frank's delicious wax

phase one
MAPPING OF SENSORY EXPERIENCES

part one
first investigation




my experience is releated to the interaction of our sences during the process of being close
and partly exposed to the elements, beauty and power of nature.
it is a storry about surfing, in fact about two special moments in a surfing day.

the first is about something like a meditation before even touching the water,
and what does a piece of surf wax have to do with that.
the second is all about being in the water and the moment the body changes the element
he is surounded from air to water and back to air again by diving through an ocean wave.


surf wax

there are certainly a few situations full of intense sensory experiences during a day
at the beach and in the water.
most of the surfers love to talk about epic waves and how it feels to drop into the steep wall
of such a beautiful beast and about the colours in the barrel, how the adrenalin rush
makes you feel that every thing almost holds still,
and that the spit in the inside of a big one bites like one-thousand needels to your skin.

one of the first things that comes to my head if someone asks me about surfing
is the speciffic smell of that surfing wax called "Mr. Zog's Sex Wax".
maybe this is caused by the fact that i had never been in the inside of such huge blue green barrel in a standing position till now.
anyway, ..as soon as i get this smell to my nose
i find myself imaging the beach, almost feeling the ocean breeze on my skin and the sand between my toes.

i guess it it is more than six years ago i first got my hands on this sort of a wax.
i traveld to the french coast to finaly try out what i had been dreaming of
since i first saw the drawings of hawaiian surfers in a book my aunt gave me when i was a kid.
waveriding or surfing.
not such an special and uncommon thing to do for someone who grew up and lives in australia
or close to the ocean and it's waves.
for me, born in the middle of europe, in the eastern part of germany, behind a wall that was 'just trying to protect', by keeping people inside with don't travel, don't move, don't think different rules.. and almost two-thousand kilometers away from the atlantic ocean shore, ..it was.

but the wall broke down in 1989 and finally, like all the others, i found myself free..
at least to travel. it took more than ten years again to get rid of some other walls, not built
by a government but still high enough to hold me, but not for good.
and so finalyl i found me, myself and one of my best friends parked an old peugeot in front of a french surfshop renting these monster beginners' nine foot longboards.
"..and hey guys, you will need some of that to get it on ya sticks.."
the owner said while grinning as if he was one hell of a joke master, before he put two pieces of good old Mister Zogs on top of it.
i awnserd that i would carefully put it on the base of my board so that it may slide well in the water to bring that old joke to an end, and we left.

the boards fit into the car; the front tip touching the front window to the back tip touching the back window.
still with the old wax on their surface it took just a few moments to the hot summerair in the car to push the wax to free; its smell all around us.
it was that sweet coconut -tropical-delicious smell. that inexplicable surfwax smell I had already heard and read about so much.
i always wondered how it would smell and now i was in the middle of it, mixed with some sweet french summer breeze.
sort of drunk and high, happy to be alive, happy to be with this totaly crazy dude next to me.
ready to go and start what i was waiting for so long, fighting for so hard, already expecting this smell, to become one of the most beloved in my live, next to one ore two others always able to catch me and change my mood from one second to the other.
i remember us just sitting there and smiling and breathing and silently enjoing the feeling of being young and at the start of a hot and never-ending summer. two discoverers of a smell called surfing.

..years later, on a fresh beautiful grey-blue morning at a little wooden cabin on top of the exmouth beach, western australia around seven a.m.,
i find myself putting wax on my board.wondering what surfing brought to my life..
one hand touches and holds it and feels the little vibrations going through its body, caused by the other hand that with a constant smooth circling motion brings the little bumbs on top of it.
the way my hand and my arm moves to put it on, always calms me down before finally go out in the water.
i started to see it as something like an meditation, trying to bring my self down to earth, to realise that every moment here at the beach is special.
i try to leave all my other thoughts, all the people at the beach, just to put everything behind me and just to be in the moment. grounded with my feet in the sand.
i start to breath deeper and slower and prepare myself to go out and surf and change my fear into a good kind of respect.
i start to realise the colours and the sound of the shore more intense.
i look out to the waves and try to find the channel and the best spot to go to before i close my eyes for a second.
and there goes that smell again...and i remember that car in france and that dude..

i always try to seal my wax in a little zipper plastic bag to keep it clean
and hold as much of it's aroma as possible.
but there is still nothing like opening up a new piece and start rubbing it over the board.
i'm quiet sure that the pressure and the temperature during this process
are an important element to get this unique smell into the air, much more intensive
than the wax smells for it self.
and so is touch and smell together in this experience. the interesting thing about touching it is that it changes it surface and its consistency under pressure and temperature from slick and hard to soft and almost sticky. ...but this is another story.

i have learnd a lot since that day in france. and i have tried a lot.
i figuered out that mr. zogs is not always the best choice when it goes down to the function.
than i started to use other ones. they come with smells as well.
cause they learned about the big advantage for their business,
to put aromas into the basic wax that actualy not very intense or delicious smelling.
so all the brands come with their own shapes, sexy-wild product graphics,"do not eat or chew" prints, names and last but not least, smells.
it goes from vanilla and banana to strawberry and so on. and they are all good,
but you know, .. it is not the same to me.

today i usually have different brands of wax with me. one is good as an base coat, another is best in cold water..
but back at the city streets and its asphalt topped earth i always carry a piece of mr. zogs in one of my bags with me.
i absolutely know that this quite a childish thing to do, but show me a real grown up..
and actually the thought of having it some where close to me keeps me smiling when i find myself in the middle of this big noisy, stress making machine...

and i can hear the smell, ".. take a deep breath.. and toes in the sand"

the second story is about a chain of sensory impressions that i experienced by duckdiving a surfboard through a wave.
the intention of this is to paddle out on the ocean into the line up, which is the spot behind where the waves are breaking.
on the way out to this point the surfer, if he isn't interested to get washed back to the beach
(or worse) has to dive through incomming waves in most of the cases.
some times that means, no duckdive no surf!
how often, how deep and for how long a surfer has to do this depends on the spot and the waves.
one of the first sensory impressions the surfer gets through this is how small and unimportant a human being is and how powerful nature is.
completly under water, the body, and all the sensors in the skin are not longer in touch with the usual surounding element.
everything feels different.sounds, colours,changes of temperature, and even our ability to move. we are forced to hold our breath, to see and hear through water. all our sences are in a totaly different situation than they are used to, even our sense of balance and gravity is different.

the more i think about this, the more i realise it's direct connection to our synaesthesia project.
to swim is one thing, to dive is the next step. to dive in a pool or lake into the deep or just as far as possible are for sure intense experiences.
to dive with a surfboard underneath a powerfull moving mass of water is even more intense.
there is an incredilel awareness of the present, action and consequence follow one another so closely that you realise what your senses are good for - to survive and orient yourself. and secondly to enjoy.
the board pushed under the water changes into a sort of an responding medium.
it helps you to get an understanding of how deep you've pushed it under water
and how strong the current is.
by holding and pushing it tight under water with your hands and your knee it even lets you know if scratching the surface of the ground.
and finally, its volume helps you spring up with enough speed and power at the back of the wave.

to stop diving in a lake because you are out of breath is all right (except some crazy mafia gangsters are hunting you, and you tried to hide in this lake), to stop diving because of what ever reason before the wave passes can cause serious trouble.
as a reaction to all of these factors, the body seems to sharpen up all senses.
and so what is supposed to assure our survival in the first place, becomes the source of a very intense sensory and EMOTIONAL experience as well.
vision, touch, smell, sound and taste come together in a very special way.
one important thing to mention about this is that it is very important not to close your eyes under water.
..except if you are just to cool and bored of everything because you already did it a million times.
to express and describe such an experience is always a difficult thing to do.
how things feel, taste and sounds to a person is always a unique feeling that can't be equated to a common sense.
so i think the best thing would be to go out und just try it, if you haven't done it yet.
i decided to put some pictures i took and made from movies as a sort of a moodsheet on the blog
to give a little visual idea. but still it is nothing in comparison.
lastly, i've interviewed myself...

duckdive
where?
exmouth western australia

when?
the first week of july
shortly before sunset

what could you feel?
non emotional, a cool offshore wind
the still warm sand as i walked to the shore,
the water warm enough to feel free without a wetsuit
my wet hair on my cheeks, my lips,schoulders and my upper back
the water lapping against my chest
the last warm rays of the sun in my face
the saltwater in my eyes
the leash around my ankle
the board underneath my body
the currents in the water with changing temperatures
my puls, my muscels, my skin a little freezing
a bit of wax underneath my fingernails
the water surounding me more and more like slipping into a liquid suit and out again
the energy and speed of the wave i'm dived through
the waterdrops the offshore wind blows from the lip of the breaking wave
i just dived through; falling on my head, my face, my back and chest..

what could you see?
the sun as a fire-red ball that colored the horizon from a cool blue over a violet to an warm orange
a view of the clouds all a part of that amazing color changing sky that moved from its blue hour
to something in between bright and dark
the waves and the whitewater that reflected it all
other surfers
a dark blue almost black for a moment of a second as i started to dive
the dark and bright blue, cyan and light green mixed spots of water during the first moments of the dive,
later on the white boiling bubles and stuctures of the breacking water over me,
already a little note of orange in it
the reef underneath my board with its softend shadows, something between dark green, brown grey and black
all the colors did just constantly changed
until the last second when the water cleared up at the back of the wave short before i sprung up again, a melting wonderfull orange red warm ball
coverd by the last waterlayers of the wave like a strange vision of the sun
like diving up into a melting sun
for a second a rainbow in the spit of the offshore breez
some doves

what could you hear?
some doves
the rhythm of the breaking of the waves
the wind
my pulse, my breath, my last deep breathe before the dive
the wave that rolled over me
my board and me sniping out the back of the wave
the waterdrops the offshore wind blowed from the lip of the breaking wave behind me
falling on me and dropping in the ocean
someone shouting to his mate to paddel into a wave
the sound of all these waves breaking over the reef

what could you taste?
a little fear on my tongue
the salty water on my lips

what could you smell?
the ocean
sunscreen
surfwax

part two

as an an artistic work which relates the experience of an intense smell i chose and
recomend the book "the perfume" from Patrick Süskind, a german born author.
the plot is all about smell and smells in the streets and alleys of eighteenth century france.
writen in an intense and fascinating way, "..with wit, a gothic imagination
and considerable originality" Süskind tells the story of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, a small ugly boy, born underneath a table in the middle of a fishmarket, denied by its mother and most importantly, born with the finest nose in paris, france, and most likely in the world, but without an own bodyodour.
through the whole story we see Grenouile trying to produce the ultimate perfume-made out of the smell of virgins he murders shortly before they loose them smell of their innoncence and purity to the development of heir bodies for ever.
a perfume to protect his nose from the disgusting smells he is surounded by,
and give him at least a smell that people will recognice him and maybe love.

as an artistic work relating to the story about surfing and duckdiving i chose
an image from Antony Gormleys Foto "Land,Sea and Air II" from 1982
and the classic masterpiece by caspar david friedrich " Monk and Sea" from 1809/10 as well.

both deliver the information of power and size of nature and its elements, as they also show how close we are conected to them, how muchwe adore, love and are based on them. finaly how much we find our selfs in them. in a way they recall the evolutionary theory of all life once came out of the ocean.

all the other images shown are pictures i made by myself or found online ore took out of the surfmovie " a broke down melody".
i hope they transport a little what i was talking about.
the moodsheets also showing images of of the cd-cover of the soundtrack from jack johnsons surf movie "thicker than water"...

part three

as an object i chose a piece of "mr. zog's surfwax", which is related to part one. the picture shows the old piece i use to carry with me and some fresher looking ones as well.