{"id":4210,"date":"2010-02-10T22:38:29","date_gmt":"2010-02-10T21:38:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/driftsurfingmagazine.driftdigital.co.uk\/?p=4210"},"modified":"2010-02-10T22:48:40","modified_gmt":"2010-02-10T21:48:40","slug":"no-tracks-in-the-snow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/driftsurfingmagazine.driftdigital.co.uk\/index.php\/archives\/4210","title":{"rendered":"No tracks in the snow"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"opener\"<\/a>I wanted to make a splash with my first article on Drift, so I thought I would have a chat about surfing and life with one of the most interesting men on the planet. As it happened, Stephen Hawking had other plans. But the man who did eventually give up his time for Drift is Andy Martin \u2013 a professor of French at Cambridge University; author of \u2018Stealing the Wave\u2019 and \u2018Walking on Water\u2019, as well as books on Napoleon and Brigitte Bardot; writer of diverse articles for major newspapers and contributor to various BBC productions. Most importantly, however, he\u2019s a surfer like the rest of us. [photo by John Callahan.]<\/p>\n


\nAndy, you once wrote that you were \u201cborn in East London, far from any beach, but umbilically connected via the Thames with the open sea\u201d. By way of introduction, tell us how you eventually made it to the ocean, how often you get your feet wet and what kind of surfing you do?<\/strong>
\nThis may not work for everyone, but I think marrying an Australian definitely helped. Having fantasised about surfing for many years, I think the turning point came when I witnessed the real thing for the first time at Ulu Watu. I wanted to paddle out straight off on the basis of zero actual experience. A passing Aussie probably saved me from bashing my brains out on the cliffs.<\/p>\n

How often: whenever the chance comes up, preferably somewhere with palm trees.<\/p>\n

What kind of surfing? Not high performance. Graceful if I\u2019m lucky.<\/p>\n

\"callahan1-13-am\"You must have taken more trips to Hawai\u2019i than the average West Ham United fan, what with your many expeditions to the Eddie Would Go contest. But do you actually like the place? Can you envisage a \u2018Martin\u2019 household there?<\/strong>
\nI love Hawaii, but it is definitely not paradise. It probably induces a kind of madness. So naturally I feel I slot right in there. As for setting up house in Hawai\u2019i \u2013 well, it\u2019s a long commute.<\/p>\n

West Ham aside, as a writer and professor you must have studied what most people would recognise as great works of art. Is surfing an art?<\/strong>
\nI get paid to read and write. But I have a sneaking regard for everything that is the opposite of a book. Surfing arose out an oral culture. Hawai\u2019i has gone from pre-literate to what I think of as post-literate almost without missing a beat. Surfing \u2013 to me at any rate \u2013 like any great art is (a) ultimately futile but (b) despite itself somehow manages to contain a meditation on life and death.<\/p>\n

Most Drift followers will know you from \u2018Stealing the Wave\u2019, your book on big-wave surfing and the epic battle between the notorious Ken Bradshaw and Mark Foo. I love your comparison of Bradshaw to an \u2018existential\u2019 hero. Not many surf writers would employ such a device, and it\u2019s also one of the easiest to understand descriptions of an \u2018existential\u2019 principle that I\u2019ve ever seen. What interests me, though, is your perspective on surfing\u2026 Is it largely \u2018existential\u2019 or \u2018essential\u2019?<\/strong>
\nI\u2019d like to turn this one around. Rather than think of surfers as frustrated philosophers, I now tend to think of philosophers as would-be surfers. So for example I see Jean-Paul Sartre, author of \u2018Being and Nothingness\u2019 and \u2018Roads to Freedom\u2019 as a kind of Ken Bradshaw figure, a hardcore hellman locked into a tragic trajectory, and Albert Camus, \u2018The Outsider\u2019, as a more of a Mark Foo, a little more manoeuvrable and stylish. His \u201cdying in a big wave is a beautiful way to go\u201d thinking is comparable to Camus\u2019 \u201csuicide is the first of all philosophical problems.\u201d I suppose if there is a line that captures the \u2018essence\u2019 of surfing it is again Camus: \u201cbeauty is unbearable. It drives us to despair, offering us eternity in a moment that we would like to unwind across the whole of time.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Sartre explicitly fantasises about surfing in a passage in \u2018Being and Nothingness\u2019, where he compares our passage through the water favourably to skiing because it \u201cleaves no trace\u201d, no tracks in the snow.<\/p>\n

In your opinion, are there many \u2018thinking\u2019 surfers, or do most of us live up the stereotype of having too much salt stuck between our ears?<\/strong>
\nI think most of us \u2013 perhaps all of us \u2013 think too much, but we tend to think in straight lines most of the time. Surfing is a different way of thinking about our relationship with the world. It goes off at an oblique angle. I like that.<\/p>\n

In \u2018Stealing the Wave\u2019 you also tell some memorable stories about your time spent at some of the world\u2019s most famous breaks. Do you have any from outside the surfing world?<\/strong>
\nI can tell you one about New York. I recently competed in the Empire State Building Run-Up, where you get to run up all the stairs of the Empire State. I\u2019m not making this up. I wasn\u2019t sure I could really make it. And oddly enough as I approached the Empire State one fine morning in February, it reminded me a lot of a big day at Waimea Bay, which fills you with a mix of ecstasy and terror.<\/p>\n

\"andypic3-1\"Simon Barnes, the sports journalist and birdwatcher, once wrote something along the lines of: \u201cDa Vinci never had to choose between one discipline or the other, so why should I?\u201d I quite agree with him. But if you absolutely had to choose between words and waves, what would it be?<\/strong>
\nOK, this is hard and probably impossible. I\u2019m just about to try a philosophical and psychological experiment by taking a vow of silence (for 24 hours only) when I give up words completely. I suspect language will find a way to creep back in. It\u2019s a little bit like that with surfing. The less I surf the more I think about it: the more it exists as a metaphor. Waves are like dreams: if you don\u2019t have them, you start hallucinating.<\/p>\n

Is there any reason why your books generally have three words in the title?<\/strong>
\nAre you training to be a psychoanalyst? Clearly there\u2019s some secret pattern here that I was completely unaware of. Something to with the three blind mice, I should think, or the three pigs. Or maybe Hegel\u2019s dialectic.<\/p>\n

Finally, any projects that we should know about in the pipeline?<\/strong>
\nI\u2019m currently writing \u2018What it Feels Like to Be Alive\u2019. At least I managed to get the number of words up. Surfing gets in there somewhere.<\/p>\n

To find out more about Andy\u2019s work in progress, visit his website<\/a>, and read the New York Times article about the Empire State Building Run-Up\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wanted to make a splash with my first article on Drift, so I thought I would have a chat about surfing and life with one of the most interesting men on the planet. As it happened, Stephen Hawking had other plans. But the man who did eventually give up his time for Drift is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,738],"tags":[760,761,14,762],"class_list":["post-4210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-portfolios","category-jamie-p","tag-andy-martin","tag-eddie-would-go","tag-hawaii","tag-stealing-the-wave"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t