When people reflect on perfect style in surfing, they often point to Pipeline master Gerry Lopez. From takeoff to kickout, Lopez was flawless. Immaculate. It’s hard to argue that anyone ever got as much from a wave with so little effort. Billy Hamilton is another example of such perfection. It radiates all the way to those perfectly placed fingertips. In our time, Joel Tudor and his sons Tosh and Judah get honorable mention.
While the aforementioned surf beautifully, something overly conscious of being observed disqualifies them from being my favorite stylists. My favorite stylists are completely unconscious of anything outside but an inner metronome. They ride to a rhythm only they hear.
The following is from the soon to be released book, “Good Things Love Water”:
True style tends to avoid the camera. They say even atoms change when they are being closely observed. Jock Sutherland’s full-throttle assault on Waimea Bay around midnight with nobody but the full moon to witness the scars left on the bay’s proud face.
Nobody had to teach Buttons Kaluhiokalani the difference between style and fashion. He did not need Madison Avenue’s approval to slink down a liquid catwalk. My own cat’s name is Brother. Brother has style that no human can match. “The Cat” is the best nickname a surfer ever had. Cats plan nothing. Something moves, and they strike, using only necessary muscles to subdue what catches their eyes. Is that a mouse? That was a mouse.
Charles Bukowski was not fashionable, but he had style. And he knew style when he saw it. According to Bukowski:
I have seen dogs with more style than men,
although not many dogs have style.
Cats have it with abundance.
Joan of Arc had style
John the Baptist
Jesus
Socrates
Caesar
García Lorca.
I have met men in jail with style.
I have met more men in jail with style than men out of jail.
Style is the difference, a way of doing, a way of being done.
Six herons standing quietly in a pool of water,
or you, naked, walking out of the bathroom without seeing me.
Let’s add the Blue Angels, Alexander the Great, Sugar Ray Robinson, Archie Moore, Ali not taking an insurance punch on Foreman, Christian Hosoi’s Christ Air, Bruce Lee, Matt Kivlin offering the template to his best student, Miki Dora, Dale Velzy, Moses. A waterman saint is crucified upside down. That’s style!
Style honors a wave rather than competing with it. Style is a two-part harmony, a dance where the wave leads, and you follow as best you can.
No one on earth has ever had perfect style. I take that back. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. Words spoken in triumphant agony about those who had beaten and nailed and cursed and spat upon perfection, never knowing their power was powerless, that love had destroyed them, along with every army sending a battering ram against it.
Runner up for best in show is the eternally young Buttons Kaluhiokalani laughing at the sun, peace sign to someone he just burned, finishing a wave by carving his signature onto its face.
Style humbly asks, “What sort of man is this that even the wind and the sea obey him.”
To preorder a first-edition, autographed copy of “Good Things Love Water,” kindly visit our website: Perelandrapublishingcompany.com
