Looking Sideways: 10 Things
This week: the generation-spanning power of art, why we decided to make our company co-owned, an emotional DJ set to remember, and your questions for Chris Burkard.
1. My pal Tristan Kennedy is one of my favourite journalists. So when it came to discussing why myself and my
co-founder Jojo White decided to go employee-owned, he was the perfect choice to write the story.Read our conversation at the link above.
2. Our next online Db Creative Exchange guest, in late June or early July (date TBC) is none other than the great Chris Burkard!
Yep, myself and Chris will be saddling up for the third time - and this time around I thought it would be interesting to invite my Looking Sideways and Creative Exchange communities to send in questions for Chris, which you can do on the Open Thread above. I’ll post the date we’ll be chatting soon, but in the meantime use the link to pose your questions to old Burky.
3. Incredibly sad news from the States. Rest in peace, Wallace J. Nichols.
4. My close pal Luke Baines just posted his emotional four-hour set from Saturday night at Once Upon a Time in the Westcountry, and it is an epic. Complete with birthday shout out to yours truly 😍
ICYMI - my pals at The Wave are the latest additions to HKC Discount Club! They’ve joined my other partner brands Finisterre, Stance, Albion, Vivo and Db to offer Looking Sideways listeners and readers yet another an exclusive discount code: this one offering 10% off ANY session at our favourite inland lake. Just drop the code SIDEWAVES10 at checkout to get the goods.
5. Blackfish director Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s forthcoming documentary The Grab, about the battle to control the world’s food resources, looks like essential (and fairly terrifying) viewing.
6. Quite a week for snowboarding, with X Games and Shaun White both announcing new separate competitive series. Plenty have tried to ‘fix’ pipe and slope comp snowboarding over the years - will it take White’s considerable clout to finally pull it off?
Friend-of-the-show Tom Monterosso spoke to White for this Snowboard Magazine piece.
7. So interesting to see French sportswear giants Decathlon leading from the front when it comes to their new Yulex wetsuit range. Super affordable as well. More here.
8. My old friend Jesse Huffman was always one of snowboarding’s most interesting and creative snowboarders and writers. He got back in touch to tell me about his new project, Claim the Lane: Becoming Roxy, ‘a featurette documentary about an Iraq veteran cyclist coming out as transgender while training for Vermont's most gruelling gravel race’. Find out more (and donate to the crowdfunder) here.
9. My pal
‘s recent piece on the Nirmal Purja allegations (above) is very worth a read.10. Last week, I forgot to actually post the song I’ve been obsessively replaying, so here it is above.
I have a loose group of random friends (the aforementioned Lukey Baines among them) who share (or at least appreciate) my pretty specific take on music, and to whom I frequently send songs, YouTube clips, and so on.
Anyway, I sent this song to my sister, who is part of this group, and she replied, ‘What is it about this particular song that you like so much?’
Which is a good question, and something I’ve been thinking about all week. I guess there’s the fact that it is practically machine-tooled to be right up my street: the lyrics, the jazzy arrangement, the sheer wistful Eighties indie-ness of the whole thing. As one pal replied, ‘…who doesn’t love a bit of proletarian poetry with overcast flamenco vibes?’
And the weird beauty of the chords! As somebody who has spent his life trying to write songs on the guitar, I can confirm that making something this unusual sound so artfully simple is really, really difficult. As another friend I sent it to said, ‘It's like The Smiths playing chords written by Steely Dan and the dude from Unknown Mortal Orchestra’.
But then, there’s something more. 40 years ago, insecure Paddy sat himself down to write this song and communicate ... something (it’s supposedly written for his girlfriend, who’d just moved to France).
And he pulled it off. And in doing so, he’s managed to capture some ineffable emotion that, four decades later, I recognise, and root for, on some deeper human level. It’s really this striving (and succeeding) to communicate that I appreciate on some primordial, emotional and fundamentally nourishing level. It’s magic, really. Kinda makes me want to cry, tbh.
This beautiful and poignant song by Broadcast (above) also has the same effect on me. So does something like Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s The Hunters in the Snow.
That’s what art is for, right? To reach us across the distance of time, and remind us of our common humanity in some faint, discernable way. At least for me, anyway.
How about you?
Also, your last comment about art reminded me of this quote by Basquiat - “Art is how we decorate space, music is how we decorate time”. I really feel that. Loving these weekly notes!
The Decathlon thing is interesting. Especially considering as it’s a mass market brand. I do wonder if this will force the hand of the legacy surf suppliers to change their wetsuits, especially as this change will make Yulex cheaper and more broadly available to Joe Bloggs.