Are you for scuba?

There’s a perfectly good explanation why this newsletter is a few hours late. Yesterday I went on a sort of spirit quest into the very non-surfy labyrinth of industrial warehouses decorated in graffiti art known as downtown Los Angeles. I was on official business.

My business was with long time collaborator, friend and artist Scott Chenoweth. In recent years Scott decided to put his core Ventura surfing reputation and thick stack of Roberts White Diamond surfboards (see “Dane and the Hazy Sea” in Modern Collective for what that board is capable of) in the rafters in exchange for a quiver of easels that he throws paint at in a smart studio apartment in DTLA where the big dogs of the art world get down.

Scott and I have long romanticized ourselves as not unlike Hunter S. Thompson and Ralph Steadman — a tag team duo sent to illuminate this brown world with colors made of letters and wet paint. But make it surf! We’ve had varying degrees of success over the years. There was Surfing Magazine, What Youth, various French, Portuguese, Scandinavian, Caribbean and bikini-themed collaborative zines, mags, films and articles before he more recently moved some colors and letters around for Inherent Bummer between his finer art pursuits.

This is usually how an idea starts with us: I come in and ramble up some gibberish, proselytizing and theorizing this and that, usually fueled by a caffeine induced disappointment in surf industry/culture’s inability to bring any style, enthusiasm or creativity to the world. As I rant and ramble, Scott moves letters and images around and does an impeccable job of turning what I’m saying into an actual visual.

This is often followed — as it was yesterday on the rooftop patio at Cha Cha Cha — by mezcalitas and margaritas and that’s when things cauterize. Yesterday, part of that crystallization process was Scott’s announcement to the table that he had gotten into something very peculiar: He had been scuba diving down in Mexico.

Now, this isn’t totally weird for him. Scott is a worldy dude. He’s surfed and surfed well his whole life. A traveler. A drinker. An oft-bearded man of culture, wit and adventure. But he’s more Pablo Picasso than Jacques Cousteau.

As he described the alien underwater sensation of total presence, totally disconnected from one part of existence while totally immersed in another, the focus entirely on breathing and awareness as you sink down like an awkward bubbling alien to the fishes who care little about you as long as you don’t eat them, he spoke about his total presence and I thought about that pursuit of presence.

I like to think we get access to that daily when we go surfing. And whether you get it by throwing yourself over a massive Puerto pit like Nathan Florence did this week, or you just like to let a little air out of your chest by just getting wet at your local beachbreak every morning, any chance we have to be totally present, especially surrounded by nature is extremely important. I also think it’s nice that we don’t have to don a diving bell or take a spiritual tourism trip to purge on ayahuasca to get there. We can just paddle on out, do a cutback and release some tension.

I’m not discrediting Scott’s new hobby either. Sounds wild! To be immersed in anything is important. “Doing easy” as they say. It’s harder and harder to do these days but it comes with the territory when you surf. Just this week in fact, I found myself surfing some pretty mundane early morning south swell when out the back I watched the water around a thrashing seal turn crimson red and couldn’t have felt any more present. It turned out to be a seal eating a (very big) fish as opposed to a big fish eating a seal but that kind of thing will put you in the moment alright. It’s not always just about the wave riding.

I went to see Scott to figure out how to better visually represent Inherent Bummer. I ended up covered in margarita salt and reminding myself that surfing allows us access to things tech bros and Crypto dorks pay a lot of money to spiritually purge themselves of. And we celebrate that. But during the times we’re not ripping or diving the deep blue sea, we also like to illuminate other ways one can use the arts to be present: be it an Agnes Martin painting, deep listening to Death Grips songs, close reading Tennesee Williams or watching a Friday Night Kurosawa flick, we want you to feel it too. That’s kind of what I was trying to explain up in LA. I’m pretty sure he got my drift.

As always, pleasure doing business with you Scott.—Travis Ferré 

[Above drawing: “Scuba” by Scott Chenoweth]