Waves

The Belgian seaside is covered in cement. As a child I remember the boardwalk in Koksijde and how I spent → a lot of time looking at the ocean. I remember swimming with my grandmother in the sea; she would play with me in the cold waves for hours.

G.V.I am a very good swimmer but still I prefer floating to swimming. When I float, I am taken away by the waves, losing my sense of orientation. Then at some point, I am thrown by the waves to the shore.

The ocean has enormous power as an entity which has agency, that decides. The word ocean is male in Portuguese. The Atlantic is never something that is a given, that can be taken for granted. Being in relation to it is always a fight. It performs its agency quite loudly. It is not a background. It is quite a force. You don’t fuck with it, you have to check it first, you cannot just go in. Boys would do it. They would play with it and its aggressiveness. They would go in and be smashed by the waves.

This is also true in life, as the sea and the ocean generate sounds that seem like words and phrases. It is really the case when one spends long periods of time listening to the waves and all the other variations of splashing, roaring, thrashing, whistling, spraying noises produced or accompanied by the ocean and the wind. Really the wind and the ocean go hand in hand.

Everything was magnified on the ocean, the waves, the tides, the rock pools, the cloudscapes, the acoustics, the invigorating flights of fantasy, etc.

There is a hippie colony near this beach and I once saw a naked woman park her baby in a stroller on the beach right in front of huge breaking waves. Then she went into the wild surf with the incredible undertow, leaving the baby to watch unattended. The view from the baby’s perspective must have been profoundly impressible and primordial, witnessing her mother disappearing into the massive waves with all the sounds of the breaking waves and wind raging around her. I was the only other person on the beach which was many kilometers long.

The experience of this place retouched on the magic that the ocean had for me when I was a child. To hear the sounds of the ocean was to be in the proximity of an old and familiar habitat. Kangaroos slept right beside the house in Woodgate which was spitting or spluttering distance from the ocean. We slept to the sounds of the breaking waves.

I was by myself on the beach + throwing rocks. I would just sit + watch the ripples the rocks made on the surface. I still love walking on the seashore, feeling the wind on my face + listening to the waves. I just sit + watch the horizon and what is behind the horizon. It opens up a lot of ideas about how movement occurs. From France, you can see England from across the channel. When I was in Marseille → I was thinking of Algeria when looking out into the sea. There’s a moment of connecting through the horizon.

The wind makes the sea always different. Different waves form with north wind than with wind from the east. The north wind creates large layers of waves (i.e. wider waves) while with eastern wind, waves are shorter (i.e. narrower).

Or, like the “Azure Window” in Malta, a limestone arch that crumbled a few years ago because of a huge storm. The waves slowly eat away the land. No human-constructed structure will hold. → Especially off the west coast of England where the Channel meets the ocean the sea is very wild.

I spent some time in the Shetland Islands in Scotland. To get from mainland Shetland to Fair Isle you either take a boat, which is called The Good Shepherd, or a plane. I became very seasick when I took that boat. That was strange because the water was calm. The waves crush the cliffs all the time so there’s an almost invisible current.

Imagine that you are standing on the ocean shore listening to the huge waves breaking in front of you. Looking out on the horizon, imagine that you can almost feel the shore at the other end of the Atlantic and the immensity of the body of water in between.

Breathe in and out through your mouth. Gradually, start varying the intensity, duration and depth of your breath. Focus on its sound. You can experiment with the different possibilities of sounding. Breathe in sometimes quietly and others more loudly; sometimes breathing in with a hiss, for example. Or, initiate the breathing out with a more explosive “p”. You can experiment with the different possibilities. What does the sound of your breath remind you of? How does it compare to the sound of waves as they break on the shore?

Position yourself in front of a table.
Pour some sand on its surface.
Place your palms on the table surface.
Slowly start moving your hands in circles, moving the sand with you.
Focus on the sound this movement produces.
Try summoning the sound of a wave: start silently, building up to a loud turn (or visa versa).
Repeat as often as you want, adding variations to the hand movements, rhythm and sound qualities.