away in the grand hollow space of the average human brain in which all random impressions and experiences are doomed to fade out. (Read as: Been wasting time in bars too much lately)

This means I am officially back in Amsterdam,  aka "hipstertown". "Welcome back to hipstertown" a friend anti-enthusiastically greeted me last week. Today, my gear included: a racing bike, a designed fleece jacket and colourful shoes, and most importantly: a herschell backpack (which I've been wearing for six months but wtf everyone seems to have one all of sudden) in order to buy a casio watch, I realised the Moment was there: hipstertown hello, goodbye crappy lil surfertown. 

When you come back after a while, you find that some things have changed, others stayed the same (but you are older). Amsterdam is a bubble. But Taghazout, or any other place, is also a bubble. And once you're back in the bubble, you're back in the bubble. And you forget what the other bubble was like. The transitioning phase is just being in complete chaos. I'll try to, bit by bit write some remaining resonance down from the impressions Morocco made on me, insh'allah.

A week ago, I wanted to write something about traffic. It surprised me how ballsy I'd gotten on the bike in Amsterdam, and figured it was because I got used to surfing in a local's spot in Morocco where everyone's basically on their own. When you're not taking priority, it will never be your turn. Forget it. You wait forever. So at some points you just have to go. Even when there are two shortboarders with nasty pointy noses and knife-sharp glass fins on their boards who will not hold themselves back possibly going for the same wave. Wave traffic can be gnarly and on a busy day, a surfer or two exits the water with a nasty fincut. g n a r l y. And the road traffic too. Most people in Morocco are insane drivers. Add up to that the fact that taxis don't leave before they're full: two people on the passanger seat in the front, and four people on the backseats. Taxis are mercedes from the sixties, or fifties, but they're mostly quite OK and seem like undestructable cars. Mountaintaxis on the contrary, are old Ford vans. We sat on a plastic crate in the back, and had to manually keep the backdoor closed because it was only attached with two pieces of household rope to the rest of the vehicle. 

It's safe to say there is a 85% unpredictability factor on the road, including freerunning goats. You never know what's going to happen. Something or someone might just pop up out of nowhere. When you are overtaking a truck, someone else might want to try to overtake you at the same time. Roundabouts are like death traps. Even in traffic jams, people try to squeeze between two rows of cars through the middle of the road. Crazy bus drivers who overtake on a cliff corner. After sunset, risks increase a tenfold because even along the highways, there is hardly any light. I remember driving back from Marrakesh once during ramadan, and seeing a road accident every 50 meters. In the headlights of our car we saw heavy lorries with broken axis, which had run into family cars, failing engines, some accidents more severe than others. It was pretty scary. I looked at Jaouad, our driver. He looked straight ahead, motionless. We had sixteen people in the van, and they needed to be brought back safe. And ourselves too, if that was permitted. There was not much more to rely on than Jaouad's nerves and driving skills. Moroccan traffic is one big russian roulette.

Back in Amsterdam: nicely predictable traffic, and everything's quite orderly. You can trust on everybody respecting the basic rules. So you can easily take priority whenever you feel like it, run around like crazy, and race through town like a mofo. Transitioning between two bubbles, best of both worlds, yeahh!

 taghazout traffic on a very quiet day... one of the "reliable" mercedeses in the picture. photo by Richard Jüngschlager

 Taking priority in the water: me vs shortboarder

 It's moine!

 That's right dudes! BOOYA shortboarder #2  

OK that was absolutely not an epic wave at all, but still! 

(They are probably having the best swell of the year at this very moment)

Leashes

Since a few days I'm having a phantom-leash on my ankle. The feeling of being rocked back and forth in the waves even hours after surfing wasn't strange to me. But now also my leash is still attached to my foot, even though I'm dry clothed and sat on the couch.

A relationship with a leash is twofolded. At one hand it's a lifesaver, on the other hand, it can be unpredictably dangerous. The amount of times the leash has prevented my board slamming into a swimming kid's head weighs up exactly against the times it tangled around my legs as the wave was rolling me in, the hard wire pulling them together with force.

The phantom leash, I discovered, only appears after a day of heavy wipeouts. Aka failing to take the wave, and being smashed on the beach by it. During a wipeout, the surfer falls off the board, rotates a couple times through the wave ("as if in a washing machine"). The board naturally flies away, pulling on the leash, the foot, of the surfer. Onshore, pick up the board, go back in through the waves rolling in, paddle out, repeat.

The final third of my time in Morocco has taken off. Summer. I've started surfing more intensively now, and getting more and more anxious about it. I sort of need to go every day.  It's the only thing I'm still excited for, and why not, I've taken in everything else in Morocco. Work-wise, I've done it, sweat it, seen it, loved it. Culture-wise, I integrated in the village up to the point where I was being gossiped about. Now I'm ready to let it all go. I will have a big fat phantom leash once back in Holland, that's one thing for sure. Two months left.

SUP Taghazout!

  Today there are no waves in Taghazout

Surfers go fishing

 We go stand up paddling. Standing up, falling off

And again

DON'T MOVE!