“The thing about waves,” says surf instructor Blaze in Aurora Real de Asua’s play Wipeout, “is that they don’t actually exist. Like, they’re just energy moving through water. So when you’re on one…you feel that. All that energy.”
From the bottom of the ocean. From the currents. From ocean trenches and underwater volcanoes and coral reefs. From the sky. From clouds and rain and moonlight. And the stars. When I rode that wave, I swore I felt stars. I felt the whole freaking universe, just in the spray of white water. People call it a surfer’s high but that doesn’t make sense. It’s more like a surfer’s everywhere. Because the energy goes freaking everywhere. So for a second you’re everywhere too. You’re stoked.
As a part of preparing for the play, the Wipeout cast and production team took a deep dive (no pun intended) into ways that surfers have written about being out on the water. Here are other perspectives we drew from:
“Falling is indispensable in terms of our evolution as wave riders, in terms of grounding our egos, and in terms of seeing surfing for the unpredictable, explosive fun that it is.
Regardless of how fast or high we go, we always sink beneath the surface at some point, and often the act of falling brings our egos back to earth. Falling unites the top surfers with the newbies as a shared experience. Regardless of whether it makes us laugh or pisses us off, the knowledge that we all fall helps us not to descend into the depraved depths of superiority.
If nothing else, falling allows us to begin again. Whatever we tried didn’t work. Our balance was off, or we misread the wave. We weren’t focused enough, or, through no fault of our own, the ocean decided to rear up and pitch us off. Falling is an act of rebirth, and what is surfing if not an endless search — an Endless Summer — for more waves, better swells, and the sublime feeling of not falling, of making the wave and riding it with flow and style.
To fall is to fail, sure. But it is also to grow, to learn, and to get another chance to make the wave and succeed.
—Brian Sousa, “In Praise of Wiping Out“
“Every surfer remembers when they caught their first good wave.
And everyone remembers how they caught it. It wasn’t by calculation or technology or book knowledge or logic but by instinct. It was like dancing. When you dance, you just fall into the music. You forget yourself. Well, in surfing, the wave is the music.
What does it feel like? When you catch your first good wave, you will feel gratitude, because you will know that you have not chosen it, it has chosen you. You have simply put yourself into the holy place where the gift was given.
You will feel tiny. You will feel as if you are being gripped and lifted up like a baby tiger in its mother’s jaws, or swept up onto the cowcatcher on a stem locomotive.
When the off-shore wind whips the crest of the approaching swells and leaves a halo of white spray behind each wave just before it plunges over, and if they are backlit by the sun, you will not be able not to see the waves as heavenly horses with wild white manes, ghost riders from the sky who disappear as quickly as they come.”
—Peter Kreeft, I Surf Therefore I Am
The Surfers of Reddit:
“[Surfing] may be the hardest thing you ever try to learn, and you may never actually catch that many clean waves. But the feeling you get from going on the journey will be like nothing you've ever experienced in your life. You will be out there and wonder, how the hell could I possibly describe this supernatural-seeming dimension I've found myself in to anyone else (or even to yourself when you get back on land and are into the daily grind again)? Then you realize you don't have to. Because this is enough. “
“Surfing is a love hate kind of activity, but when the planets line up for you, you've got the conditions, a dolphin swings by to catch a wave with you or a seal detours to acknowledge you, then you realize how good it is for your soul.”
“It's the purest sport on the face of the earth, just you and the endless ocean ever changing, ever present. The connection to nature is unlike anything this world has to offer and when you catch that wave just right nothing else exists, it's just you and the ocean. You and the thing that was there before time itself. you and the most powerful pure thing god ever dared to create.”
If your interests are more practical, however, here are some links we used to get a sense of time out on the water.
Just some gorgeous videos of surfing
From Aurora: End titles to the 2004 documentary Riding Giants
"Make Way: Women's Surfing Documentary" This is about women, aged 19-61, on the Gold Coast of Australia
Link to an older woman talking about what she loves about surfing (and we see her on some waves)
Surfers lining up on relatively small waves
Waimea Bay Surf day, 2023: Professional surfers having the time of their lives
This WikiHow on surfing has some GIFs alongside its instructions