Page One Rewrite

“...that our eyelids might open some morning upon a world that had been refashioned anew in the darkness for our pleasure, a world in which things would have fresh shapes and colours, and be changed, or have other secrets, a world in which the past would have little or no place, or survive, at any rate, in no conscious form of obligation or regret, the remembrance even of joy having its bitterness and the memories of pleasure their pain.”—Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

I think this was one of the first things I ever underlined in a book. Late high school, sometime between trying to deepen the contrast on my neck tan line by surfing so much I started to see what existed beneath the letters in literature. 

I thought of this quote this morning after reading a piece by Mike Solana — one of the only remaining voices I can stand in “media” — regarding the idiocy of the internet in its current form. He goes on about several hot button “mainstream” stories that are so radically bonkers it’s hard to imagine they’re “headline news.” He then highlights the lucrative circus that exists between media outlets and activists who use social media megaphones to amplify the most ridiculous bits of our dying culture, transforming us into something far more barbaric and disgusting than anything Mike Judge could have dreamed up in his prophetic 2006 film Idiocracy.

I remember the time of underlining that Oscar Wilde quote as a time of constantly asking myself about life and youth and where I stacked up: 

“Am I doing this right?”

“Now what?”

“Is this it?” 

I was probably thinking it might be cool if things took on different shapes and meanings, typical suburban boredom, thinking life would be more interesting if it were more vibrant and eclectic than it was looking to be between the four beige walls of my 4th period English class.

I would end up discovering rum, Heineken and traveling as antidote for my beige walls, but I never thought that quote would float back to me as an adult with a child looking for safe distractions from extremely insane mainstream headlines. Funny how we used to run from the square mainstream to our punk rock, now we have to hide from the mainstream media’s radical neurosis into our subcultures. But here we are. 

Solana ends his piece by speaking about the importance of subscribers, email lists and “tiny worlds, walled off from the broader social media hellscape, where smaller circles of like-minded individuals assemble and make sense of our reality.”

Sound like Inherent Bummer? We don’t really stand a chance in a man-on-man heat with Stab or Surfline right now, but who says we even wanna surf that heat? We’re happy to do our own thing, relaying to you the latest Lost film next to a Kurosawa samurai classic, an algorithm-free music selection all before throwing a beach party cleanup and a rock show to follow That’s the world we want to fashion anew.

Mike finishes with this: “The future of culture is either a gatekept internet of mostly peaceful nations, and the rebirth of subculture, or all-consuming outrage until we’re swallowed by the void, left to wander anxious and empty through a haunted, miserable internet. Our choices: change our human nature (impossible), break (undesirable), or build something new.” 

When you open this email each week, just consider us attempting something new. We’ll see how it goes. We’re just getting started. 

And before you go, what are your thoughts on the Challenger Series being more exciting than the World Tour? Hear me out, sure, you lose John John and maybe a few others, but…you’re basically getting a surf video at Snapper. Look at the heat draw for this weekends event and consider the fact that the Snapper sand bank is a 9/10 right now, then consider that the next CT event is in a pool, in a hot dusty valley next to a sad casino. That’s not the world I was thinking about when I wanted it refashioned anew. I want the Gold Coast in May with the best young surfers in the world and a few icons sprinkled in and some good dancing between heats and a packed beach of scantily clad Australians cheering them on. Think about it. What world are you living in?—Travis Ferré 

[Above Artwork: Roberto Matta, “On the Edge of a Dream,” oil on canvas, 1956]

*If you want to read the rest of the Mike Solana piece, or follow his really good Pirate Wire dispatches, click here.