I
have appeared on various magazine covers, company adverts, posters,
and in mainstream newspapers, notably The Guardian, The
Observer and The Independent. I have featured in over twenty
action sport DVDs and documentaries and appeared in television programmes
about surfing and travel on the BBC, Channel 4 and ITV. I worked as
a consultant, writer and interviewer for the award winning Mengejar
Ombak - Chasing Waves - The chronicle of Dede Suryana's rise to surf
stardom (Indonesia 2009).
Exploring surf and travel writing through metaphors of jazz has become
an important part of my media work. 'Jazz' is not just a kind of music
- the primary African-American art form - but a way of thinking and
doing (based on improvisation, syncopation, timing, rhythm and beat).
Surfers and travellers can be jazz players without ever liking or
knowing jazz, where they have that jazz feel that takes them away
from the straight line and the standard moves.
Surfing is about improvising in brilliant ways that utilise the sea's
surprises. And surfers who travel with sensitivity to local cultures
will act like jazz musicians, quickly getting an ear for the rhythm
of the moment and showing facility for improvisation. These performances
demand a stage - a place - which is the main player and shapes the
performance.
Thinking jazz is to live an improvised life, one in which imagination,
not convention, is at the core. No Room for Squares exclaimed the
title of tenor saxophonist Hank Mobley's 1963 Blue Note label album.
The pianist Sonny Clark's 1958 album on the same label put it another
way with its title Cool Struttin'. A blue note is an imaginatively
squashed note, played with soul - a note that oozes quality and feeling,
and signals 'style'.
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