Matt George and his new book, a collection of stories from four decades on the road.
Editor’s Note: The following are excerpts from the book In Deep: The Collected Surf Writings of Matt George, a curation of Matt’s writing from 35 years covering the surfing world, published in various magazines and publications. “In these stories,” Matt writes, “I hope you will see a sincere love fueled by a profound sport populated by characters living remarkable lives. And it is my hope that these tales will stand the test of time and serve as a kind of portal into a sport that is as arresting as it is mystifying. Not only adding a new perspective to surfing’s unfolding mythology, but providing readers new to this world with a deeper understanding of the enthralling sport that has given me, and my fellow devotees, a life of meaning.” The following are snippets from three Matt George stories featured in full within the pages of In Deep.
Keala Kennelly, when Matt profiled her for SURFER.
Keala Kennelly’s Symphonies for the Devil
(Originally published in SURFER magazine, 2001)
Her name is Keala Kennelly and she has a story that most male surfers do not want to hear. Because she is a woman in the professional surfing world. Because she is supposed to behave. She is supposed to defer. And yet she sees and feels and loves exactly the same things you misogynist surfer assholes do. Probably more. She has to. Because you guys have made it so damn hard for her to love anything. Mostly herself. Think about that next time you’re looking down your noses at Keala Kennelly. Yeah, I know she doesn’t look like some piece doing a pole dance and I know that confuses your strip club sensitivities, but I can tell you this much, she knows what it’s like to push herself over a roaring offshore ledge in scary Sumatran surf and win.
She’s ridden deep at Pipeline, which is more than 99 percent of you will ever do. She’s surfed the seven seas, which is more than 99 percent of you will ever do. She’s wiped out horribly, been scalped by a Tahitian reef, won championships and she has drowned and been resuscitated a long way from home. She’s risked her life, bet it all, and surfed desperately for the money that no one else on earth was ever going to give her. She earns her stay here on earth. The hard way. All alone. With absolutely no help from you. That’s why she knows what it’s like to be a winner against impossible odds. Don’t you dare run Keala Kennelly down for trying to be a winner. Because that’s what she’s been doing here on earth. Trying to win. Trying to be something. Trying to rise up in a man’s world that doesn’t even want her there. To rise up and stand up and love and laugh and surf through life a winner, a champion. And for God’s sake, gentlemen, who could possibly hate someone, anyone, for wanting that?
Matt wrote about the pressures of stardom for a young Kelly Slater who’d yet to graduate high school. Kelly above, where he’s still most comfortable.
THE SEDUCTION OF KELLY SLATER
(SURFER)
1998, Cocoa Beach, Florida, USA
Kelly’s answers were simple, but a few stood out.
“Money? Well, I don’t know. I’ve never had a job. I was going to bus tables once, but then I didn’t.”
Right. But what about the surfing money, the career money?
“Oh, that,” he said. “Well, I guess that’s what everyone wants . It would be nice. But I just look at it like I’m gonna have a job I really love once I get out of high school.”
What would he do if he found himself with a lot of money someday?
“I don’t know. I already get my boards for free. Build a wave pool for me and my friends maybe?
Bethany Hamilton, during the Matt George profile.
RED WATER
Bethany Hamilton and the Teeth of the Tiger (SURFER)
October 31, 2003 – Hā’ena, Kauai
She had been leading a daredevil life for weeks now. And in the end, she had no idea the trouble she was getting herself into. Swimming beneath the moon, swimming beneath the sun, but swimming. Always swimming. And starving. Patrolling the reefs for opportunity, for blood, for flesh. Swinging her massive, blunted head with the regularity of a metronome, propelling her fourteen feet of mass through the depths with effortless power. With her ragged dorsal fin breaking the surface, she had been bumping into surfers for weeks now. Testing them, feeling their fear, waiting for her time. They seemed such easy prey. Slow, awkward, lounging on the surface like something dying. And now, one of them was in her path, it was time. Another was here, apart from the rest. Alone and weak. And this one looked so small and frail. She approached her prey from the side, taking her time, timing the strokes of the thin, pale arm that dipped off the surfboard in a rhythm of bubbles. With one last savage kick of her great tail, she opened her jaws in a ragged yawn, and taking the thin, pale arm in her throat, she clamped down with over 16 tons of sawing pressure. And as her teeth met, she effortlessly plucked it from the human body and swallowed it whole.
In Deep: The Collected Surf Writings of Matt George is available on Amazon.
