Surfing Brilliant Corners by Sam Bleakley

If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull, is all too often a juxtaposition aimed at people who do things differently, I think. I've been guilty of thinking this. I wasn't sure whether this was going to the case when I saw the book. The shear scale of variety of vocabulary between the front cover and the first page, suggested things were not all as they seemed. Still a local legend who just seems to radiate positivity you've got to check it out right?

The surfing world has morphed into and out of art over the years, its simply too diverse to be defined. Thomas Campbell, the WCT and my average surf share less and less in common it would seem. It's hard to find common ground. One thing that has mesmerized me over the last few years is some of the more Art House photography that has emerged.

We have magnificent brains, but we use a great deal of our brilliance to keep ourselves stuck and ignorant, to keep ourselves from not shining. We are so afraid of our beauty and radiance and brilliance because it scared the adults around us when we were children.
Patricia Sun

 I've not been convinced the art of surf journalism has kept pace. "Blood, sweat and beers" was  as surf article that stuck in my head as being particularly tabloid in nature.... So obviously I purchased Brilliant corners. (click on link to get yours) in search for something new . It's not the cheapest book you'll come upon, but then again for the photographs of the ever brilliant Senor Callahan and the roads less travelled of Monsieur Bleakley it seems appropriate.

  Before the beginning of great brilliance,
there must be chaos.
I Ching

There was a bit of chaos in my mind when I read it unlike I think the author.I find it pretty strange to think like anyone but myself. I like Miles Davis though it gets so frantic I can also hate it, jazz has been known to saunter around my Ipod yet I am no aficionado. What I realised very early on in the book is that Sam Bleakley knows his way around Jazz, bands and its historiography. At times there was one too many snaps of a snare drum when I wanted to live a little more vicariously. But in a unique way I did. That's what dawned on me by the end. I'd actually had a bit of a peep into a buena henti and his relationship with the world which had been heavily laden by jazz enjoyment and surfing splendor. it captured me and it did it sneakily. I didn't realise how much I'd appreciated it till the end, then I felt sad but realised there'd be more from what that came from.

 This book is not the norm, it will not be everyone, but there is poetry and there is earnestness. The divide between  photography and journalism, just got smaller. it may be only  in my head but it was a serendipitous discovery indeed.

 Most interesting surf book I've read since Miki Dora's biography. Give it a whirl.