Live to Sea (Psyche Films)

 

How an elite surfer followed the wave of his dreams back home to the Baltic Sea

Even for those who have never stood on a surfboard, it’s not hard to imagine the exhilaration of the sport – the immediacy of fear-tinged thrills, the might and weight of the seawater, the wonder of moving with and across waves. And when surfers describe the feeling of freedom, the connection with nature and the camaraderie that they find in their pursuit, most of us can probably come up with our own analogous experiences, even if they’re less obviously adventurous or skilful. The short documentary Live to Sea offers a rich sense of these and other aspects of surfing, but another theme also pulses through the film and transforms its story into one that resonates in unexpected ways.

Freddie Meadows, the Swedish surfer at the centre of this saga, speaks frequently of his dreams, not just in the sense of aspirations and objectives, but also as something akin to visions. To be sure, this more mystical strand of dream is inseparable from his primary goal, which is to find the rare and elusive waves in the Baltic Sea that can challenge and excite a professional surfer. But he has a curious turn of phrase – ‘dreaming myself into all these places’ – that he tends to use to describe a kind of imagining that lets him see what he has not yet found. That something so intuitive and internal is central to how he seeks those waves gives his striving the shape and valence of the classic hero’s journey.

The film follows the archetypal quest narrative described by Joseph Campbell in 1949, from ‘The Call to Adventure’ to the eventual ‘Return’, via a period of training in Portugal, international surfing competitions and a period of illness. But it’s the emotional journey of Meadows in relation to substantial physical and psychological obstacles that ties his story to the grander narratives that are so familiar in literature and mythology. This is not to say that the story itself reaches the heights or profundity of epics such as Gilgamesh, The Odyssey or Parzival, but there is compelling psychological grist swirling within this extreme sports documentary. While the imagery of Sweden’s rugged coastline and the mysterious swells of the Baltic have a palpable power on screen, it’s the internal undertow of Meadows’s dream-questing that can move us to consider our own paths to self-development and self-knowledge.

Live to sea | Psyche Films

Northumbrian Sequence IV (by Kathleen Raine)

Let in the wind,

Let in the rain,

Let in the moors tonight,

 

The storm beats on my window-pane,

Night stands at my bed-foot,

Let in the fear,

Let in the pain,

Let in the trees that toss and groan,

Let in the north tonight.

 

Let in the nameless formless power

That beats upon my door,

Let in the ice, let in the snow,

The banshee howling on the moor,

The bracken-bush on the bleak hillside,

Let in the dead tonight.

 

The whistling ghost behind the dyke,

The dead that rot in the mire,

Let in the thronging ancestors,

The unfilled desire,

Let in the wraith of the dead earl,

Let in the dead tonight.

 

Let in the cold,

Let in the wet,

Let in the loneliness,

Let in the quick,

Let in the dead,

Let in the unpeopled skies.

 

Oh how can virgin fingers weave

A covering for the void,

How can my fearful heart conceive

Gigantic solitude?

How can a house so small contain

A company so great?

Let in the dark,

Let in the dead,

Let in your love tonight.

 

Let in the snow that numbs the grave,

Let in the acorn-tree,

The mountain stream and mountain stone,

Let in the bitter sea.

 

Fearful is my virgin heart

And frail my virgin form,

And must I then take pity on

The raging of the storm

That rose up from the great abyss

Before the earth was made,

That pours the stars in cataracts

And shakes this violent world?

 

Let in the fire,

Let in the power,

Let in the invading might.

 

Gentle must my fingers be

And pitiful my heart

Since I must bind in human form

A living power so great,

A living impulse great and wild

That cries about my house

With all the violence of desire

Desiring this my peace.

 

Pitiful my heart must hold

The lonely stars at rest,

Have pity on the raven’s cry,

The torrent and the eagle’s wing,

The icy water of the tarn

And on the biting blast.

 

Let in the wound,

Let in the pain,

Let in your child tonight.

 

(Kathleen Raine in: The Collected Poems of Kathleen Raine)

 

Thoughts on the Winter Solstice 2020 (by Tom Hirons)

Here we are, at the solstice, then. Me, I'm weary and dazed. Who is not weighed down by the year just past? Who is not looking to the future with trepidation?

I don't know what's ahead of us. We slip further into the chaos of ecological desecration. Covid. War. Corruption. Foolishness of all the wrong sorts.

But, this is my solstice news: whatever shape your life has made, you have the right to joy in this world. Whether your road to here has been one of sweet delight or not, you have a right to joy. Sometimes it will take years, but sometimes it happens in a moment. The tower falls; the pain rings out in your body; the voices all around clamour for attention; the needs are always too many... And yet there is the possibility, as everything breaks around you, of joy.

One day, perhaps soon, you will be dead and all your joylessness will have been for nothing. Do not waste the chance you have for joy and find yourself at death's threshold, suddenly awake as you die.

I live my life with one eye in the gutter, soaked in darkness, in the belly of a bear; my other eye observes the light from stars both near and far, and sees a world of radiance. I'm not going to hide the bad news: there is so much that is terrible & broken. But, in the midst of this inferno of a life, here is a doorway.

In the still moment of solstice, I'm standing in that doorway, with my hand reaching out. Come through.

Yes, everything is burning. Yes, disease and poverty and the trauma and grief and all the bloody shame of so much life and love wasted, yes. All of it. Oh, it burns. If I could cast a spear or a stone into the eye of that which makes it so, I would. I cannot, and no one that I know can.

But, I know one thing: This joy in the dark is the antidote to the crippling despair, the one that eats us when we've gone beyond grieving. All the demons tremble to witness it, because it cannot be undone or broken or sullied. It is the stuff of heaven, and it is your birthright.

Here I am, then. Standing in the doorway as the timbers and tiles crash around us and the fire billows and roars. Come through. Risk it. Step forward.

What the hell have you got to lose?