We found nirvana over the Internet.
The Internet is a late night porn machine of surf photos and foreign warm water waves and thin blonde girls out late for the one year anniversary party at The Single Fin above Uluwatu. The Internet is an informational junkyard. Everyone in Indonesia obviously just gets barreled. No one goes home alone.
All the development, all the progress.
It’s a party town and it’s a legend. Cheap plane flights, Russian surf tourists…..Russian surf tourists!?! The women are sharp and fearless. Kuta is damn hot. There is a lot of money around, there is no money around. Everyone is famous, everyone is drunk; just a nice little surfing town, just a pretty place to get married.
The forecast is very specific. The Ocean is sending mixed signals. This morning calls for six foot and over at Padang. The jet skis are out. The boys are flashing signs. Early morning water break ups, howling down the line.
She looks fantastic. She looks like magic. Watery eyes, blue as a long day.
A stunned looking woman with no shirt is committing everything to memory. A massive swell late in the season. Memories of being scared – yes, scared. The sets come rolling in from way out there bigger and bigger every time. The local kids take up the point. Everyone on the beach is drunk.
A smattering of faces unfamiliar. Interviews with legends in the making. Unlike the Declaration of Independence, unlike the waves back home. A famous motto to live by; a drugstore that is open 24 hours a day. Cheap fine cuisine in an uneven parking lot sets the tone for the trip, all the good looking Brazilian girls come out in the late afternoon. Tattooed across my chest. Forever in the vision of something original, forever with isolated surfboard shapes reticent in my mind. A quick third eye glance to catch the swell coming in. Forever is such a long time.
Gotta wake up early and go surf. Gotta save money for a plane ticket. All contributions welcome. Leave your wallet and expensive cars keys at the door.
The Interview Process:
What brings you to paradise?
You see, we came here for realization, we came here for awakening. We came here to bathe in the oceans and be reunited with the water in a way that is positive and without judgments or circumstances. We came here to be one with our people and the smell of water and the touch of a wave and the shock of rocks and the banter of sound. To recharge our batteries, to be healthy and free in a way that is foreign to us back home. Alleviated, born again, relevant.
Has that happened?
We also came to surf and have sex.
Any specific moments?
You like this t-shirt? I bought this t-shirt down the road at one of those t-shirt stands and the lady in the shop told me I look like marlin brando when I put the t-shirt on and stand with my face to the side – like this – and then we had drinks in front of her shop and she read my future. My palm is what she literally read, but that’s where the future is.
You bought a surfboard?
We all leased surfboards from this dealer with no last name and lots of hair. We came around his place in the late afternoon a few days after we all arrived and acclimated to the altitude then had dinner with him and his super model wife and then he took us out back to a small woodshed that was locked and insulated with titanium and inside he had all these colorful surfboards for us to choose from. The lighting was horrid but the boards are so so pretty. Mine is orange With a lightning bolt on the front. HELLO!
When are you coming back?
Well, first we shoot film here for two weeks, then we go on location to Java for a long weekend, then Singapore, then back to the States for editing. The girls will leave before us because they can. The rest of the crew is stationed permanently here and are just freelancing with us until the rains come. The money is endless so we will be back in June.
The modern function of art is obviously to eat itself.
Obviously.
– Douglas Evan Weiss, April 15, 2012, Costa Rica
Photo: Piermario
