In the depths

on a former life and watching the waves

I’ve struggled to know what to write about this week. There is so much going on in the world that deserves our attention, the news feels overwhelming, and I haven’t found words to write. Being alive now feels like swimming through the depths, finding our way in the dark. Maybe that’s how it’s always felt, with little beams of joy pushing through along the way.

I have been thinking of the ocean this week. The waves have permeated my dreams. I’ve been recalling how it feels when you swim through choppy waves, what the thud of a wave does to you when you miss out on swimming underneath one. What it feels like when you study a wave, and how mesmerizing the motion of the ocean is. It may be an obvious parallel to make, but that’s what life has felt like over the past few years.

When I was in my early 20s, I moved to Bali, which makes me somewhat of a cliché. I went to work for a woman who wanted to create a line of dresses to sell to Texan mothers — I was her production manager. That title understates the herculean effort one puts into creating a fashion line from the ground up in a foreign country you’ve never been to. We worked together remotely for the entirety of our time together, which makes me, once again, ahead of my time.

Safety first with headphones in, stopping ongoing traffic

I was tasked with sourcing material and finding suppliers. I got swindled, made bad samples, made better samples, figured out how to ship said samples, learned to drive a motorbike and learned Bahasa Indonesia. I was given about four months to do all of this. Of course, I had no idea what I was doing — my experience was mainly in editorial and styling, along with an ill-fated design internship at House of Holland at the height of the recession after graduating university in 2009. I prayed it would turn into a job, but at the end of my months-long stint of free labour, they sent me on my way with a thank you note from the team and a Terry’s Chocolate Orange as a token of their gratitude.

I hastily cracked open the chocolate orange when I returned to my flat in Stamford Hill, hoping £50 notes would cascade from its innards. Alas, it was just the milk chocolatey goodness for me to devour along with my £3 bottle of wine. Eventually, I got a (real) job in PR, but I found that part of the industry particularly soul-crushing. So when a friend called with a job opportunity in Bali, I booked a flight and hot-stepped it out of London faster than you can say nasi goreng.

Bali, of course, is known for its surf culture. Every second person I’d meet there was a surfer, and they’d always let you know they were off to “check the surf”, flat white in hand. I had no idea what that meant but it sounded like something I had no interest in (mostly because it involved waking up at 6 am). People were sometimes perplexed that I lived there and didn’t surf. I spent most of my time working and trying not to fuck up the collection I had to produce (which I did repeatedly — though my boss still managed to sell her first collection and eventually even sold it to Neiman Marcus and other big-name retailers). The Texans loved it.

One of the rituals I implemented early on in my tenure on the Island of the Gods was driving my motorbike down to the beach to watch the sunset. The waves in certain parts of Bali are good for beginner surfers because they don’t get too big. You can learn on the baby waves in Seminyak before graduating to the bigger breaks in Uluwatu and Canggu. I took lessons on the baby waves and got thrashed; I never graduated to the bigger breaks. That daily commune with the ocean was like a prayer. The sun sets early in that part of the world, around 630 pm — and it was always a scramble to get there. The daily beach jaunt helped me to implement a boundary for myself: you must catch the sunset, you must see the waves, and you must give yourself the gift of understanding how small and insignificant you are to spur you forward. It was my version of checking the surf.

I was only 23, but I felt like the oldest 23-year-old in the world. It’s interesting to look back now, some 12 years later and think how young I feel now in comparison. How little I know. How cocky I was back then. The waves would crash in front of me as I worried about the length of dress seams and whether the pattern for the shift dress would fit correctly. Another wave would roll in, and I’d worry if my boss would find me out: that I had no idea what I was doing. It’d go back out to sea, I’d order a Bintang and light a Marlboro Light and wonder if I’d make friends on this transient island or if there was any community to speak of.

Eventually, the dresses got made. The friends were found. I learned the language, built something from nothing and made a little life for myself. I blagged my way through that period of my life. I marvel at her now (the 23 year old), spurred on by the waves that licked every crevice of that island. The swells doing something alchemical to help me create a life.

I don’t have much opportunity to watch the waves these days. I make plans in my head to drive to Rockaway and months pass. The days get colder and I tell myself: “you’ll go his weekend”. The sharks are multiplying and close to shore in Long Island, which makes it less alluring to dip a toe. The old me would have tempted fate: I knew a guy in Bali who got his arm maimed by a shark in the morning, I was in the water by the afternoon. In many ways, I often feel like I’m waiting for the tide to come in, caught in the undulating swell of life — continuously checking the proverbial surf for what’s to come. Maybe that’s just what being human is. Though I still worry, and often, I’m less neurotic than I was back then — I’ve quit the beer and the fags. It feels like a fever dream now. But how lucky I am to have lived it.