‘Dancing about architecture’: the fraught practice and chequered history of writing about the physical act of wave riding

Abstract

It has been said of music journalism, that writing about music is like dancing about architecture, a flawed and pointless exercise, the wrong medium for the artform. One might regard surf writing similarly. Perhaps the point of surf writing is that the experience is so fleeting and elusive that attempting to convey it in literary form stretches any writer to their limits. It is an open-ended challenge in which we are almost destined to fail but compelled to try anyway, like paddling out in a tumultuous sea, or taking off on a close-out. This paper provides an historic overview of literary efforts to conjure the ethereal, multi-sensory experience of wave-riding, not just surf writing in general, but specifically efforts to describe the physical act of wave riding. I have written about surfing, as a career, for over 35 years, and am often struck by how little surf writing is focussed on describing the act itself. Most surf writing concerns itself with character profiles of elite surfers, exotic travel, competition, social and environmental issues that impact surfing. In the context of the popular surf media, images are the hero, better able to capture the splendour and magic of wave-riding, where words may seem inadequate.