Love’s Rest Stop, just east of San Antonio, Texas, March 6 – 9
Hi folks,
Just came across a knockout of a film made back at Montauk this winter (‘Tauk Is Cheap Productions,’ a clever moniker); a couple of young surfers I’ve known since they were basically born ripping out at the point during the blizzard in late January; the storm was bad enough that it had a name, Juno.
CLICK THE ABOVE LINK
Good film, ballsy boys, no?
Seriously, I watched two of the surfers, Charlie and Grant, grow up; I actually remember Grant’s first go-out at Ditch one summer. It was maybe three feet, head high for Grant back then, and I recall he was scared. Imagine that. Scared little kid. Now look at him. But so what? What’s my point?
The above film is somehow an example of the mixed feelings I have about Montauk. I mean I’m not on vacation; this isn’t a road trip, from which I will return, back to normal, hi everyone, wanna see slides of my trip? No. This is life, here on the road. Yeah, I’ve said it before: I dunno if I’ll be going back…
That’s twice I’ve left the place I considered ‘home’ – the other being Pavones, Costa Rica – both times the bolt (from a physically beautiful place) being under some sort of human-engendered duress.
But so what?
One through-line in the film I thought I’d make – Part Two of Water Time – was to be ‘Why I left.’ I might work it in to Always Open; we’ll see how it develops. (See my memoir, CYGAWA, for the sordid details of my departure from Costa Rica.)
I have a sequence I shot just before I left last June wherein an old friend – surf buddy since the 1960s – a reporter for our local paper, The East Hampton Star, interviewed me, the two of us sitting in the rig as I was getting it ready for the road.
In a previous article (relating to my local showing of Water Time) my friend had portrayed me as believing that ‘the Internet is black magic.’ The subtext being that I’m nuts. Now you can think that I’m nuts and that’s your business but I’m not nuts because I think the Internet is ‘black magic.’ What I meant – and he well knew this, which is vital – was my own version of Arthur C. Clarke’s well-known maxim that ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’
That’s what I meant. Very different from ‘believing’ that the Internet is black magic. It was public and a bit of a nasty thing to put in the newspaper and I told him so. He rambled that he didn’t mean that. Yeah he did. It was his way of making a statement about me, my view on how the world works (HTWW).
But am I making too much of this? In context – and if you’ve seen Water Time – I don’t think so. What jumps out at you in the film is the levels of denial and hostility of the folks I interviewed.
That my buddy for a half century wanted me to look like a nutcase in the local paper is a micro-example of why I left the beautiful, interesting place you saw in the above film. He did not want to be wrong in his view of the world, which is radically different from my own. The easiest way for him to be right is for me to be nuts. If I’m nuts, no need to think critically about HTWW.
Out of say, one hundred people I know well enough to stop for a chat with at the post office, probably ninety-eight feel the same way…
‘We like Allan even though he’s a nutcase.’ This is the general consensus at the town where I used to live. There are two, maybe three exceptions to this – people I can actually talk to. (These folks have told me that they don’t expose their views ‘publicly’ because they don’t want to be thought of in the way I am.)
It’s not that I care what ‘people’ think of me, but see, it’s different when you are looking ‘friends’ in the eye and have to fight back the notion that they are deep down intrinsically different from you.
Point being: The fact that true critical thinking has been ‘dumbed out of us,’ most of us that is, and that self-reflection is likewise a trait that is profoundly lacking in the majority, is the root of why I can’t seem to stay put.
So I’ll wander around the country and thanks to the Internet and Amazon (my main book source) I will continue my research into HTWW.
I’m going to post a short film (about 12 minutes) that sums up everything I’m saying here. If you’re curious about why I live as I do – wandering (apparently) aimlessly across the country, etc. – if you pay attention to this film (13 min.), you’ll understand. Why I left and why I have so little faith in mankind.
The video is a couple years old and I’m only now making it public. I didn’t make it public before because I didn’t want to make my friend Walter look foolish — to me he looks like a complete fool. Such is my naivety! See, I’ve shown the film to enough people to know that it hasn’t affected – and will not affect – anyone about anything. Not about 9/11, the media, about denial/doublethink, or anything else. Incredibly (to me and I can’t seem to get used to this), people just see it however they want to; ‘truth’ has nothing to do with anything. Zero.
My old friend Walter doesn’t look like a fool – I do.
Talk to you (whoever is left subscribed) in a few days.
Allan
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