Brilliant Corners: Jamaica

Brilliant Corners Jamaica: surfing as performance

Sam Bleakley

We are constantly told that the world is shrinking, time and space collapsed into a common moment, eye contact replaced by iphone. Travel may confirm the ubiquity of this global network, with wireless access and same brand sodas available at every corner. But take away the tourist scaffolding and travel also brings difference and variety at each turn. Throw in an unknown ingredient such as travelling to coastlines that are off the trail, and the world suddenly seems very big, liquid, a disparate set of cultures and lifestyles, a host of voices, and an endless variety of characters. To look for a common code amongst this variety is fruitless. Getting traction in these places requires dedication and promises highs and lows. The trace of this traction falls somewhere between what the French poet St-John Perse called a ‘tidemark’ and what the jazz genius Charles Mingus called a ‘weird nightmare’. Perse’s ‘tidemark’ is a salt-stain that cannot be erased but is enjoyed as a permanent print on the psyche of deep satisfaction – something achieved above and beyond the ordinary, a risk that pays off. Not just the mark of time, but of time well spent. Mingus’ ‘weird nightmare’ is a risk that nearly doesn’t pay off, a batch of troubles, a mire, meeting the ghost at the crossroads. But this is territory we must all tread, like illness, disappointment, or the loss of a loved one.

My ‘weirdest nightmare’ is that of racial segregation – that one group of people should irrationally hate another so much that they cordon them off, repress them, and pretend they don’t exist. For me, there is nothing more cowardly. Travel brings you right up against these inter-cultural tensions and teaches you that the best way ahead is collaboration and tolerance.

If there is a message from the Brilliant Corners films, it is that travel really does broaden the mind, but also enlarges the heart and imagination. And challenging surf travel to areas that shun conventional tourism helps you to respect not only people, but also the character of landscape, the spirit of place. My goal is simple: I hope to learn a little about how to live like others, albeit briefly but intensively.

Travelling to surf opens up two horizons of possibility – one, looking out to sea, hawk-eyed for the next wave, sensitive to the local, rapidly soaking up knowledge of the tides and currents, engaging the sea life. The other turns you back to land, where you meet the locals face-to-face, touch the doors of their houses and eat in their street cafes. You head into alleyways and thoroughfares, airports and public squares, sheltered back gardens and local dumps, open toilets and bureaucrats’ offices - always bureaucrats’ offices: checkpoints, bribery at the crossroads, passports stamped, permissions gained. A current runs through you, a thrill at the possibilities, where the spirit bursts into flame, and you are fully absorbed in place.

My container for travel begins with a geographical imagination - a synthetic imagination that gives meaning to places. This is a kind of psychogeography, getting inside the mind of somewhere as much as a people. Surf travel engages intimately with ‘coastscapes’, a term first coined by UK geographer and surfer Nicholas Ford collectively describing coastal landscape and culture. I see coastscapes as characters. But such a possessive taxis is dangerous, replaying the imperial gaze of the conqueror who, historically, has appropriated tropical coastscapes and shaped them to his (the conqueror is gendered male) desires. In the histories of a variety of colonialisms, these movements, this circular path of coastal landing to interior and movement back to coast, is where the Other - the stranger and the strange - is demonized. But of course it is me, the visiting surfer and traveler, who is the stranger. This cultural movement, this desire to conquer and teach rather than to learn, leads to exploitation of resources including the human, as seen in the history of the slave trade through waves of colonialism and neo-colonialism.

The late great Polish travel writer Ryszard Kapuscinski reversed the imperial gaze, so that his identity was formed in response to an Other. For Kapuscinski, the Other is the person of an ‘other’ culture who was his informant into the ways of that culture: “In a reporter’s understanding, a journey is a challenge and an effort, involving hard work and dedication; it is a difficult task, an ambitious project to accomplish. As we travel, we can feel that something important is happening, that we are taking part in something of which we are at once both witnesses and creators, that there is a duty incumbent upon us, and that we are responsible for something. And in fact we are responsible for the road we are travelling. We often feel sure that we are walking or driving down a particular road just this once in our lives, and that we shall never return to it again, so we must not miss anything from the journey, we cannot overlook or lose anything, because we are going to give an account of it all, write a report, a story – we are going to examine our conscience. And so, as we travel we concentrate, we focus our attention and sharpen our hearing. The road we are on is very important, because each step along takes us nearer to an encounter with the Other, and that is exactly why we are there. Would we otherwise voluntarily expose ourselves to hardships and take on the risk of all sorts of discomfort and danger?”

And how about challenging the notion that the ‘Other’ has to be a human other, suggesting instead that the environment itself, a whole culture, a local coastscape, or simply an incident, can be the mirror of the Other in which a self is discovered? The landscape or coastscape can then become one of the characters. One of the most poetic and sensitive writers exploring this line of thinking and being is the philosopher and anthropologist Alphonso Lingis. He described an experience of tropical reef diving in which the deep water surge began to throw him “back and forth thirty feet, so that I fought violently to stabilize myself, afraid of being dashed against the coral cliffs. Something then told me to put off struggling…The fish accompanied me then, stable in the surge, part of the surge. I drowned the will to move myself.” And then, “the links of light in the blue spaces illuminate nothing, do not outline a form; they delight. The coral cliffs shiver with millions of antennae. Fish materialise in stripes and streams of colour.” Things started awkwardly, but the environment captured Lingis’ attention. He let go. A new noticing emerged; the coral reef fauna became the character, on display. Waves and sea-states do the same thing.

And the geographical imagination must be tied to a poetic imagination. St-John Perse (a Frenchman raised in Guadeloupe) wrote an epic poem in 1924 entitled ‘Anabasis’. It describes the movement of imperialists keen to uproot and claim new territory. “We shall not dwell forever in these yellow lands” says the protagonist, referring to nomads moving from the desert. Also, “I have seen the earth parcelled out in vast spaces” – the desire for the adventurer to conquer. Perse’s masterwork is based on the ancient Greek writer and warrior Xenophon’s Anabasis, the Greek word for an expedition from a coastline to the interior of a country. Travel-hungry surfers, however, move in the opposite direction, from the interior to the coast. The Greek term for this was katabasis. And the poetry of surf travel is to dare not to conquer; to resist the imperialist urge; to gracefully attempt to understand the here and now, in this parcel of land, and adapt to the moment; and to document the occasion poetically and with precision, sensitively exploring the limits of this performance. This involves thinking democratically and appreciating the varieties of cultures and ways of life that present on surf trips. This round of movement from interior to coast and coast to interior, is like the rise and fall of the lung in a steady breathing cycle, like the beating of the heart.

The katabasis of surf travel – moving from the interior to coast, from shelter to adventure – also educates a mindset. Here, you shake off any desire to parcel out the earth as you paddle out, turn and sit, ocean at your rear, now looking back on the conflicts of territorial desire with a new perspective, as still as a bird, while all around seems to broil and boil. This is not smugness, but a gaining of a particular and literal point-of-view, from sea to land. Just as the surfer knows the poet Perse’s salt-stained ‘tidemark’, so he or she knows the perspective gained by distance from land to breaking wave, one of simultaneous cool contemplation and hot involvement. But surfers are not all at sea. We return to shore on each wave, and at the end of each surf we engage with those whose homes and livelihoods are on the coast, where things are tethered to feed the domestic, and where terroir – the very smell and taste of the place - replaces terror. And here also is great beauty – bright pearlstrings offered by any and every culture, and the reward of a sudden and deep connection with an unfamiliar, usually misrepresented, place.

I’ve always been attracted to the Caribbean because the region has emerged from the worlds of slavery and colonialism with so much pride and style. Caribbean cultures have both a dignity and lyricism like nowhere else on the planet. Trying to get a grip on the wet and wild surfaces of Haiti had already infected me in a way that I could not shake off after coming home. Haiti’s neighbour, Jamaica, became a natural target, drawing me back to travel, extending from heart through stomach to groin, inviting a gut response and an animal feel for deep engagement. The whole region here is like a centre of gravity that lingers in my psyche to shape my life as a surfer. It is a state of being, pulling like thumos - a gut soul - to the islands impressed with this cartographic link, coastlines dropping into seas that stir and boil, where smoking surf may, or may not, unfold without crowds, commercialism and egos. Stoking that fire means taking on the challenge of stressful adventure to places where a host of fellow creatures go about their business underfoot in their natural world, hopefully accepting me, perhaps as a slight irritation, perhaps with curiosity, perhaps with a welcome smile. Sea life and see life are the surf traveller’s constant companions.

Jamaica is, of course, readily romanticized. But the capital Kingston has also been a place of provocation. Many areas are steeped in social and political strife as a paradoxical recovery from colonial rule. Yet these same communities ring out with a music and culture that has become celebrated throughout the world. I am captivated by the rhythm of Jamaican patois, and believe surfing is a great way to discover different facets of Caribbean culture. In the Brilliant Corners film I bypass The Wilmot family and Bull Bay, the modern home of Jamaican surfing (beautifully documented in Chris Malloy’s film A Broke Down Melody), and head to Boston Beach, the traditional heart of Jamaican surfing. Here I meet the charismatic local scene, greeted wholeheartedly with the phrase, “International Respect.”

I have no training and limited experience making films. It’s the passion that drives me. I am a writer and surfer by trade, but what I hope to capture in the films is the beauty of the places visited, using surfing to get under the skin of these coastlines and cultures. Of course, dynamically filmed surfing sequences are central, working with an outlandishly talented Cornish Director of Photography called Morgan Lowndes who can brilliantly capture place, mood, and moment. We both see surfing as a performance art, not just leaving tracks on waves, inscriptions on the water, but transferring this to both words and visuals.

I try to integrate the work of travel, surfing and subsequent writing as a coherent whole always in process, where travel and writing capture the fluidity and surprise of surfing. It is more a shape shifting than a shaping, more a dance than an installation. Typically, there are common musical tropes that I bring not only to writing and surfing, but also to the act of travel itself - the rich, the frantic, the soulful, the hard-driving, the rhythmic, the open, the graceful, the fluid, the cool, the lyrical. This is writing and filmmaking with surfing’s prescription - oily waters underfoot, wind stripping foam from the wave’s lip as you glide by, bending the cutback so hard that your fins pop clear in a sharp wail, and then snap back as the wave collapses whole and you kick out in an arc that allows you to seamlessly snatch the surfboard in mid-air, land with grace and paddle out with a gaze already anticipating and summarizing the coming set wave. Every surfer knows this songline.

The countermelody of editing the films recreates a whole new travel experience. It is another kind of surfing, through cycles of improvisation. This is done always with the trusted and fantastic Cornwall based Editor Robin Simpson. Teamwork is key. If one of us misses a beat or a note, the other can step in as the performance gains momentum. And the opportunity to capture the subtleties of surfing as performance in the edit is very inspiring. Key to the performance is exploiting contradiction – seeing this as a resource rather than a hindrance. Surfing must deal consistently with contradiction. It is a contradiction itself that the surfer walks impossibly upright, ready to be tipped but always working against that gravity, maintaining the hot spot, the point of balance. Surfers too have to play, or read, between the lines, where ‘lines’ of course refer to sets of waves approaching. Surfers ‘make waves’ in their high performance as a form of rhetoric, persuading others of their skill, grit, creativity, and character. Surfers and surf culture is often blunt - getting to the point – the Point of course also being the shared surf break where surfers gather for their shared rituals, create their texts, and spout their rhetoric.

These performances demand a stage, and here the stage is place - as the main player that shapes the performance. Getting to and from this stage require rehearsal, preparation, elastic response to the unexpected, greeting the mysteries with an open heart, listening to the locals, never assuming, taking the surf on offer as a gift, spotting the angles, the angels, ghosts and spirits, exiting with humility. Renaissance alchemists called this process the iteratio – iteration, repetition, rehearsal, getting the basics down.

I hope the Brilliant Corners films capture at least some of the character of the places I visit, and the subtleties in rhythm and timing that emerge from a keen sense of relationship to coastscape. Surfing is both an illness and a cure – an addiction and a lifesaver. Extreme travel is the same – a welcome but awkward infection. But surfing offers a powerful lens to explore the world. A true ethnography of place can only come with extended travel and time spent indwelling a culture. But on the resources I have available I try to make the most of every moment, to get at the beating heart of place. Brilliant Corners is a celebration of life, demonstrating how surfing can offer detailed understanding of the changing relationship between cultures and coastlines. International Respect.

SAM BLEAKLEY is a travel writer, author, presenter and professional surfer, from Gwenver beach, Sennen, Cornwall, UK. Sam's book Surfing Brilliant Corners details a decade of extreme global surf travel, illustrated by renowned photographer John Callahan. The sequel, Surfing Tropical Beats is the first surf travel book translated into Mandarin Chinese . Sam has an MA in Geography from the University of Cambridge, is researching a part-time PhD in Travel Writing with Falmouth University and has been a multiple British and European Longboard Surfing Champion. Sam specialises in surf exploration projects with the surfEXPLORE team.