The song "You'll Never Surf Again" always killed me. It's from Dan Reeder's 2006 album Sweetheart. Well, I just now stumbled across this animation by Paul Ferraris which only adds to the poignancy.
You know there's doctors conspiring against us right now. Plotting and planning all the stuff they're going to one day tell us we'll never do again.
That day isn't today.
I'm talking about using your brain. Your sense of imagination. Your sense of playfulness and resourcefulness and fun.
That's what Londoner Rich McCor does on Instagram. Smile-for-smile his account might be my favorite right now. It's the perfect testament to what skewing your perspective can do for you (also helpful: crazy scissor skills).
He and his work (his play?) are no secret since he's been featured on CNN, among other places. His Instagram following is currently at 117,000. The Kardashian/Jenner family is over 180 million. Help right the world by following Rich McCor instead. He'll make you happy. You'll see.
Photo taken on Turks and Caicos, 2014
Here's another confession. I think if you combined Thoreau and Whitman into one transcendentally inspired, massively bearded crafter of words, he would still fall short of Mary Oliver. She's that good.
I'm not revealing any secrets here, of course. She won the damn Pulitzer Prize. But the amount of wonder and wisdom she fits into every passage, into every word, is truly inspiring. Her power-to-weight ratio is off the charts.
Wild Geese by Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Mary turned 80 last month. She's tended to avoid interviews, preferring to let her words do the talking. But here is one she did with NPR not too long ago:
Carriacou is the largest island in the Grenadines, which are part of the Windward Islands chain. It's a beautiful, slow, real place where 4,500 people go about their business on their 13-square-mile piece of land.
A big part of their business is boat building. You see these wonderful wooden boats all over the island in various stages of construction. And of course, they're on the water too, painted exactly how all boats should be painted.
Rivington Street on a Monday afternoon.
Credits are at the end of the film, but a big Right On! goes to Marc Donahue and Roth Rind of PermaGrin Films.
Mike Olbinski drove 17,000 miles capturing this footage, shooting 105,000 frames worth of time-lapse in the process.
It was so well worth it.
I stumbled across a David Hockney book last night that pretty much blew the top of my head off. But I'll be honest, not in the same visceral way as the work of HULA (Sean Yoro).
Born in Hawaii and now living in New York, he paints these absolutely stunning murals from a standup paddleboard. I'm drawn to them in the same hard-to-explain way that I'm drawn to Easter Island statues and massive wind turbines on the horizon. With equal parts emotion and introspection and WTF.
I love street art (canal art in this case?). And I love fine art. Usually when those two worlds come together, there's an element of irony or cynicism or smart-assery to it. Not here. HULA's work is just powerful and resonant and beautiful. His studio portraiture work is wonderful too.
Yes, I realize I'm gushing. But there's nothing I love more than finding things worth gushing over.
Sol slice 3 ©Erik Abel
That, my friends, is how you kick off an About page. And artist Erik Abel wasn’t kidding. Originally from Ventura County, California, he’s lived all over the world – sweet and salty fronded places like Bali, Fiji, Sumatra, and the Kingdom of Tonga(!). Not to mention New Zealand, Australia, and aboard a bunch of boats in between.
He was searching for waves, mostly, and whatever else it is we search for when we find ourselves searching.
It makes for a good story. What makes his a great story, though, is this: along the way Erik created a trail. A string of paintings connecting one place, one culture, one experience to the next. I love his work. (Check it out. I’m so serious!)
To me, this is what the world looks like when you worry less about leaving your mark on it and, instead, allow the world to leave its mark on you. Clearly the places he’s been have affected his art and, I can only assume, his worldview.
I think it’s important, this idea of leaving a trail. Of making things as we move through life. It's a line of breadcrumbs, the things we create, whether they’re paintings or poems or even blog posts. They help us remember where we’ve been. Those special places and times where, for whatever reason, things seemed to make sense. And... should we lose our way over the ensuing years, it's those breadcrumbs that help us find our way back again.
Big thanks to Erik + Nellie Abel for letting me share some of Erik's work.
Bring Limes is dedicated to beaches, bonfires, vagabonds, and doing what you love.
