Just discovered this—a short documentary, A Million Waves, about 19 year-old Kadiatu Kamara, KK, the only female surfer from Sierra Leone and the crucial role surfing has in her life. Quietly powerful, it is life affirming, hopeful, exploring how surfing has given her a way to cope with personal tragedy, and a sense of who she is, who she wants to be.
The documentary was created by Daniel Ali and Louis Leeson.
Recently I was reading Neil Gaiman's journal to check out his New Year's message and found this, an incredibly moving version of Leonard Cohen's song, Democracy.
Neil recorded the lyrics, Amanda Palmer featured on the piano, the paintings were created by David Mack and given life through the animation of Olga Nunes.
It hooks into the heart.
Given the political climate in the US and the passing of Leonard, it's timely. Neil and Amanda gave the video to PEN America in support of PEN's continued mission to defend free expression.
A short film by Ian Derry about Finnish free diver, Johanna Nordblad. After a leg injury, she turned to cold water treatment to heal, only to discover so much more.
Truly inspirational.
Artwork: wall mural by SETH, Italy
dreams
as new-grown leaves
shoots spindling
from my eyes
of you
yet to be known
still unseen
© Angela Jooste
Artwork: SETH, Love Conquers All (Omnia vincit amor)
And to end the year—a beautiful image from the artist, SETH (@seth_globepainter, Julien Malland, www.seth.fr), a work he's titled Love Conquers All (Omnia vincit amor).
The best way to bring in the New Year.
Artwork: Photograph by Woody Gooch (@woodygphoto)
I love great surf photography, and probably one of my fave photographers is Woody Gooch. He has a wonderful sense of scale, with a great appreciation of how the natural world can overwhelm with its power and beauty. I could imagine this particular image blown up wall size. Total immersion...
Check out his work at www.woodygooch.com or on IG (@woodygphoto).
It's amazing how quickly the year's end has come. And what a year!!! I came across this image by Ami Vitale (@amivitale)—sweet, hopeful and full of the spirit of connection, care and love that you hope for at Christmas. Magic.
Peace, love and joy to all.
Artwork: by Lora Zombie
You just happen to be walking in a field when, looking up, a whale is swimming in the sky...
Sometimes life flips, topsy-turvy, and you experience a wondrous moment. Thanks Lora Zombie (@lorazombie) for this surreal image!
A beautiful sight. Mick Fanning's recent adventure—a midnight surf under the Northern Lights. Spectacular.
I have a thing about blue glass—I love it.
It’s not surprising that when I saw the blue glass sculptures at the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice, I was absolutely enthralled. They're situated in front of a window looking out to the water. It was so memorable, I included a reference in one of my art stories, Ann Hamilton's myein. I was reminded again today, as they featured on my IG feed.
The twenty-three poured glass sculptures were created by artist by Egidio Costantini and based on sketches by Picasso in 1964.
Seen filtered against the light, they're exquisite and mesmerising.
Just saw the film, Arrival. It was eerily strange which was great for a Hollywood film. That sense of such an unknown entity coming to Earth and humans having to rise to the challenge of communicating with it—to learn about it and its purpose—had my mind whirling with thoughts about language.
Spoilers here.
When the linguist in the film, Louise, cracks the “code” so to speak of what the “aliens” were saying, she had to ask them the “big” question: why were they here? The answer she deciphered was “weapon” or possibly “tool”. Obviously that sent everyone into a panic, with retaliation or obliteration on the military’s mind. But what Louise finally figures out is their purpose wasn’t to proliferate a weapon but to impart a “gift”—language. They were here to give their language so that humans could help them in the distant future.
Language is a gift. As a means to communicate, connect, understand, empathise and help. To make sense of our existence and express what it means to be human. It’s amazing how we take this gift for granted, simply in that we use it every day. In the wake of the US election, I’ve been thinking a lot about how language can also obfuscate, manipulate, erase, harm, rally and damage. The fact that Trump’s proposed cabinet is shaping to become an alt-right (or to be more pointed: right wing nationalist) nightmare, it’s chilling to think of how other extreme right wing regimes throughout history have co-opted language in the most insidious ways, and how citizens became embroiled in that narrative.
So I’ve been turning to other writers for solace. Affirming my belief in the life-giving capacity of language, Toni Morrison in her Nobel Lecture in 1993 spoke of language’s vitality, how “It arcs toward the place where meaning may lie.”
Her discussion of language is couched in a parable, and her words are those of a wise, blind woman having to communicate with her much younger visitors. The challenge is communicating that which seems inexplicable, and how language meets that challenge. Why language matters.
“Word-work is sublime, she thinks, because it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference – the way in which we are like no other life.
We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.”
Seriously needing to chill, so I'm listening to Gilligan Moss' remix of Glass Animals' song Gooey on repeat. Never fails to make me smile :)
'THIS IS THE WALL WE NEED'
Words written on a Post-It note and stuck on a 14th street subway wall in New York. The art installation was created by artist, Levee, so that people could put their thoughts on Post-it notes in response to Trump’s election win.
Been a while between posts! Since I just posted about di Caprio's doc, Before the Flood, what's on my mind—planet earth. This Nara image reminds me of Antoine de Saint-Exupery's Little Prince, one of my all-time faves. Finding home, self and love.
Forget the hype.
That’s what I keep reminding myself when listening to Frank Ocean’s new album. Both the video-album, Endless and the album, Blonde (or Blond??? Yeah it’s confusing).
In the end, it’s the music that matters. With the drop of Blonde there’s been fudged release dates; a video-album that could have been the actual album; the exclusive Apple music deal; huge number of stellar collaborators, pop-up shop promos and a glossy mag accompanying the album.
Too much hype. So, I decided to just focus on the music. Watching Endless was intriguing, seeing Frank going DIY and building his spiral staircase (more sculpture than functional), but I found myself closing my eyes and just listening. Whether the video was a metaphor for crafting, creating, taking time, the ongoing process of making stuff—whatever. In the end, the music felt like submerging myself in a sonic sea. I just drifted along with the current. It’s an immersive experience, like listening to Blonde, and it’s beautiful. Blonde has a different tone, edgier, darker, but equally poetic, with that quality of slipstreaming from one song to the next. Both are mesmerising and it’s been wonderful engaging with Frank’s words and voice once again.
I’ll be listening to both for a long time, because the wait has been worth it.
"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."
So begins Gabriel Garcia Marquez's marvellous tale, One Hundred Years of Solitude. Marquez's book wasn't my introduction to South American magical realism, that book was Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits. Thoroughly entranced, I went searching for more and discovered Marquez.
In a Paris Review interview (The Art of Fiction no69) I was delighted to read how Marquez found the tone for One Hundred Years of Solitude. This is what he had to say:
GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
[] It was based on the way my grandmother used to tell her stories. She told things that sounded supernatural and fantastic, but she told them with complete naturalness. When I finally discovered the tone I had to use, I sat down for eighteen months and worked every day.
INTERVIEWER
How did she express the “fantastic” so naturally?
GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
What was most important was the expression she had on her face. She did not change her expression at all when telling her stories, and everyone was surprised. In previous attempts to write One Hundred Years of Solitude, I tried to tell the story without believing in it. I discovered that what I had to do was believe in them myself and write them with the same expression with which my grandmother told them: with a brick face.
I love Frank Ocean's Channel Orange, so I'm very excited that he's about to release his next album this Friday, Boys Don't Cry.
Can't wait!
Update—apparently it might not be out until November! So much for the excitement...
A great meditation on one surfer's connection to the sea—check out this short film directed by Andrew Kaineder, The Man & the Sea, featuring Australian surfer, Derek Hynd, getting philosophical at Jeffrey's Bay.
Kind of feels like I'm waiting for something...
Illustration by @Louison_A
Thoughts and prayers for France, and especially the people of Nice.