Watch "Pink Lemonade" starring Chippa Wilson

This morning I woke up to screen Chippa Wilson and Ben Gulliver’s new short “Pink Lemonade” once more before posting it on the website for you. As I watched I was struck down with an overwhelming sense of appreciation for its subtle creativity. Now this could be the repercussions of the 4 weeks it’s now been since I’ve surfed, which for all the bad it’s done to my overall wellbeing has unlocked an extremely heightened and nearly transcendental sense of appreciation in me. For everything. For the squirrel who eats the strawberries outside my house, to margaritas with friends in dark naugahyde booths on Friday afternoons, to my routine surfs at home with the clusterfuck of locals I love. And it was through this lens that I watched “Pink Lemonade.” 

I see a lot of surf edits and I’ve seen a lot of surf edits. I see them all really and I know it’s easy to let them all blur together. But what I hope you’ll join me in doing today is letting this one marinate and slow you down for a few minutes. Try to do that everything you decide to view or read. Ingest the visuals, the music and the concept. Let it percolate. Swirl it around. Go back for seconds and thirds if you enjoy how it makes you feel.  

Musician Nick Cave has a website called “The Red Hand Files” that I often rave about and reference, and this week he said something about a new Bob Dylan song and whether or not this could be the last Bob Dylan song we ever hear. What he said, in consideration of our current social habits and the global pandemic has altered my philosophy entirely:  

Perhaps there is some wisdom in treating all songs, or for that matter, all experiences, with a certain care and reverence, as if encountering these things for the last time. I say this not just in the light of the novel coronavirus, rather that it is an eloquent way to lead one’s life and to appreciate the here and now, by savoring it as if it were for the last time. To have a drink with a friend as if it were the last time, to eat with your family as it were the last time, to read to your child as if it were the last time, or indeed, to sit in the kitchen listening to a new Bob Dylan song as if it were the last time. It permeates all that we do with greater meaning, placing us within the present, our uncertain future, temporarily arrested.—Nick Cave

I can’t tell you how important this philosophy is as we all trudge through our daily routines, indoors, searching for optimism in what might be a fearful day spent filling out unemployment forms, applying for loans or awaiting stimulus checks just to get to the next day. These are difficult times (we all know because every stock email we get leads with that damn phrase), but if we can learn to redefine our understanding for the word appreciation, maybe we’ll realize the gluttony and excessive consumption wasn’t entirely necessary and what others have, are doing, or experiencing without us isn’t any more significant than the miracle that is an asshole squirrel stealing a strawberry from your garden, and maybe, with that new appreciation we can find a graceful exit from what continues looking like a massive closeout.

I hope you’ll fill a glass of something fizzy and enjoy this simple and sweet little morsel of creativity from Ben Gulliver and Chippa Wilson. It’s called “Pink Lemonade.”—Travis Ferré