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

[Mark Kohut]

Alice writes:
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

I once read a whole, dense sociological study---book-length!---of the culture of professionalism in America, asserting certain patterns in EVERYTHING that gets professionalized. 

Relates totally to the above and to part of the ending of IV. To Come.



--- On Mon, 8/31/09, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
> Subject: IV Hard Core Surfers & That Rough God's Mighty Loom
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Monday, August 31, 2009, 8:44 AM
> 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.
> 
>