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1-4. The pier at Huntington Beach, California
wave itself to which the surfer is drawn; and it is ultimately the wave that determines not only the space of the surfbreak, but more profoundly the surfer’s relationship with time. In the water the surfer is constantly in motion, negotiating the ever-shifting regions of ‘inside’ and ‘outside,’ the areas shoreward and seaward of a breaking wave that each successive wave redefines. In surfing timing is everything: not only while riding, but in simply finding the evanescent wave, whose rhythms do not obey the constructed metres of modern society. Surfing is not something to be scheduled; rather, it must be scheduled around. Consequently, in order to surf on a regular basis, all surfers must inevitably submit to the wave– the spatial embodi- ment cyclical time. Waves are created by vast pelagic storms; they follow the paths of the seasons, respond to the pull of the sun and moon, to the alternations of night and day– to the rhythms that once defined our understanding of time’s passage. The practice reflects this reality: surfers tend to return to familiar breaks season after season, year after year; the surf-session is defined by elliptical orbits– surfers paddle outside, wait for and catch a wave, only to return outside and repeat the sequence again; there is no score, no tangible goal, no clear beginning or end. This stands in stark contrast to the linear conception of time upon which the idea of progress is founded, the imperative which drives the modern world. As a result, surfers are often caught between the demands of irreconcilable worlds as well as inimical elements. Even the surfboard spans two seemingly antithetical domains: the mass production of the foam ‘blank’ (the primary component of the modern surfboard) and the hand-craftsmanship of the board shaper; the impersonal and placeless nature of the industrial process, coupled with the fact that shapers often craft surfboards in collaboration with surfers in response to particular conditions and locations– the gently tapered lines of Malibu or the fast-breaking tubes of Pipeline. In the threshold between land and sea, between progress and nature’s incurable cycles, between the modern and the vernacular, dwells the surfer. In the shadow of the pier a wave swells, steepens, suddenly mortal; and on a thin blade of glass and foam a surfer strokes into the wave, rises to his feet and descends – at the moment of its collapse: a dialogue, an architectural dialogue, between permanence and change. D
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