Virginia Woolf and Hemingway go Night Surfing

The European blog drift surfing recently posted a video created using by Will Hanke and Phil Young which juxtaposes footage of a Nike night surfing event at Fistral Beach in Newquay with the words of Ernest Hemingway and Virginia Woolf.

You can check out the original post here:

http://www.driftsurfing.eu/index.php/archives/10494

Because the content so directly relates to many of the reasons I write this blog, I decided to repost the video.

Often, the relationship between a surfer and the ocean is depicted in a spiritual context. This is either represented in terms loosely derived from Western notions of eastern religion, or else it depicts the sea as a powerful god that ought to be treated with reverence and respect. In this context, the quote from Hemingway and the voice-over extracted from the prose of Virginia Woolf depict the relationship between the individual and the sea as at once existential and passionate.

Here and there people write short blips about writers who surfed, like Mark Twain or Agatha Christie. And indeed there is a modest body of surfing literature. I’d be interested to look into the way surfers depict surfing as compared to how writers depict the sport.

For a little fun, here’s a link to photos of writers playing sports, including Agatha Christie posing beside a Hawaiian board.

http://flavorwire.com/204128/strangely-intriguing-photos-of-famous-authors-playing-sports.