Images from Praia Grande in Sintra, Lisbon, Portugal.
This is the beach where I learned to surf about 19 years ago.

Mahler: Symphony 5, IV. Adagietto, Sehr langsam
Orchestral (original) version alternated with the transcription for piano.

Being in direct contact with Nature means being in direct contact with reality.

The opposite means operating under assumptions, probabilistic reasoning, external expectations, foreign constructs that set you up at a most often disadvantaged position, because the goal of comunicating between people and managing relationships between people is, and always was, driven by a sole objective: to achieve advantage of the individual over the circumstances and that includes over other people.

«All of these processes are designed to erase reality.»

These are excerpts from the 2006 Globe surf movie “The Secret Machine” dir by Joe Guglielmino.

An important principle in surfing is

You look at where you want to go.

Always look ahead.

Pure Energy in Motion with DJ Sash.

A few days ago I came from a morning surf session and casually took a look at the video below where a young man talks about some interesting matters.

That morning the waves were solid, head high or slightly overhead, but because the period was long they came bulky and due to the sand bar they got fast in the closing stage and caved.

This required a quick, determined approach and takeoff, at least for my 6’3 thruster.

I got frustrated after taking a few on the head, and in that first half an hour or so, I got defensive about taking those waves. I got avoidant. I was internally fighting the prospect of failure, much more than focusing on the shifting wall of water.

After starting to get physically tired, I found myself more relaxed as is usual as a consequence of it (at least for me). I get a bit more careless just because I am tired.

And then a good wave approached and I distincly remember making a semiconscious decision of not caring about the consequences. I felt like I accepted whatever it was to become of that wave, of my effort. I then got much less distracted and more in tune with the wave, doing everything at the right time in perfect blending with the wave. It was a textbook takeoff and drop. It felt like a marriage with the wave.

This got me thinking because I want to reproduce the effect. I want to understand better how this worked. I was thinking about it and when I saw this video it resonated with me. The acceptance, the shift from the binary succeed/fail to an acceptance of possibilities, the getting rid of tresholds of expectations, it all made sense.

After a session, got into the car, turned the radio on and everything falls into place.
A remastered recording of Enrico Caruso on ‘E lucevan le stelle’ (from Tosca, Puccini).
I later made a transcription of this for violin which you can find here.

Sport is a form of expression of a performer who is also therefore an artist.
Oscar Langburne. The performative dream of a brand. The artistic dream of a sport.

Returning to the beach after a long quarantine, I decided to express my mood in a video.

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Shot at Carcavelos Beach, Lisbon (March 2021).
Music by Tomaso Albinoni, ‘Adagio’ performed by Copernicus Chamber Orchestra (dir. Horst Sohm, excerpts).

For the instrumental version please refer to Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, finale.

I challenged myself to paddle out when it was too big for me & my (short) board.
The journey outside is also a journey inside.

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Music by Vangelis ‘Conquest of Paradise’ (excerpts).