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

[rich]

“every profession is a conspiracy against the public”--Wm Gaddis, A
Frolic of His Own

On 8/31/09, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 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.
>>
>>
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