color the water: my first surfing lesson

12 Jan 2024

i went surfing yesterday for the first time. and holy shit was it fun! you know those moments when you realize your life has been forever changed? well, this was one of them for me. wow. it was such a powerful experience i don’t even know how to start. everything just wants to tumble out of me at once. maybe i’ll write a little bulletted list of all the thoughts and then expand as i can.

• history: black and brown folks the world over
• surfing as communal
• not about standing up or being good. not rooted in competition
• doing it in a BIPOC context
• learning from damon pt 1
• learning from farzana
• learning with ignacio
• learning from damon pt 2
• giggles and joy
• cheering each other on
• feeling changed
• next steps

ok that wasn’t so bad! but it really is a lot of thoughts. let’s dive in (lol - get ready for a whole new world of puns).

history lesson

when we arrived, we got on all our wetsuits and david malana, founder of color the water, circled us up to begin the lesson.

quick sidebar: color the water (CTW) is the BIPOC-only surfing nonprofit that held our surf lesson. from what i remember, they host a weekly BIPOC surf hang and teach free lessons (which includes giving folks free access during their lesson for wetsuits and surfboards). their approach is to teach surfing and surf as practice of collective liberation. they are rad. check out their website: https://www.colorthewater.org/ and if it looks dope, consider joining their patreon and supporting them monthly: https://www.patreon.com/colorthewater

anyway, david said a bunch of really profound stuff and as the founder of an org that’s focused on surfing as an anti-racist practice of liberation for BIPOC, i was hella convinced. some of those things:

• surfing was created by brown and black peoples all over the world
• in many places, surfing is/was a communal activity
• in many places, surifng was practiced either lying down, on your knees, or on all fours. standing to surf is a relatively recent thing
• for some people, the whole point of surfing is being with the water and the power of the ocean. the performative, competitive aspects aren’t important in all surfing cultures
• whiteness and colonialism have taken surfing (as they do with most things) and infused it with all sorts of badness but it doesn’t have to be or stay that way. BIPOC surfing (in the u.s.) is a return and reclamation, not an adoption of some white thing (shocker lol).
• surfing can be healing

it’s not about standing up

it was so freeing to hear david talk about how surfing isn’t about standing up. hearing that in some places standing up to surf isn’t that strong of a practice felt like a paradigm shift. i realized in that moment how whiteness had yet again taken something and made it a monoculture that prioritized just one way of doing things (or at least made that way better than other ways). surfing isn’t inherently about competition or fitness or achievement. 🤯

UPDATE: given how i learned, one thing i’ve noticed is how ubiquitous the culture of achievement and competition is. regardless of the race of the person, so many times when i tell people i had SO MUCH FUN surfing for the first time, they respond with something like “cool! tell me about your first time standing up” or “isn’t popping up really hard?” the dominant narrative in this is so strong.

doing it in a BIPOC context

learning how to surf in a BIPOC context was huge for me. BIPOC contexts don’t always feel safer to me than mixed-race contexts. some of my significant racial misshaping/wounding has been in all black spaces (is this an unthinkable thought?)*. that said, i do often experience BIPOC contexts as safer than mixed-race spaces and this was absolutely one of those times. having the crew feel on a collective wavelength around things like fear, humility, excitement, and reverence for the water was just great. there were even some folks who weren’t strong swimmers and the fact that color the water even asked that question and prepared to have those folks be given extra attention in the water was just 🤯.

it was also really cool that we learned in 2:1 student:teacher ratios. even that being not individually-focused was rad. being able to celebrated or given support by two people after each attempt to stay on a wave was so so lovely. shout out to ignacio, my surfing buddy!

cheering each other on

CTW was an epic crew to learn from and being in a BIPOC group just really made the energy feel so collective and non-competitive. our energy as a group was so juicy that multiple white solo surfers walked by us and said things like “i love how supportive you all are of each other!” clearly, what we were doing was really different than what most people experience out there.

lessons from the teachers

over the course of the day, i got taught by damon, farzana, and, of course, the ocean. i won’t write all the lessons out but here are some headlines (of which i could go into more detail but maybe i’ll do that another time. this post is already way longer than i intended, ha).

• how to get on your board - damon
• different ways to be on board - damon
• how to balance on your board - farzana
• how to watch for waves - damon
• how listen for waves - farzana
• how to pay the fuck attention so you don’t wrecked (aka what happenes when you fuck around and find out) - the ocean
• waves organize too - damon
• how to get around in the ocean with your board - farzana
• how to be present in the water and stay in flow - damon and farzaza

truly, there’s so much more but that feels like enough for now.

giggles and joy

multiple times when i came out of the water, people in our crew that i walked by said just how big my grin was. and i felt every bit of what folks were seeing. one person (i think it was ariana) asked me how old i felt and my immediate answer was 5. i was totally hooked into a young/inner child part of me and it was magical. the feeling of falling off a wave, the excitement of staying on a wave, the feeling of being cheered on by others, the feeling of getting pummeled by the power of the ocean, all of it was just so damn joyful.

i remember giggling so much, even when i “failed” at something. but the context and the framing were both so good that i actually felt an embodiment of “never a failure, always a lesson.” just so good.

feeling changed

needless to say, i feel transformed by this experience.

how i relate to water has changed drastically. in some ways, it may actually just be a return to how i felt about the ocean as a kid. in some other ways, there’s absolutely new complexity showing up in this relationship. as a kid, i remember the joy and happiness of splashing in the waves and playing with my brother and friends. as an adult, i feel like i got that back but also have more reverence for the power of the ocean/earth. and now i see being in the ocean on a surfboard as a way ride the power of a hugely powerful being for my own pleasure and as a way of connecting with that being and other beings. so cool.

next steps

so what’s next for me?

• in 2024 i hope to surf at least 3 times (are you a surfer in boston/ri/ny? hit me up! (email me or leave a comment)
• i learned from david that surf season in the northeast is winter time. i hope to surf at least once in winter this year.
• if you interact with me during the first few months of year, be prepared for me to share how excited i was about my first surfing experience.

phew! ok that’s all i wanna write about this for now. hope you enjoyed the ride. 🌊🏄🏾‍♂️

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* some of my most significant healing has also happened in all black spaces; both things can be true.

words / writing / post-processing
1437w / 51+15min / 8+6min

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