IV Hard Core Surfers & That Rough God's Mighty Loom

[alice wellintown]

Waves of Transformation
By Carin Crawford
This paper will focus on Southern California's surf culture in the
post-World War II period; it will attempt to provide a snapshot of the
ways in which a Polynesian cultural practice was trans formed into a
uniquely Southern California "experience." The very meaning of surfing
was trans formed in the context of its Southern California post-World
War II revival--both in relationship to its Hawaiian origin and in
relationship to its pre-war American incarnation. It will also
investigate how Southern California surfers responded to a series of
encounters with market-driven forces that transformed American culture
at large. These encounters included attempts to capitalize on surfing
through the professionalization of the sport, commercialization of
surfing through Hollywood films, and the destruction of pristine beach
areas. This paper proposes an initial foray into the rel atively
unexplored subject of surfing as a cultural form--a form that has its
own history and moves against the background of Southern California's
cultural transformation during the post-World War II period.

[. . . ]

IT’S ABOUT WORK
The Backlash against Professionalism
"Professionalism will be completely destructive of any control an
individual has over the sport at present. These few Wall Street flesh
merchants desire to unify surfing only to extract the wealth. Under
this `professional' regime, the wave rider will be forced into being
totally subservient to the few in control in order to survive. The
organizers will call the shots, collect the profits while the wave
rider does all the labor and receives little. . . .A surfer should
think carefully before selling his being to these "people" since he's
signing his own death warrant as a personal entity.
 	-Mickey Dora

http://www.lajollasurf.org/wavesof.html

http://surflibrary.org/popularculture.html

Hector tells Zoyd, “this is a real revolution, not that little fantasy
handjob you people was into, the wave of History.” [27] “Our dream is
to locate a legendary OBSERVER-PARTICIPANT from those times, Frenesi
Gates-and bring her up out of her mysterious years of underground
existence, to make a Film about all those long ago political wars.
[51] Why does Hector want to “make a Film about Frenesi Gates, the
observer-participant, of the fantasy handjob, in “which th’ ultimate
message will be that the real threat to America, then and now, is from
the illegal abuse of narcotics?” [51] How does “the big Nostalgia
Wave” Hector’s trying to catch, obviously a Right, any surfer like
Zoyd would recognize as a “20 year cycle,’ rise out of the Lefts our
“legendary” Frenesi observed and participated in? How did she observe
and participate in that “soft focus shot” of “the Mellow Sixties, a
slower moving time, predigital, not yet so cut into pieces, not even
by television?” [38] A time when Zoyd was stupid enough or innocent
enough to ask her, “do you think that love can save anybody?” [39] A
“20 year cycle” Zoyd could catch “straight up through the third eye in
his forehead, now and then, when moon, tides, and planetary magnetism
were all in tune.” Those were the early swells, mellow, predigital,
when the
fact that Zoyd’s “Educated pussy” “was Pregnant” was only a “topic of
debate.” [41] And, even after Prairie came ashore, for Zoyd, “the
years had kept rolling, like the surf he used to ride, high, calm,
wild, windless.” [39] “But increasingly, the day, the necessary day,
presenting its demands, had claimed” our Goofy-Footed idealist, as
those Lefts got sloppy and that “soft focus shot” became semi-and full
automatic, with a dangerous undertow that betrayed legendary tube
riders and Weed and the whole big beautiful College of the Surf.  Now,
Hector the Comet, “in the service of the ever-dwindling attention span
of an ever more infantilized population”[52] is sitting on a long-
board trying to catch a big Right, in that boomerang swell from the
sixties to the eighties.

When the vast body had at last been stripped of its fathom-deep
enfoldings, and the bones become dust dry in the sun, then the
skeleton was carefully transported up the Pupella glen, where a grand
temple of lordly palms now sheltered it. The ribs were hung with
trophies; the vertebrae were carved with Arsacidean annals, in strange
hieroglyphics; in the skull, the priests kept up an unextinguished
aromatic flame, so that the mystic head again sent forth its vapory
spout; while, suspended from a bough, the terrific lower jaw vibrated
over all the devotees, like the hair-hung sword that so affrighted
damocles. it was a wondrous sight. the wood was green as mosses of the
icy Glen; the trees stood high and haughty, feeling their living sap;
the industrious earth beneath was as a weaver's loom, with a gorgeous
carpet on it, whereof the ground-vine tendrils formed the warp and
woof, and the living flowers the figures. All the trees, with all
their laden branches; all the shrubs, and ferns, and grasses; the
message-carrying air; all these unceasingly were active. Through the
lacings of the leaves, the great sun seemed a flying shuttle weaving
the unwearied verdure. Oh, busy weaver! unseen weaver! --pause! --one
word! -- whither flows the fabric? what palace may it deck? wherefore
all these ceaseless toilings? Speak, weaver! --stay thy hand! -- but
one single word with thee! Nay --the shuttle flies --the figures float
from forth the loom; the freshet-rushing carpet for ever slides away.
The weaver-god, he weaves; and by that weaving is he deafened, that he
hears no mortal voice; and by that humming, we, too, who look on the
loom are deafened; and only when we escape it shall we hear the
thousand voices that speak through it. For even so it is in all
material factories. The spoken words that are inaudible among the
flying spindles; those same words are plainly heard without the walls,
bursting from the opened casements. Thereby have villanies been
detected. Ah, mortal! then, be heedful; for so, in all this din of the
great world's loom, thy subtlest thinkings may be overheard afar. Now,
amid the green, life-restless loom of that Arsacidean wood, the great,
white, worshipped skeleton lay lounging --a gigantic idler! Yet, as
the ever-woven verdant warp and woof intermixed and hummed around him,
the mighty idler seemed the cunning weaver; himself all woven over
with the vines; every month assuming greener, fresher verdure; but
himself a skeleton. Life folded Death; Death trellised Life; the grim
god wived with youthful Life, and begat him curly-headed glories. Now,
when with royal Tranquo I visited this wondrous whale, and saw the
skull an altar, and the artificial smoke ascending from where the real
jet had issued, I marvelled that the king should regard a chapel as an
object of vertu. He laughed. But more I marvelled that the priests
should swear that smoky jet of his was genuine. To and fro I paced
before this skeleton --brushed the vines aside --broke through the
ribs --and with a ball of Arsacidean twine, wandered, eddied long amid
its many winding, shaded collonades and arbors. But soon my line was
out; and following it back, I emerged from the opening where I
entered. I saw no living thing within; naught was there but bones.
Cutting me a green measuring-rod, I once more dived within the
skeleton. From their arrow-slit in the skull, the priests perceived me
taking the altitude of the final rib. How now! they shouted; Dar'st
thou measure this our god! That's for us. Aye, priests --well, how
long do ye make him, then? But hereupon a fierce contest rose among
them, concerning feet and inches; they cracked each other's sconces
with their yard-sticks -- the great skull echoed --and seizing that
lucky chance, I quickly concluded my own admeasurements. These
admeasurements I now propose to set before you. But first, be it
recorded, that, in this matter, I am not free to utter any fancied
measurement I please. Because there are skeleton authorities you can
refer to, to test my accuracy. There is a Leviathanic Museum, they
tell me, in Hull, England, one of the whaling ports of that country,
where they have some fine specimens of fin-backs and other whales.
Likewise, I have heard that in the museum of Manchester, in New
Hampshire, they have what the proprietors call the only perfect
specimen of a Greenland or River Whale in the United States. Moreover,
at a place in Yorkshire, England, Burton constable by name, a certain
sir clifford constable has in his possession the skeleton of a Sperm
Whale, but of moderate size, by no means of the full-grown magnitude
of my friend King Tranquo's. In both cases, the stranded whales to
which these two skeletons belonged, were originally claimed by their
proprietors upon similar grounds. King Tranquo seizing his because he
wanted it; and Sir Clifford, because he was lord of the seignories of
those parts. Sir Clifford's whale has been articulated throughout; so
that, like a great chest of drawers, you can open and shut him, in all
his bony cavities --spread out his ribs like a gigantic fan --and
swing all day upon his lower jaw. Locks are to be put upon some of his
trap-doors and shutters; and a footman will show round future visitors
with a bunch of keys at his side. Sir Clifford thinks of charging
twopence for a peep at the whispering gallery in the spinal column;
threepence to hear the echo in the hollow of his cerebellum; and
sixpence for the unrivalled view from his forehead. The skeleton
dimensions I shall now proceed to set down are copied verbatim from my
right arm, where I had them tattooed; as in my wild wanderings at that
period, there was no other secure way of preserving such valuable
statistics. But as I was crowded for space, and wished the other parts
of my body to remain a blank page for a poem I was then composing --at
least, what untattooed parts might remain --I did not trouble myself
with the odd inches; nor, indeed, should inches at all enter into a
congenial admeasurement of the whale.