Story Starts to Tell Itself
Lodging at Amaru includes four meals a day: an early, pre-surf help-yourself breakfast of coffee and yoghurt and homemade granola at 4:30 or 5 am, the post-surf breakfast at around 9:30, lunch at 2 and dinner at 7:30. Waiting for dinnertime to arrive, I’ve taken a sweating bottle of Tona Light, the favored local beer, to my room, where I now sit on a small wooden bench behind the bedside table that I’ve positioned to form a makeshift desk. An external hard drive, covered in orange rubber meant to protect it while in the field, is plugged into my MacBook Pro. The drive holds all the footage we’ve shot so far. Clicking on the little MP4 files opens little Easter eggs of QuickTime goodness. I hope.
Here’s one now: The camera wobbles, then stills as Rob Baker, 78, thinning gray hair and electric blue eyes, settles in for his interview. This is from just before we left Utah, at Rob’s Park City home. Cameraman Will Cutting adjusts the wireless mic that’s clipped to Rob’s pale green T-shirt. I hear my own voice from off-screen prompt Rob with some slicing serve of a question, that seems to have only succeeded in stalling an answer he’s already formed.
He says: Get married. Have kids. Get a career. Be serious. That’s what you do.
He smiles at the camera, and I tap the touchpad, pausing on that smile. There’s a sardonic curl to his lip, and I smile right back at the screen because I remember where he’s about to take the thought. But before I hit play again, I tap over to the Final Draft screenwriting program and write:
BK (V.O.): Rob Baker was a successful lawyer and corporate executive who, at 64, the same age as I am now, decided to change his life. He didn’t inject peptides or human growth hormone; didn’t go vegan, eat ayahuasca, or find a new guru. He just went surfing.
I take a pull off the Tona – a nice, easy beer – and then speak the words I’ve just written out loud. Like most of us, I’m generally let down by the sound of my own voice, but today, in this high-ceilinged room, a jungle haven far from the critics, I must admit that there’s something I’m hearing that I like. It’s not my timbre or tone; it’s that the story is beginning to tell itself and I am in the middle of it, being told.
Clicking back over to QuickTime, I hit play and let Rob finish his thought.
It’s your true self versus your public self, he says. You hide your true self and cover it up and hold it down while you're doing all the stuff that you're supposed to do. I figured it was time I started working on the former rather than the latter.
From off-screen I ask: Why? You had a great family, friends, a beautiful home, the country club membership. Didn’t you have it all?
He grins at my weak volley and returns it effortlessly.
Now we're back to the true self, you know? Like, what could be better for that than trying and doing stuff that you haven't done before or that you haven't done well before?
I’m back to baseline, and the volley crosses him up. I say: That's not what most people do.
I know.
Come 64 or 65, they're gearing down. But you geared up.
Damn straight.
But why?
At this point, Rob pauses, as if to search for the answer as we all do in conversation, but there’s something in his manner that is completely controlled, and I don’t think he’s searching at all. I remember that long before he was a country club member, he was a successful lawyer, trained in the dialectical arts, where opposing parties present conflicting arguments before a neutral judge or jury. I’ve watched enough legal dramas to know that it’s not always the logical presentation of cogent facts that win the day. It’s often the rhythm and melody that moves the jury. I think Rob’s just naturally playing the moment, letting it breathe...
A slow smile smooths across his face, and then he answers my question:
It’s all about the stoke, he says.
And then, after another timely beat, he finishes the thought: and the stoke is meant to be shared.
I click on his face, pausing the video, and sip on the Tona. For the second time today, the inner cynic is whining at me: Dude, really? The stoke!? Cue Spicoli. C’mon…
I don’t like the tone of this inner critic’s squealing voice, but I do understand what he’s talking about. I’ve heard the word “stoked” all my life–you’re stoked, I’m stoked, we’re all stoked–and by now the tread has worn off that one, and it sits in the same dumpster as wicked and pissa (from my Boston upbringing) as well as shred, psyched, and the gnarr (from my ski town years).
But, still, I wonder if there’s something worth hearing here. Something simple and true that might be unharnessed from the hackneyed phrase?
I play the clip again, and then again.
Maybe it’s the Tona talking, or the delirium from the long travel day, but I do think there is something different and deeper about the way Rob is using the slang term. I don’t think he’s saying, I did it because I was overexcited. I think he’s saying, I did it because I trusted a feeling.
And then, he finishes with this: and the stoke is meant to be shared.
He nods, delivering the last line of his closing argument. Is he making a case for following deeper feelings, or is he just trying to code switch from suit to surfer?
Withholding judgment, I close the laptop and drain the Tona. It’s time for dinner.