Making Friends With The Neighbours

Last night I took myself to see the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s (ACO) performance,  Mountain, which  I’d been looking forward to for months. I'm no expert on classical music. I still learning about the histories, personalities and bodies of work of various composers, but what I do know is that I love listening to this genre of music. Even more, I love attending the performances. Every time, I'm still surprised by those first notes as they float across the room - how is it possible that people are making something so beautiful?! Over the last few years, I've become fascinated by classical compositions about nature. About how it is possible to reflect nature and wildlife in music in a way that is recognizable, musically, literally and emotionally. This interest emerges from my research about surfing, but it's also in no small part a reaction to previous ACO performances and programmes.  Following the success and acclaim of their  collaborations wit...

I have come late to Finnegan’s celebrated book, ‘Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life’. It sat, unread, by my beside for months, and I was never sure what my hesitation was. Perhaps the singularly glowing reviews in the New York Review of Book, The New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal following his awarding of a Pulitzer Prize for Autobiography. A Pulitzer! For a book about surfing! Or perhaps it was the claim (I can’t remember where), that this book would change the surf writing genre. Books about surfing's past are a growing genre of non-fiction. As men who started surfing in the 50s, 60s and 70s head into their sunset years, the scramble to claim their place in the surfing past appears to have come upon them suddenly and absolutely. This genre has a big market. Thousands of surfers - like them, who knew them, or who admired them – love reading these stories to reflect on their own surfing lives and histories, while the current affinity for the apparent “golden era of surfing” a...

Yay! Somewhat strangely, I wasn't bothered about who played the next Dr (although, I do have a soft spot for Idris Elba), but when I watched this I felt so stoked and excited!

Men's sport is most often talked about just as 'sport', while women occupy a different world of women's sport. Sir Andrew Murray is NOT amused with your casual sexism! #wimbledon pic.twitter.com/a6pTpHCFSr — Jamie (@_JamieMac_) July 12, 2017 It's only just after 9am, and this is already likely the best thing I'll see today. This is not the first time Andy Murray has defended the achievements of women in tennis. Such corrections aren't only made by Andy Murray, but male sportspeople are otherwise rare in their support of women athletes. Women, in particular Serena Williams, often have to do the work of reminding journalists and other athletes of their achievements in the big picture, not in a stand-alone women's category. When one reporter asked "There will be talk about you going down as one of the greatest female athletes of all time. What do you think when you hear someone talk like that?", Serena famously replied "I pre...

Since watching  Musica Surfica , I've thought a lot about intersections between classical music and the sea. I'm not going to bang on about that today, but I did want to share one of my most treasured oceanic musical discoveries, Become Ocean, by John Luther Adams. Instead of riffing on a sense of the sea from afar, of watching it, or being awed by it, this 45 minute composition takes you under the water, under the waves, onto the ocean floor. You float bout with the swell and fall of the sounds, carried along to the point where it's barely possible to notice it any more, where the weight of the water - of the music - disappears. I go back to this composition a lot, and highly recommend exploring his catalogue of work - songs of the wind, of birds, of light. The capacity to communicate space through words, colour or music fascinates me, and I've rarely heard a place - under the sea - so perfectly achieved as in this.

I'm always learning new things about the coast, the beach, the surf, the waves. Mostly though, it's with my feet planted firmly on the ground, or floating in or on the sea. I know the ways different waves form up and crash from the water. I know how the sand looks on the ocean floor bottom from sticking my face through the surface, diving down to touch it, or being scraped along when I wipe out. I know the rocks from headlands or from avoiding them at different tides, the shoreline from how sand sticks to my feet, from beach-combing, sun-baking, digging holes, building castles, I know the littoral zone from wading on long walks, paddling with children, passing through on my way to the surf. I know the effect of coastlines swell lines from sitting on headlands, walking up cliffs and watching from on high, but always with my feet planted firmly on the ground. Drones have shifted some of that, but most of the drone images I have seen have been of people surfing waves, not of coa...

Australian surf history has a pretty consistent narrative that tends to focus on people rather than places. That people are so key to how we talk about the surfing past in Australia means that there are legacies that get protected, businesses that rely on particular myths, and ego that rely on the status. I'm not saying any of this is terrible, I'm just saying... But I just saw a call for submissions and participation in a history of surfing that is specifically related to a place, rather than a person or technological development: Lennox Head. The history is to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of the Lennox National Surfing Reserve in February 2018. The project seems to be called, 'Surfing Lennox'. You can find more details here . Lennox is a beloved, localised and popular place, with it's own tensions and importance when it comes to surfing in Australia and the world. I'll look forward to hearing more about this project as it goes along, and to buying the...

These days, most of my writing about surfing appears in academic publications, which means all my work is hidden behind really expensive paywalls. Because the main role of academics is to contribute to public knowledge, that the public can't access our work is one of the terrible paradoxes and most unethical things about contemporary academia - we're bound by our industry to publish in academic spaces. It's why I feel a responsibility to write here and in other mainstream and accessible places as well. I've not been very good and keeping to that commitment, but writing more on this blog one of my goals for this year. In the mean time, a new book with lots of research about surfing, Sustainable Surfing (edited by Greg Borne and Jess Ponting), has offered full and free access to anyone for the next 60 days. I'm not sure you can print it out (people more clever than I can likely find ways around that), but if you're interested in reading some work on sustainabili...

This story popped up over and over yesterday. It's not a nice one - police intervention and criminal charges following a violent altercation in my home town. Via local newspaper, The Northern Star: Described by police as a "surf rage" incident, at about 1.30pm on Monday, a Byron Bay man was surfing when police will allege "he and another surfer went to catch the same wave".   Police said the accused 29-year-old pushed the pointy end of his surfboard into another man's face, causing him facial injuries that bled. Police went into the surf to get the guy, and he's been charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm, which can carry up to a five year gaol term, or lesser penalties such as home detention, community service, or a suspended sentence. Whatever he gets, pushing the very pointy tip of your board into someone's face to cut them up is a shocking thing to do. And we're to talking about this happening in pumping surf, and unexpect...

Laird Hamilton, post-feminist, period scientist and shark behaviour expert, appears to have a really great understanding of how menstruation works, what it's like, and how women manage their flow while surfing. He also makes a compelling argument for why women should be kicked out of lineups (at least once a month, but I'm guessing he'd prefer more often) - they attract sharks. 'The biggest, most common reason to be bitten is a woman with her period. Which people don't, you know, they don't even think about that. Uh, obviously if a woman has her period then there's a certain amount of blood in the water. So, but...' Laird, mate, if I was bleeding that badly, that I was leaking through all and any of the period products I was using and thus onto my clothes and swimmers, I would likely be in a bunch of pain and thus home in bed. Honestly. The community members of the wonderful  Surf Feminism Facebook page * (where I found the original Mpora link t...

Kids and parents play along the shoreline and the surf is busy: daughters and sons bobbing hopefully near their parents, awaiting instruction and/or parental pride; a Sunday Boardriders contest, the competitors gaudy in fluoro pink, green, yellow and blue rashees; young men positioned in the critical take-off spot, right next the rock shelf that generates this point break; older men on longer, thicker boards, knowing as much, or more, than the younger showponies, but betrayed by their bodies they wait further down the line, hungrily asserting themselves from the inside; those on the outside, avoiding the fray for all kinds of reasons: skills, age, vibe, preference, or some other knowledge about the break born from experience; and scattered throughout are women young and old, taking their time, staking their claims, with no distinctions between their skills and the others, the men – as far as I can observe they’re no worse or better at surfing. But I already knew that. On this warm, ...