045: JAMIE BRISICK - Former Pro Surfer, Writer, Author.

SHOW NOTES

What happens when surfing is no longer enough to carry you through life’s heaviest moments?

In this intimate conversation, pro surfer-turned-writer Jamie Brisick opens up about the addictive nature of surfing, the trauma of losing loved ones, and how the sport that shaped his youth eventually led him toward a deeper creative and personal path.

• Discover the emotional and spiritual cost of surfing as identity—and what comes after.

• Learn how writing became Jamie’s lifeline, offering expression, reflection, and recovery.

• Hear raw insights on ego, grief, addiction, and how to find purpose after the peak of performance.

Listen now to explore what surfing can teach you about aging, meaning, and finding your voice beyond the lineup.

Jamie opens up about what drove him to become a better surfer and how his surfing journey lead him into writing. Jamie's wisdom can help us all be better surfers - in and out of the water.

http://www.jamiebrisick.com
https://www.birdwell.com/pages/the-dazzling-blue
https://surfsplendorpodcast.com/199-wax-on-jamie-brisick/
https://surfsplendorpodcast.com/283-the-dazzling-blue-jamie-brisick-and-william-finnegan/

Key Points

• Jamie Brissac's first memorable surfing experience was in Waikiki, Hawaii, where he rented a soft top surfboard and enjoyed the turquoise, sparkly water.

• Jamie started surfing because his family took him to Santa Monica State Beach, and it was a fun way to entertain the three boys.

• Surfing transitioned from play to something more serious for Jamie when he started surfing Malibu in 1979 and witnessed the Sunkist Pro contest, which inspired him to compete.

• Jamie got his first sponsorship at age 15 from McCoy surfboards, followed by Quicksilver and Rip Curl, which helped validate his pursuit of professional surfing.

• Jamie's drive to improve at surfing was fueled by his love for the sport and a holistic approach that included visualization and creative practices.

• Jamie’s brother's death from a drug overdose in 1987 deeply affected him, leading to a period of repression and a focus on winning contests as a way to cope.

• Jamie found that surfing and writing are interconnected, with surfing providing a sense of lightness and levity that complements his writing practice.

• Jamie believes that wave pools will play a significant role in the future of surfing, offering a solution to the issue of crowding and providing a new experience for surfers.

• Jamie emphasizes the importance of finding one's original voice in both surfing and writing, suggesting that true self-expression comes from within rather than mimicry.

• Jamie’s experience of losing his wife led to a period of deep despair, but he found solace and purpose in both surfing and writing, which helped him navigate through his grief. 

Outline

Jamie's Early Surfing Experiences

• Jamie started surfing as a young child in the late 1970s, initially just playing in knee-deep water with their brothers at Santa Monica State Beach using an old single-fin board passed down from a cousin.

• Their first memorable waves were on a family trip to Hawaii around 1977-1978, where they rented soft-top 'Mori Doyle' boards designed by Mike Doyle.

• Jamie vividly recalls gliding along the reef at Waikiki, seeing the turquoise water sparkling in the sun beneath them.

• The experience left such an impression that they would relive it viscerally while lying in bed that night, creating a 'buzz' that made them want to keep surfing.

Transition from Skateboarding to Surfing

• Jamie grew up in Southern California's San Fernando Valley and started skateboarding around age 5-6 in the early 1970s.

• Unlike many surfers of that era who skateboarded as a substitute for surfing when waves weren't available, Jamie came to surfing through skateboarding.

• The bent-knee, knock-kneed style popular in 1970s skateboarding translated directly to Jamie's early surfing style.

• Skateboarding was seen as rebellious and an individual pursuit, setting Jamie apart from kids who played traditional team sports.

• Their parents would take Jamie and their brothers to the beach to surf as a way to entertain them during hot summers in the valley.

Exposure to Professional Surfing and Competition

• In 1979, Jamie started surfing Malibu regularly.

• That year, they witnessed the setup of the Sunkist Pro contest, featuring top international surfers like Larry Bertelman, Randall Kim, and Buttons Kaluhiokalani.

• This was Jamie's first exposure to professional surfing contests and the rituals surrounding them.

• Inspired by this, Jamie wanted to compete but was initially too intimidated by larger waves at contests.

• They finally entered their first contest at Malibu around age 14, making it to the finals and placing second.

• This success gave them a 'buzz' and opened their eyes to the possibilities of sponsorship, free gear, and a potential career in surfing.

Early Sponsorship and Parental Concerns

• Jamie received their first sponsorship at age 15 from McCoy surfboards, followed by Quicksilver and Rip Curl.

• They later switched to Channel Island surfboards.

• While the free gear and support were exciting, Jamie's parents, particularly their academic father, were concerned about surfing derailing Jamie's future and college prospects.

• Jamie saw their growing success and sponsorships as a way to validate surfing as a viable path and counter their parents' worries about becoming a 'beach bum.'

Influence of Punk Rock and Rebellion

• Concurrent with Jamie's early competitive surfing, the punk rock scene was emerging in Los Angeles.

• Jamie and their friends became deeply involved in punk music, which gave voice to their dissatisfaction with suburban life and societal expectations.

• Surfing, being an individual and marginalized sport at the time, felt like a form of rebellion against the prescribed 'American dream' lifestyle Jamie saw in their suburban community.

Transition to Professional Surfing

• Jamie’s transition to professional surfing was gradual.

• Quicksilver laid out milestones for them, such as winning amateur championships and building a solid contest record to gain attention from magazines.

• Their first sponsored trip was to Hawaii, followed by a more significant trip to Australia in 1986 for four events.

• While Jamie didn't consciously think of it as a job, they felt pressure to perform well to 'keep this going.'

• They embraced new training methods, looking to tennis players like Ivan Lendl and John McEnroe as models for serious athleticism in individual sports.

Jamie's Professional Surfing Career

• Jamie describes themselves as a 'middling pro surfer,' with their highest rankings in the 40s on the world tour.

• They achieved third place in a couple of events and gained recognition in magazines, occasionally experiencing moments of fame with cheering crowds and autograph signings.

• However, Jamie notes that their career was not spectacular compared to top-ranked surfers.

Surfing Skill Development and Influences

• Jamie was largely self-taught but received guidance from older surfer Willie Morris.

• Their skills developed rapidly when they began competing internationally, facing much larger and more powerful waves than they were accustomed to in California.

• They gained insights from watching and surfing with top professionals like Tom Curren.

• Jamie describes how the energy and integrity of internationally competitive surfers influenced their approach, helping them understand how certain techniques that worked on small waves wouldn't translate to larger, more powerful breaks.

Mental Approach to Surfing

• Jamie utilized creative visualization techniques, imagining every detail of successful competitive performances.

• They describe this practice as natural and flowing, not forced.

• The competitive mindset became intense and 'jock-like,' with an alpha dog mentality.

• Jamie notes that this ego-driven approach was effective for athletic achievement but contrasts with the more introspective and empathetic mindset required for their later writing career.

Personal Trauma and Its Impact

• In 1987, when Jamie was 21 and in their first full year on the pro tour, their oldest brother died of a drug overdose.

• Jamie initially tried to bury their grief, attempting to channel it into winning contests.

• While they achieved their best competitive results in the years following their brother's death, they were repressing a lot of emotion.

• This experience contrasts with how some other surfers, like Mick Fanning, were able to use personal tragedy as motivation to drive their careers forward.

Transition from Professional Surfing to Writing

• Jamie retired from professional surfing at age 25.

• They began working as an associate editor for a surfing magazine in Sydney, which opened their eyes to a broader world of ideas and interests beyond competitive surfing.

• This transition period saw Jamie doing some of their best surfing while simultaneously developing new interests and skills.

• They consciously chose to develop their writing and intellectual pursuits, seeing the potential pitfalls of remaining solely focused on surfing.

Writing Career and Approach

• Jamie’s transition to writing required a significant shift in mindset from their surfing career.

• They had to abandon the ego-driven, immediate gratification approach of competitive surfing for a more patient, humble, and long-term oriented practice.

• Writing became a daily discipline, focused on absorbing great literature and producing consistent output.

• Jamie views writing as a lifelong pursuit, contrasting with the limited timeframe of a professional surfing career.

Impact of Personal Loss on Writing

• The sudden death of Jamie's wife six years ago profoundly affected their writing.

• While devastating, this loss ultimately made them a better writer by cracking open their empathy and understanding of human struggles.

• It led them to care less about trying to imitate other writers and more about expressing their authentic voice.

• Writing also became a crucial lifeline during this period, providing both emotional outlet and financial necessity.

Current Relationship with Surfing

• Now 52, Jamie describes their current relationship with surfing as 'passive-aggressive.'

• They still love surfing and can get deeply into it, but they try to keep their competitive, ego-driven side in check.

• Surfing now serves as a rejuvenating break from their writing work.

• Jamie values the social aspects of surfing, like the shorthand humor and camaraderie with other surfers, while being less focused on performance or showing off.

Thoughts on Modern Surfing Culture

• Jamie expresses concern about the increasing crowds in surfing and the potential loss of etiquette and consideration in the water.

• They advocate for kindness and maintaining the fun aspect of surfing, acknowledging that they may have contributed to a more competitive atmosphere in the past.

• Jamie notes the difference between Southern California and Australian surf cultures, with Australian surfing generally being more demanding and 'hardcore.'

Current Projects

• Jamie is working on an autobiographical novel about their experiences growing up surfing and dealing with their brother's death.

• They have also recently published a collection of short pieces written for Birdwell's blog over the past five years, available on the Birdwell website.

Final Advice to Surfers

• Jamie emphasizes the importance of practicing kindness in the water and keeping surfing fun.

• They acknowledge the challenge of maintaining this attitude in crowded, competitive conditions but stress its importance for the surfing community.

Transcription

Michael Frampton
To the Surf Mastery Podcast. Today's guest is Jamie Brisick, surfer, writer, author. Thank you so much, Jamie, for taking the time to do this. I really appreciate it. There's a lot of wisdom in this episode, and as you'll hear, Jamie touches on a few things and you might wonder why I didn't go into it. And the reason being he's already spoken in depth about some of his traumatic life experiences with David Scales on the Surf Splendor Podcast. So I will put a link in the show notes to those two episodes. There's links to all of Jamie's work in the show notes as well. Do you remember your first wave?

Jamie Brisick
My first wave, you know, I started tinkering with surfing. Essentially, like I was the youngest of three brothers. My folks would take us down to Santa Monica State Beach. We had a board passed along from my older cousin who surfed, and we'd sort of take turns on it. But it was so, I mean, we were, you know, we didn't call them fins back then. We called them skegs, and they were single fins. This was the late 70s, and we would really not go out into much more than like skeg-deep water, right? So we were in like knee-high water and you'd hop up for a second. But we did this trip to Hawaii, and it was in 1977 or 8, I'm mixing it up, but it was a family trip and we rented what at the time we called Mori Doyles, which was essentially what's called a soft top now. But back then the Mori Boogie, the Mori Doyle, which Mike Doyle designed, it was a soft top surfboard, and it was the only kind, you know, only soft board available. So we rented those, paddled out, and I ended up after much, you know, going head over heels and doing kind of all the like fumbles that you do, eventually getting rides. And because it was Waikiki and it was sort of midday and there was hot sun overhead, I just remember gliding along the reef, you know, the pat, the reef sort of streaking by underneath the water, really turquoisey and sparkly from the sun. And just having that feeling, just so I do, this wasn't technically my first wave, but these were the first waves that stayed with me. And to extend it a little bit further, what was most striking, and I still feel this about surfing, is there was the moment that it happened which was completely engaging, but then later at the hotel where we stayed, that night I just remember lying in bed and having it almost like viscerally play back in my body. Like I could, it just came back as if I were reliving it, and that was like the buzz. That was almost this thing that made me want to keep surfing.

Michael Frampton
So why did you start surfing? Do you remember why?

Jamie Brisick
Yeah, I mean, so it's sort of interesting and it's sort of a cliché, but I grew up in Southern California. I grew up in the San Fernando Valley. I started, I was born in '66, by age 71 or 2, five or six years old, I was kind of kneeing around on a little skateboard that was just like a way for our parents to keep us busy. And my cousins, as I mentioned, I have an older cousin who was sort of the ringleader of our group, and he was really into skateboarding. And so at that time, and you know, probably many listeners have seen the Dogtown documentary or the feature or both, and it was that era. So skateboarding was really just like a stand-in for surfing. It was, as Stacey Peralta, I believe, says in the film, you know, this is what we did when we couldn't go surfing. See, I didn't know that. It was almost like I went the opposite way around, where all those guys were surfers first and then skating was this thing that they did. I started skateboarding, and then it just sort of naturally fed into surfing. And when we started surfing, unlike today, you know, I would say like the average kid, if you were to give him a skateboard, the kind of like flip tricks he might be trying to do in the driveway or in the garage would be totally different to his first couple ways of surfing. But with us, it was just that kind of bent-kneed, knock-kneed. It was a very 70s style. It was a very sort of style-conscious era, or style carried a lot of weight. And so the very way in which we kind of glided down the street or the sidewalk on our skateboards was just exactly what was there. So I mean, it was really just hot summers in the valley and my folks looking for a way to entertain their three boys, and they'd take us to Santa Monica State Beach and we'd go out and surf. And that, it was just fun. So yeah, and you know it's interesting that because it's almost like the apple was introduced to the garden, so to speak.

Michael Frampton
It's kind of started off as play. Yes, for sure. Do you remember when it transitioned from play to something a bit more serious?

Jamie Brisick
Because as I say, I have two older brothers. My oldest brother passed away, but the three of us were always out surfing together. And in 1979 we started surfing Malibu. And Malibu was a great scene, as it is today. But I guess it's always been a great scene. It was so full of colorful characters. It was as engaging to be on the beach or in the parking lot as it was to be in the water. And it was this kind of like rite of passage. It was sort of, we lived out in the valley in a suburban neighborhood where everything was kind of cookie cutter and organized. And the scene down at Malibu was just wild. And you know, you guys were drinking brown bag beers on the beach. And our parents kind of gave us a little space there. So it felt like, in this coming of age way, it was like, okay, now we get to find out who we are. And so in 1979 we were there one day. We'd sort of started riding the very inside of Third Point. Third Point was a good wave back then. It's a glorified closeout now, as we call it. But one day a truck pulls up with some worker guys in the back. And they hop out and they just start erecting this scaffold. And as it grew, right before our eyes, out in the water were suddenly these really good surfers on bright boards and bright wetsuits. And as it turned out, they were the Town and Country Surf Team. This was Larry Bertelman, Randall Kim, Calvin Maeda, Vince Klein, etc., etc., Buttons, Dane Kealoha. And they were setting up the Sunkist Pro, which was the first—I don't think I even knew that contests existed before this. But it was at the time an international pro contest. So we got to see, so over the course of that week or weekend when the event happened, we were just these little kind of like awestruck kids running around, like watching our favorite surfers that we'd seen in the magazine and watching them compete and watching their psych-up thing and their pre, you know, the preheat rituals and the waxing of the boards and the polishing the bottom and the stretches and all of it. And it was so alluring. So suddenly, like surfing went into this next realm. And then I wanted to compete because I was attracted to it. And I was a reasonably good surfer. I was 13, 14 at the time. And it took me almost a year before I actually would have the courage to compete in an event because I was a real pipsqueak of a kid. And every event that I'd gone to with the intention of entering, the waves were bigger than I wanted them to be. And I was afraid to just go out and ride insiders and, you know, officially mark myself as a wimp. So finally there was an event at Malibu, and I went out and not having a clue what to do, I just sort of tied on this oversized jersey. They didn't even clear the water. So it was almost like any other surf. But there was suddenly something at stake. And I got through my heat, and then suddenly I was in the finals. It was just, you know, there—it was the boys division. There were, I think, 12 surfers in the entire boys division. So then I was in the final. I ended up getting second to a guy who would become my longtime friend, Solo Scott, this great surfer from L.A. And then that gave me the buzz. And I got, you know, I walked home with the trophy, and it was—so suddenly there was this thing of, it was like entering into this world, and there was a way to kind of keep this surfing thing alive. And not that—I was only 14. So it wasn't like my parents were saying, you got to get a job or you got to go to college or anything like that. But I could sort of see, by virtue of the surfers older than myself, that there was like, you could get sponsor, you get free wetsuits, free board, you know, boards at cost, free clothes, get your contest entry fees paid for. And then suddenly there was surfer Willie Morris from L.A. County who turned pro not long after. And then I saw what he was doing, and then suddenly it did become like business. It had—there was just much more at stake and it was more competitive. And I dare say like, you know, for better and worse. I mean, because then there was like, you know, I was fortunate because I did well. I somehow easily transitioned into the contest scene, and I was of an age where I was at the upper age of the division I surfed in. So I was like the boys, I was 14, not 13, and that was a difference back then. So I brought home trophies. But I mean, there was certainly like a sense of letdown if you didn't do well.

Michael Frampton
So you kind of—you just—were you a natural athlete with other sports as well?

Jamie Brisick
No, you know, I wasn't. And not that in any way, like I wasn't—it wasn't that I was a nerdy kid or an intellectual kid or anything like that. It was just that from such a young age I was into skateboarding. It was—which was an individual sport, and definitely back then it had a little bit of the rebelliousness that, you know, that surfing had back then too. And I think because of taking on skateboarding so seriously, it was almost like if you skated that means you didn't play baseball, basketball, or football. A lot of those team sports that had a jock quality to them were—you what—you are sort of picking your lane, and my lane was skateboarding. So I skated well. I mean, I definitely—I can remember being this little kid at skate parks and having older guys like, oh, this kid's good. But I never—I wasn't athletic in the traditional sense of like, you know, I was a home run hitter on the baseball team or I was good at, you know, on the basketball team. I did 10 team sports—I didn't, no.

Michael Frampton
When did you get sponsored?

Jamie Brisick
Got sponsored age 15. First sponsor was McCoy Surfboards, then Quicksilver and Rip Curl, and then I not long after switched over to Channel Island Surfboards. And it was free gear, and at that time my folks weren't thrilled with how much surfing consumed me. You know, they were—my dad was an academic, and he'd been putting away money for us to go to college. And so this derailing that—what he was watching happen, you know, he's not talking about college, he's talking about trying to be a pro surfer. It wasn't like it is today. I, so to speak, it was a little bit of, you know, don't become a beach bum. And that was sort of the more. So that gave me something to strive for because the more I could validate with sponsorships, with getting stuff paid for, then it became okay, there is actually this thing that's viable.

Michael Frampton
So is it a little bit rebelling against your parents?

Jamie Brisick
I don't know that it was, to be honest. I mean maybe it was. I don't think it was. What I did never felt like rebelling against my parents because I have my parents—my dad passed away, my mom's still here—but my parents were really great in every sense, and I knew that from a young age. So it wasn't like I had some strict parents or totally unsupportive parents that I was consciously trying to go the other direction from. For me, and I think for us—I'm speaking for my brothers—we lived in this cookie-cutter suburbia out in Westlake Village, which is now a really upscale neighborhood in the valley. Back then it was kind of saplings. It was, you know, I always joke, it looked almost more like an architect's model of a suburban community than an actual suburban community. It had yet to even—it had no history. So it had like—imagine, I guess, like the equivalent would be like everything in your house is IKEA. That's what it felt like. There was something like kind of served up to you, like prescribed, this is how you're supposed to do it. And that was the thing, honestly, I felt I was rebelling against in many ways. And, you know, later I would get into writing, and I think like the thing I was rebelling against was almost like a very narrow confine in which you were supposed to exist. And my personality—although obviously I was young and still forming—was very—you know, I guess the other thing I should say is at the same time that the competitive surfing was happening, punk rock was happening in L.A., and we got really into that. So in many ways punk rock was like giving almost voice to what we could not properly articulate, which was just like this sort of dissatisfaction with what we were supposed to be embracing or stepping into as adolescent kids. Like this is supposed to be the American dream or the version of what is going to be fulfilling and bring you happiness, you know? No. And so surfing—I think because surfing was individual, you know, wasn't a team sport, and because at the time it was marginalized—it felt like that was a great way to rebel.

Michael Frampton
So when did surfing become like a job for you?

Jamie Brisick
I mean, I guess probably the day I was on retainer as a pro surfer. Because when I was working my way towards that, it was such the dangling carrot that I never thought of as this job. In fact, it was utterly exciting. And Quicksilver had laid out a few things: if you win the West Coast Championships, which is like winning the NSSA Nationals now in the amateur ranks—you know, win one of those, try to win it the next year. If you can build up a solid contest record of these events that kind of create attention for you and you build up your name, and the magazines are now interested and you're getting pictures in the mag, then we will send you off on your first trip. So I think the first trip was they sent me to Hawaii. I don't even think I competed. It was more just to try to work with photographers. I got a couple pictures in the mags. And then the first proper trip was 1986. I went to Australia and they basically said, you know, we'll buy you a plane ticket, the rest you're on your own, and we'll see how you do. There were four events. And I think then—I don't think I consciously thought of it as a job—but it definitely—I mean the trickiest thing was it was so damn fun. It was so exciting that it never felt like I've got to go to work today in that humdrum way. It was more like how do I keep this going. So that was—so I felt the stress that might be closer to what a family man might feel where it's like, I got to keep this shit going because if I don't, my kids are gonna starve. For me, it was like I'm going to starve, you know, spiritually if I can't stay on this tour. So it was less about—it never ever felt like a job. Like everything was a joy, though. And all the training—I got really new—because I was of a generation where like Mark Richards won his four world titles famously on a diet of steak and coke. I was the beginning of the period where Tom Curren was training, Tom Carroll was training, Martin Potter trained really hard. Diet was being brought into it. I mean we were all looking—I looked at tennis and I think a lot of surfers did actually. This was the era of like Ivan Lendl and John McEnroe and Boris Becker, and they were serious athletes. And it was sort of like, here's the model of how you do this. So all the stuff that was about like, you know, what we might now call self-improvement, I guess, or like bettering oneself as an athlete—that was all just a joy. It was exciting. So yeah, because you know the thing—and I'll say it, this is important to qualify—I was a, you know, what I referred to as a middling pro surfer. I mean, I was never in the top ranks. For better or for worse—at the time it was definitely for worse—in the long run, looking at how some of the surfers who've done really well have had—I found it harder to kind of assimilate back to civilian life, as they call it. But my highest rankings were in the 40s. You know, I mean I got third in a couple of events. I was in magazines. I got out of the water and people were cheering my name and I was signing autographs. I had like those moments in that kind of ego realm of like I'm doing it. But it wasn't as if I had some spectacular career, you know.

Michael Frampton
That you were conscious of, that you needed to progress to stay, absolutely. But you're quite observant. You must have noticed the difference between average surfers and good surfers? Yes. And then good surfers and great surfers? Definitely. And how did you—yourself-taught I'm guessing? Did you have a coach or—

Jamie Brisick
Yeah, it was self-taught. There were really no coaches back then. There was a surfer named Willie Morris who recently passed away and we were really close. And he took me under his wing and he kind of taught me everything. And he taught me everything from how to be a better surfer to how to be on the road and how to like, you know, get by on the sniff of an oily rag, as you say in Australia. But like getting by on cheap money and, you know, you buy this stuff and Top Ramen here in Hawaii and blah. So all those sort of survival skills, that skill set to survive on tour, he taught me. But with regards to the surfing part, you know, the thing is—here we're sitting in Malibu or in L.A. County—and while Malibu itself is a pretty great wave on many levels, this is not like a great spawning ground to be a pro surfer on an international scale. So as soon as I got on the road, I was riding waves bigger and more powerful than I'd ever ridden. I mean, when I first went to Australia, you know, immediately like jumping off the rocks at DY into double overhead waves was something you just didn't do around here. So I got little windows into what great surfing was as I was coming up in the amateur ranks via like the guys who were about to launch into the pros—Tom Curren being one of them. Like I got to surf with Tom Curren a lot before he turned—before he joined the tour, and obviously a master. And then my friend Willie Morris, who was on tour, would come, would bring some of his friends from abroad—Australian surfers, South African surfers, Hawaiian surfers—and they'd come stay with him. We'd go surfing at Malibu with him. And I just—there was this energy that just sort of oozed off of them of having like—they just got back from France and did the four events there, and there was just this higher level of surfing. And there was kind of—I guess for lack of a better description—almost more of an integrity to their—to them surfing. You know, I think like riding really small crappy waves, you can sort of build bad habits that don't—they won't necessarily translate to getting a big wave at J-Bay. And these guys that I was lucky enough to be exposed to, they had all those qualities. So it was sort of like that slidy little top-turn snap thing is kind of cool on a little day at Malibu, but you really won't be doing that when you're on a J-Bay wave. You know, most likely you're gonna be thinking about getting down the line. So I got to—so those little things were just slowly kind of coming, you know, entering into my surfing vocabulary.

Michael Frampton
The drive to get better at surfing, was that—I mean you mentioned it as like you want to keep the ball rolling—yes. But was there another side of that as well?

Jamie Brisick
Yeah, for sure. And this is something that I think back on so fondly. And this is where, regardless of—I guess like when I qualify that I was a middling pro surfer, I'm almost underselling myself because the truth of it is, I think anyone that gets on tour is so deeply entrenched in surfing. It's kind of so flowing through them nonstop that the guy who's number five on the rankings versus the guy who's 45 on the rankings—that thing is the same in both. So I think with me, it was—I love surfing. You know, it was like if you were a musician and all you did was hear and songs just flowed through your head and you were just like one of those people that's just tapping on something all the time—I had that with surfing. You know, in a beautiful way. I guess like psychologists would call it flow state, right? Where—and just I felt like my entire career I kind of lived in that groove. Like it would never—there was never—it there was—if anything it was trying to turn it off. It wasn't—and I never did try to turn it off—but it was never like I've got to summon my inspiration right now or I've got to—it's homework to study more surf videos to see what the great surfers are doing. All that was the most natural thing in the world. It was all I wanted to do. So there was this kind of—it was like this holistic approach where if I wasn't in the water, I was thinking about surfing, talking about surfing, watching surfing on videos. You know, I did a lot of cycling because I lived out—and being out in the valley made me a little more hungry. I wasn't—I didn't always have the beach right there. So there'd be times when I'd go for these really hard rides and I was turned on to a book called Creative Visualization by Shakti Gawain, which in many ways was way ahead of its time. I mean it came out in the 70s, but it sounds much more like a title of today. And what it was is—it was almost doing these meditations where you just visualize yourself doing what you wanted to do. And so in my case, it would be the—you know, the NSSA National Championships are coming up in August. It's now June. Every night before I go to bed for the next two months leading up to that event, I'm just gonna lay there and imagine, you know, putting on my wetsuit, waxing my board, peeling on the jersey, walking down to the wet sand, into the water, paddling out for the final heat, and every single little gyration of the hips and arm gestures and everything that I would do for that 20-minute heat or 30-minute final—whatever—right up to like coming out and having friends go, “You killed it bro, I think you won.” And then finally the moment where they announce the results and, you know, that glorious moment of winning. That was a really cool, fun thing that—you know, it transcends kind of surfing. But it was this idea of visualizing. When I speak about it now, it seems like more of a thing. Back then, again, it was just really natural. It was like my mind was going there anyway. Interesting.

Michael Frampton
Yeah, I guess there was a certain element of acceptance as well. Or you just—it's coming naturally and you're accepting. You didn't overthink it. You didn't judge yourself. Yeah?

Jamie Brisick
It was intense though, too. I mean that's the thing where it became—for lack of a better description—jock-like or jockish. You know, it was—it became very competitive and very kind of alpha dog, you know. So there was the intensity with that. So in many ways, the things that were challenging were very much like privileged challenges to have. Because it was—as—thinking about it now as a teenager into my 20s, when I think—when I look at a lot of other kids that age not knowing exactly what they wanted—I mean I was fortunate to know absolutely what I wanted. And there was kind of no stopping me from going after it with, like, with great enthusiasm. Yeah, I think it does. I mean I have it with writing, but it's interesting because—I mean this is an entirely different conversation—but with writing, it doesn't work that way. I mean it can work that way, but there's a certain very direct way to athletic greatness or athletic achievement. And we see it on the world tour. I mean you have the off-season and you see one surfer get really into working on his surfboards and his training, and he might be with some coach, and then he comes in, the season starts, and you just see that person sort of elevate their game. I mean I think that can happen with writing as well, but it's less of a kind of like clenched-fist determination. And it's a little bit more—it just takes more time. It's sort of like a daily practice of writing and reading and observing and living. And I think as a writer, oddly enough, some of the best things that have happened to me have been horrible things. Like things that have sort of opened my humanity or my empathy. My wife died six years ago suddenly, and that made me a better writer—which is a really strange thing to say—but it absolutely did. And I didn't—it happened quickly and slowly. But in many ways my writing advanced because I stopped giving—caring so much. I stopped trying so hard. And I think I had a sort of—something cracked open in me where I understood people's struggles in a way that I hadn't maybe before. Whereas for an athlete, you almost want to cloister yourself away from that stuff. You know, you want to live in that kind of Muhammad Ali, Rocky Balboa “I'm the best” and that’s—you drive yourself with bursts of ego, which is a wonder—which is—I think truly, look—you know—and I'm—look, there are a lot of athletes who would probably say this guy doesn't know what he's talking about. But in my opinion, in my experience—at least for me personally—the more I could kind of pump myself up to believe that I could maybe beat Tom Curren or maybe beat Tom Carroll, maybe beat Martin Potter—the more I could find those like those leaps of confidence, the more likely I was to achieve what I wanted to achieve. And that—so it was very much like in the realm of the ego. Whereas with—whereas writing and I think a lot of art-making—it's about kind of humanity. It's about—of course it's about being smart and intelligent—but it's not—there's a less direct path to get to that thing.

Michael Frampton
Does that urge still live within you? When you say ego, it makes me think like maybe to get really good at surfing, yeah, you need to be somewhat narcissistic.

Jamie Brisick
I think so. I mean, it's interesting because ego is often referred to in the negative, and I think in many ways maybe it is. If for someone's entire lifetime—provided they live the 70, 80 years or whatever most of us hopefully will live—to live in that space the entire time would not be a good thing. I think, you know, you see that. That's where marriages collapse. That's where shitty fathers come into play, right? Or mothers, for that matter. But when you are in that competitive realm, it does demand a certain narcissism. I mean, the more—I used to think of it as putting the blinders on, almost like a horse, right, in a horse race where it's sort of like all you're seeing is that finish line, and you just, you know, you're just galloping towards it. And so for me, you know, my intellectual curiosity was almost being kind of repressed during that time, which—it came out as soon as I stopped surfing. But the idea to want to read books, the idea to want to learn about things, that kind of curiosity would ultimately, at that time, almost take—you know, had I explored that further, it would have almost taken away from that kind of athletic focus that you need. So yeah, I think there is—like you just need a lot of confidence. You got to completely believe in yourself. And I think that's probably—that's like a common through-line in so many great athletic feats. You know, that person just saw it. They had the vision of themselves triumphing, right.

Michael Frampton
Yeah, you know it's the unique individuals. Competitive high-level athletes are very unique. Yeah, so you mentioned how trauma opened up your writing. Was there anything traumatic in surfing that opened up your surfing?

Jamie Brisick
For sure, yeah. Big time. I don't know that it opened up my surfing, but my oldest brother died of a drug overdose in 1987. He was 23, I was 21. I was on my first full year on tour, and I tried—at that time, it's interesting because being in the pack of pro surfing—and by this time all my best friends were the guys on tour. We were a big kind of traveling circus. We was like a big fraternity, like just imagine a bunch of guys who are an extended family traveling around the world but staying within that kind of safe space of brotherhood. And so when my brother died, I really did not know how to process it, and I tried to bury it. And I tried to kind of call upon what, at that age, at that stage of my life and what I knew to be—you know, my take honestly was like, I'm gonna utilize—I'm gonna go win a contest and dedicate it to my brother. You know, it was still—it was interesting because only much later would I kind of realize—I don't want to say that I had it wrong, but I wasn't really letting in the sadness. So I tried—it affected me greatly, and I, you know, and I still continued on tour for about three, four years after that, and my best results came after that. So it wasn't as if it completely destroyed me, but I was repressing a lot of feeling. And that was there, that was just kind of this great wound that I carried. But most of my response was really to just try to kind of bury it totally. You know, it's interesting you mentioned him, because I don't know Mick well. I've hung out with him and I really like him, but he's one of the most incredible people that I can think of. I mean, when I—and having a certain—I mean, to my mind I look at Mick and he's like—I look at—he's like a fully realized version of what I wanted to be, but I never got there. You know, he used the loss of a sibling to—it drove him, it gave him focus. I remember someone—Derek, who's a great friend, coach, mentor, etc.—said to me at one point that a lot of the great surfers have something they're working out, right? Like it's a neglectful parent or there's, you know, they were burned by some girl or guy that they wanted to be with. You know, there's like—there's some kind of thing that provides them a little bit of a sail, a kind of chip on their shoulder that they can drive forward with. And I think—you know, maybe chip on the shoulder is the wrong word for with Mick's deal, but he—it seems like he—that didn't weaken him. It made him stronger. And he continued to do that all along. No, absolutely. It's a great—that's a fabulous question. I mean, I think it's so hard to know. It's so hard to know what—because I, you know, I aspire to that, and I had my moments, but there was a kind of like unraveling that was slowly taking place within me, and almost like self-destructive sides of myself were revealing themselves, maybe as a result of that repression. Maybe it was stuff that was already there. But I mean maybe that is—you know, that is the difference in the athletic realm of kind of a champion versus—you know, that ability to find that focus, really, to not fall into the despair or the self-pity that can so easily happen in those times.

Michael Frampton
Yeah, you probably relate to Mick Fanning in that way a lot. Why is that? Because it can so easily go the other way. Yeah, because I'm sure most people can relate—like losing a loved one. Yeah, for most people, I think they would—they become unfocused, for sure. Possibly depressed. Definitely less productive. Yes. Etc. Yeah, I think that's how most people would relate to that experience. Yeah.

Jamie Brisick
You know, the one thing that's important to point out, okay—because now, I mean it's been 25 years—I write every day. You know, most of my heroes are writers and artists, and in that realm, we shall we call it, there's a long—there's not this short shelf life, right? Like with athleticism—while it's being stretched right now beautifully by Kelly Slater, best example—you know, for the most part, when I was on tour, it was sort of by the time you're 30, you're an old man. Like time to find your second act, go on and get your job or get whatever you're gonna do, but you're kind of out. So those things—those things that can be so character-building, can breed more humanity within us, can kind of make us maybe better—I don't even want to use the word better—but enlarge us as people. When you're—when you've got the hourglass tipped on a pro surfing career or a pro athletic career in general, and it's kind of like you've got time—you know, you've only got so long—and then before you're even midway through your life, most likely it's gonna be over for you. The stuff that you might have gained, the stuff that might have enlarged you via this—via this trauma, via these things that in the moment seem terribly unfortunate—they may not have time to be fully realized within you. So by the time—you know, by the time you might go, okay, I lost a loved one, and now I have—now I understand why. Now when I look at a homeless person on the street, I don't have a kind of far-right-wing attitude of I have no sympathy for you, get your shit together and our health care is never gonna take care of you. You come to the other end where it's like, I understand. I'm not—I'm right there myself. I'm not far away from that. That stuff—that stuff's not like someone dies and you feel that two years later. That stuff may be a decade later. And in an athletic career, that decade is often the length of your career. You know, so when I think of it in the—you know, in terms of like art-making or, you know, writing or a songwriter or visual artist of any kind—like that stuff can find its way into this what is likely gonna be a lifelong career or a practice that will endure, one that will stay with a person through their lifetime and maybe even be getting better and maybe be even getting richer when they're in their 60s, let's say. Whereas with athleticism—you know, like definitely—like I have a flow with the surf that is—it doesn't—it's not all diminishing returns, but I know that at age 25, I could hop up and do things that I don't do now. You know, whereas with writing, I know I'm getting better, and I know it's—I know the deeper I go as a person, and the more I learn and understand, and the more experiences I kind of process within me, the more material I have to write with. Yeah, I think so. I think it definitely—I mean, I don't—it's not something that I would—like I think in a way that's not—I know there's been the argument, you know, sport, art, lifestyle, that whole debate. That's like not a debate. I'd say it's all three of those things. In many ways, it's sort of just wherever you take it. But I definitely find—when I really came to realize surfing was an art—there was a time where I was—it was probably a decade after I'd stopped being a pro surfer. I was writing for magazines, I was working at Surfing Magazine as the editor, and I was trying to just—I really wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a serious writer, and I moved to New York specifically to kind of shake off my surfing past and to kind of just retract myself because I felt like if I stay on the path, there's a very prescribed path of where I'll go if I just sort of follow surfing, which is basically let's just get the best waves we can, and that's what our sole focus in life is. And I went, I'm gonna derail. I'm gonna take that elsewhere. So I moved to New York specifically just to have a new experience, and at that time I had this idea that surfing was kind of taking away. Anytime I would—I purposely didn't want to surf because I wanted to sit alone and read books, and I wanted to build up my kind of writing output, my ability to sit at my desk every day and write. And then when my wife passed away, I hit such a low. There was absolutely nothing that felt good to me, and I moved back to L.A., actually Malibu, where we are now. And I started surfing again, and I kind of gave myself a break. I was like, just go surfing. Just do that. Like that's kind of going back to the familiar. And oddly, like being in the ocean was as familiar as anything I could think of at that time. Surfing started to feel good, and I started to kind of reframe surfing in relation to writing, which is effectively an indoor activity, you know, and it's sedentary. You sit. Reading and writing is not—it's almost the antithesis of dancing across a wave. But I started to realize how the dance across the wave could kind of carry over. And in many ways, the kind of lightness or levity that I got from surfing would keep me from becoming this embittered writer that just has an angry tone to him, you know. And so now I really—so with regard to is surfing art—for me it's like totally linked to my writing practice. They're kind of like—they're almost of the same ilk. And when I have days when I feel like I'm hardening inside, if I go surfing, it can lighten that up. And that's like—I think—important. I want that as a writer. I want humor. I don't want anger, you know. Yeah, I think so. Question—well, you know—interesting that—here's the thing. If I worked somewhere every—if I worked in an office every day with a group of folks where there was like water cooler conversation and Friday night beers and all the kind of conventional stuff, and then I fought traffic because I was working nine to five or roughly those hours, to go out at Malibu in a crowded lineup would be—that would not be solace. But considering that I work from home and I sit alone all day reading and writing, if I go out in a crowded lineup, sometimes it's a different kind of solace. And that is—it's just like—it's the kind of shorthand I have with all my surfer bros, which is just like humor. And, you know, like the Malibu parking lot has it. And I value it so much. But I see all these guys and it's not even like—we don't go into deep conversations—but there's just like this comfort of being with them that is a kind of solace. I think—tough. I mean that's where it's hard to be optimistic, you know. It seems like it's just getting increasingly sort of unsustainably crowded. And it's tough because I love surfing, and I pay a lot of attention to surfing, and I write about surfing a lot. So to some degree, I'm a promoter of surfing on some level because I've been writing for surf magazines for 25 years, and much of what I write about the surf world or culture is framed very optimistically. It's like ultimately this is this great lifestyle that I love, and I'm writing about it. And so that writing—anyone in the media, the surf world—might in some way be kind of facilitating those very crowds. So it's contradictory to sort of complain about them. But yes, I mean, I'm much—when I've kind of got my groove going surfing, I'd way rather have uncrowded waves and be getting a lot of waves and be in that rhythm.

Michael Frampton
Do you think surfing is an art? Do you seek solace when you surf? Is it possible to get solace in a crowded lineup? Great. Yeah. How do you feel about the crowds and modern surfing? Yeah. So do you see a difference between the surf culture in California compared with Australia?

Jamie Brisick
I think so. You know, it depends. California is fairly broad. I think like the NorCal surf scene I think is very different to the SoCal surf scene. But if we're talking SoCal, which is the one that gets the most focus and attention, the thing that I'm always—that I always find whenever I go to Australia—I'm speaking about the East Coast mostly—northern, you know, New South Wales, Sydney area, northern New South Wales, and the Gold Coast—the surf's better. There's more surf. There's just more going on. The ocean seems more alive. Specifically in Sydney, there's more kind of crags and coves and reef breaks and bounces in the corner of this beach. And the surfing experience is—it just seems a little bit more—it stretches you a little bit more. I mean, I remember when I first started going to Australia, I just—as I said, like, you know, jumping off rocks to surf DY or the wedge at Whale Beach or whatever spot or surfing Narrabeen—I instantly had a sense of these guys are more hardcore than the surfers that I know in the L.A. County area.

Michael Frampton
Yeah, I totally agree with that. And I think there's—it's almost a sense of entitlement in Southern California for a lot of beginner—yeah—surfers or intermediate surfers. 

Jamie Brisick
The tricky thing is I think we both surf Malibu, and Malibu has gotten so crowded and there's a lot of dropping in. I mean, it's almost—you're more likely to see multiple surfers on a single wave than you are to see a single guy on a wave, and you absolutely never see an empty wave. And so I think what happens is beginners go out and they see the sharing of the wave—the party wave, so to speak—and they don't understand that party wave happened by—there's a very delicate kind of thing going on, which is like these guys or girls know each other, they are of a certain skill level where they know how to get out of each other's ways, and they know that if they're gonna drop in, they're gonna be riding really high up the front, and they're gonna give plenty of space. I mean, I see it all the time now—someone's flying across a wave beautifully, some total beginner paddles in, jumps up, goes completely straight, and the surfer in the back who is having a great ride has to either straighten out or plow into that beginner. And the beginner—I don't know, you know—there's almost a responsibility to warn the beginning surfers that while it may look like it's just a free-for-all out there, it's definitely not. Yeah, I know.

Michael Frampton
I'm wondering how long that can last. Yeah, is there—you know, skateboarding had a kind of a boom and then it kind of plateaued and now it's just a—yeah—and it's such a—not going to the skate parkers—I mean, I love surfing more than skateboarding—but going to the skate park, everyone's so much nicer than the surfers.

Jamie Brisick
Right, yeah, I know. I think about this a lot. I mean, and the other side of it—I found I was out at Malibu a couple of months ago and there was a really good swell and I was excited. And a lot of times, honestly, when there's a good swell, I'm almost already trying to like—trying to trick myself into being extremely humble. And I don't—it's sort of like if I go out and get a decent wave, I'm happy. If I get dropped in, I try not to get mad. I just kind of keep the expectations really low. And this day, I was like in rhythm and getting good waves and feeling good about my surfing, and I was flying across a wave and a guy dropped in on me and did exactly what I just described—he just went to the bottom and just fell—and I—and his board nearly whacked me in the whitewash and I had to straighten out, and I was fuming. And I was totally fuming. And I did—I said things that, you know, to this guy that I like—I would like—this barbaric self came out and I felt bad about it afterwards. But what I was—in thinking about it later, I realized, you know, when that blue bump is moving towards you in the ocean, for surfers, for those of us who are deep into our surfing, you know, deep into surfing and we love surfing the way we do—that's like that kind of like primal, proprietary thing—that like, get the fuck away from me, this is mine, you know. It's so powerful. And while I don't like—while I don't want to be someone who gets in, you know, arguments in the water, whatever—I hate—like that's not—I don't want to be doing that at my stage of life. There's the other part of me that's almost glad that I'm that passionate about this thing too, you know.

Michael Frampton
Yeah, that's a great point, because—and to that point—that's like the 30-year-old beginner who's been surfing for two years on a soft top. Do they have that, or are they just doing it because it's cool? That's why I think it's gonna—there's a lot of them—and over the next five years, they're gonna drop off, right? And surfing is gonna sort of balance out again. Yeah, that's what I'm hoping.

Jamie Brisick
No, that's a great question. There's a lot of the cool factor. And I, you know—yeah, no, I know what you—I know—I mean, from in terms of—in my kind of greedy get-give-me-as-many-waves-as-possible way, I totally agree with you on that. But I somehow too—I think, and just looking at, you know, all of our like advances in the wellness movement and the self-improvement movement and the way—and we, you know, measure neurotransmitters and dopamine bursts, etc.—so much of this stuff points to surfing as being this great thing, you know. Like it's weirdly like surfing is being discovered, where in the 70s it might have been it's this cool scene, but, you know, there are some—like beware of some of the people you might meet in the parking lot. Now there's this wholesomeness to it, and then there's—and then there's almost like, you know, scientific research of how good it is for us, right. There have been these books written about like the negative ions coming off the ocean, all that. So there's a lot more stuff luring people down to the beach. You know—I know—I agree with you, although, you know, in the last decade I found—I can recall doing—you know, I did a boat trip through Costa Rica at one point, and I was going to supposedly remote places that were not uncrowded at all. And I thought—I started thinking, wow, there's just—it's almost inescapable. It really is. It's that thing—and this is almost like a life lesson. There's a metaphor here, where it's sort of like just teaching yourself to not expect too much. You know, just be kind of happy with what you've got. Because the last few years, my—those surf trips where I had in my head this idea of getting great waves with no crowds had not necessarily delivered that way. You know, for me, there's—okay, so this is—the actual act of surfing—I think there's been—it's taught me so much. I mean, I think all those—you know, I almost think of it—it's almost like a martial arts practice or something like that, or—I think, is it jiu-jitsu?—where you learn to dance with the energy coming at you versus push against it. And there's all that stuff, there's all the—I mean, I think like being out in nature, the fickle nature of the ocean itself, the kind of flowing with waves and the everything that goes on there in some way sort of ingrains itself in you and might be how you deal with things, hopefully. Although there are plenty of contradictions, because I know a lot of surfers who are real fluid on the wave, but they're real rigid in their personalities. But for me, I guess on some level it's this microcosm, you know. And it's something that I know so well where I can look into this surf world that I've been—you know, it's been a vast source of fascination and something I've engaged in for 40 years now—and what's happening in our little world of surfing is often sort of mirroring what's happening on a larger scale. It's a microcosm for what's going on. I mean even in—even just like social media practices among surfers is like showing what social media might mean to the world today, you know. So that—I like it. I guess I'm constantly learning from it on that level.

Michael Frampton
Yeah, that's true. Shooting ourselves in the foot. You can always travel though, that's what you think—you just have to travel if you want to surf good waves. What has surfing taught you about life? Yeah, that's the end—I hadn't thought of it like that. Wait—how would you describe your relationship to surfing now?

Jamie Brisick
It's probably passive-aggressive. No, I know—I mean, I'm still a complete like surf animal. Like I—if I allowed myself, I can go so—get so into it and kind of let the like alpha side come out and be competitive and have my ego just kind of run wild, but I try not to. So when I say passive-aggressive, it's sort of like I'm looking at it more—most of my days, I'm trying to—I've got a lot I want to write while I'm alive, and so—and I thankfully have no shortage of things I'm working on. So my days are really—but I can only sit in a chair for so long, and I can only sit alone in a room for so long, so the way the surfing comes in—it's almost this kind of foil that I use to go out and just sort of wash it all off and kind of rejuvenate and then go back to it. So I'm almost like—to the best of my ability—I'm pretending that surfing is in the background or it's this other thing, but I am actually really—I really love it. And there are times when I feel really good, you know. I get a good rhythm going and there might be some kind of like a string of good waves or swell to where I feel like it's still very alive in me. I still feel I can take off on a wave and feel really good.

Michael Frampton
It's interesting you say passive-aggressive because First Point, Malibu, has to be one of the most passive-aggressive places in the world. Yeah, yes. And do you think that was your—that was your first two words when I asked that question. Do you think that's because you're a victim of the culture, or do you think the culture is a victim of the surfers' attitude? So when I said to you, describe your relationship to surfing, you said "passive," and I'm always telling people First Point, Malibu, is the most passive-aggressive place I've ever been in—and out of—surfing. Yeah, like people drop in and they won't even acknowledge you. Yes.

Jamie Brisick
Interesting. I'm trying—no, I want to understand exactly what you mean, because I think this is a great question. Aggressive—yeah—but you mean in the sense of like everyone's all jolly and chummy on the beach and they go out and then they're just animals in the water? Yeah, and—okay, now I know what you mean. Yeah, you know, in many ways—at least for me, and having surfed Malibu all my life—I think the passive—that passive-aggressive quality is almost a survival tactic. There was a time in my mid-20s up into my 30s where most surfs, most sessions at Malibu, I smoked a little weed before I'd paddle out. And I remember at one point, I was like, the weed is actually the thing taking that edge off of me to where I'm just—I've kind of got this like dumb smile on my face the entire time. And it kind of—it like maybe helped me just focus on just solely what I was doing. But my rule at Malibu really is just sort of—you get dropped in on, and I tell friends, it's like the key is just not to get bummed. Not to even go out there with the sense of I deserve this wave, how dare you drop in on me. It's more like—it's almost like we're going back to the days of like the beach party movies or Gidget or something, where like everyone's out there, you know—Moondoggie took off on me over there, and the Kahuna took off on me there, and you're just a group of folks having a fun time. Because to get too serious in the lineup like First Point is really hard to do. I mean, even the best surfers out there get dropped in on, and if you do get angry, it kind of ruins your day. And then if you—it's almost that thing of like—if you're—it's almost like driving in, you know, being in a country where—or being on a road where everyone's a terrible driver, and if you get angry at every one of those people, you're just gonna be an angry person. You know, like that's how I see the Malibu lineup.

Michael Frampton
Yeah, I guess it's different waves—it weighs for consequence. It's different, isn't it? I guess it's the style of wave—Malibu is such a user-friendly wave, that's probably what breeds that.

Jamie Brisick
That—I totally agree. I mean, if it were like some slab-type wave or a big wave, like those drop-ins could be potentially very hurtful—or lethal, for that matter. But for the most part, Malibu is like a soft, playful, tame wave, and so—it isn't.

Michael Frampton
Isn't it funny that we only care about other humans when they potentially get hurt? Yeah. But when it comes to them enjoying a wave to themselves, we don't give a shit. Right? That's what it is. Yeah. Sometimes I think surfing brings out the worst in people.

Jamie Brisick
I think so too. I mean, there were times when I would—I've been at odds—I've had my love-hate phases with surfing for sure. And I've not—the just—I haven't felt akin to my fellow surfer. I felt like I'm not part of this world anymore. I don't—it's not—it felt—there have been times in my life where it felt like totally like home, and now I don't feel like I relate to these people. But then I've swung back. I mean, for me, having been at it for so long, it's just sort of—it is this relationship that just shape-shifts, I guess.

Michael Frampton
Yeah, interesting you say that. Yeah, I go through those cycles too where sometimes I just don't even go surfing. Yeah. I take a break from it. Yeah. I think you need those breaks sometimes. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. What do you think the future of surfing holds?

Jamie Brisick

Yeah. I wonder about the future. I mean, I wonder about the future in every sense of the word. I mean, I do. I think the wave pools will probably keep coming. My sense is that the sport's just gonna get—the surfing is just gonna get—bigger and bigger. There will be more people doing it. Hopefully, we’ll find ways of being able to deal with that in terms of crowding. I think it's gonna get—the technology is gonna be a part of it more than ever. I wish I had a better answer. I wish I had a more sort of precise answer, but I'm kind of just watching it unfold. And I don't—there's not—I don't have a sort of idea of the future that I can talk about with any kind of conviction. I surfed the Kelly's wave pool. Yeah. Well, my immediate—I went up—they did this thing where they had a media—a couple of weekends I guess it was—or media days, and so they invited sort of different writers from different magazines, editors, and some photographers, if I'm not mistaken. I think maybe mostly writers. But I was with a group, and I knew all the guys I was with. I don't know—half a dozen of us, I guess. And the idea was we all got four waves. We got a right, and then immediately after, a left, and then a right, and immediately after, a left. And then there were two kind of heats like that. So you got your thing, and then we had lunch, and then we did it again later. My feeling was—my immediate thought just by the way in which they structured the day—I remember saying this to my friend Matt Warshaw, the editor of the Encyclopedia of Surfing—I said, you know, I feel like this master chef has invited us all, you know, a long way to travel for this great meal, and he sort of served us an hors d'oeuvre, and he went, thanks for coming, see you later. Like it was this thing of like—I just got like a tiny taste of what I wanted so much more of. Yeah. And in many ways I was grateful for that because again, it was that thing of like, I'm still a full surf dog, you know? Like, that side of me is still alive. That frothing guy is still inside of me, even though I don't always realize it. And it—almost in an addict way—like if they said, write a $10,000 check and we'll give you five more waves, if I had that money in my account at that moment, I would have gone, sure. Yeah, it was great. But the wave itself was fantastic, and I blew a couple of them. And then I connected one, and it was great. It was really exciting. The thing that—I think people have talked about this, but there were two things. One, it really made me aware of my own kind of habits as a surfer. There's this kind of mirror effect that the pool does, because my typical thing is if I were to go surfing, I'd paddle out, and the very first wave that comes to me, I'd jump up and I'd kind of feel my wax and feel my body and just kind of, you know, get a little—like try to fall into some kind of groove. And then I'd paddle back out, and if anything's coming to me, I'd go for it. And then, as I'm kind of getting rhythm, I might start like waiting for the sets and sitting and going for that more. To drive to Lemoore—a long drive—to stay in the hotel, to show up in the morning with coffee, cold, to do a couple little stretches poolside, and then to jump in and then suddenly have this wave come at you—there was this performance anxiety that I'd never ever experienced before. It was almost like—more than I've had in—competent—you know, you have that in a heat, in competition, where like it's the final of the event and you're—you know, that first wave comes, and like you're nervous. And if I fall, I'm gonna take—I'm gonna push my momentum backwards. If I rip it up, my momentum will move forward. But with the pool—with the wave ranch, with the Surf Ranch—it was just this thing of like, I've got four waves. And my very first wave—it came to me—my biggest fear was just to not even catch it. But whoever was the—whoever sort of coached me at the time, there was someone in the ski, a really lovely guy, explained how to do it. So I caught the wave, did like one little pump, and then went for a snap, and as I snapped I kind of committed too much, and the wave just spiraled past, and I lost the whole thing. And I was like, okay, there's one down. I just completely blew that. And then I think I blew another one. I only connected really one, and it—but it really was great, and it went on for a long time, which was really nice. I think—so not that everyone gets addicted—but I think for sure it becomes a thing that whatever—and I won't articulate well what goes on with an addict—but there's definitely that thing. Yeah, I think so. Though I have a dear friend who's writing a book about this right now—that addiction that might start in the ocean in a healthy way—if it doesn't carry on, if surfing doesn't continue to feed that thing, then other things might come in. And that's why I said, you know—I alluded to earlier—like for better or for worse, I had a middling pro career, which made—maybe made it easier for me to kind of jump back into my life and figure out what I'm gonna do. Some of my peers who were world champions and, you know, top-ranking pros found it harder to do that stuff and did find addiction elsewhere. I mean, there are many cases of that. I think there are many cases of that in professional athletics in general. You know what I mean? I think it's just—there's—this is the simplified answer: it's just you get used to doing something extraordinarily well that feels so damn good, that makes you so happy. And yeah—and then you do it on a public level, where you become a star. And you know, I think—I could probably—I'll delicately speak of Tom Carroll, who's a good friend who's very openly struggled with addiction. He won two world titles, he won Pipeline Masters. To be in the water on a huge day at Pipeline, tearing apart waves in front of thousands on the beach, to have the heat—the horn blow, the heat’s over—and then you come in and the entire beach is roaring you, and you get chaired up the beach. You know—Andy Irons as well. That thing is like—you’re almost like—whatever kind of chemical explosion or whatever those—the decibel that—like on that graph—those—it’s hitting these highs that become totally unsustainable. So it's sort of like, where do I find these in the rest of my life? You know, I remember talking to Tom Carroll about it, and he was referring to PTSD. And he was talking about like some soldier goes off to Iraq, and while it may not be fun, being—doing all that—it’s damn exciting. And then they go home to their families, and then it's like—you know—“Hey honey, it’s Tuesday night, can you take out the trash?” And you’re like, what happened to my life? You know, like, how did life get so mundane all of a sudden? I mean, there is—I don’t know, I kind of feel like I’m starting to see in midlife how like sometimes great—what might be a victory or what can be great success at one stage of life can, in fact, be a curse later on. And it’s sort of like you get used to something that you can’t sustain. I mean, I think it probably happens with people getting extraordinarily wealthy too. Like someone, you know, gets a ton of money and gets used to a lifestyle, and then if they lose that money, what would—for the next person—would be like this is a nice kind of modest, earnest lifestyle—for that person it’s like, where’s my yacht? You know, where’s my summer house? Where’s the penthouse in New York overlooking the park? You know? And so—it’s another version of that I think has happened with the surf stars that we know.

Michael Frampton
Yeah. Did you surf the wave pool? Thoughts? Yeah, you mentioned—well, do you think surfing’s an addiction? Yeah. It’s one of the healthier addictions though. Yeah. Yeah, why do you think that is? Of—yeah, because we’ve got stories on that with the elite athletes, like—so you mentioned Tom Carroll and Andy Irons. So Andy didn’t manage it well and we lost him. Yeah. Tom figured it.

Jamie Brisick
Out. Yeah, for sure. He was fortunate. Yeah, because he went through it bad. Yeah, and now he’s great. And now he’s so inspired. I mean, he’s inspiring in a way that probably he didn’t even know he could ever do at one point when he was in his lowest lows. But I see Tom as—I mean, Tom’s—and he’s a dear friend—but he’s proven to be a champion far beyond just as a surfer.

Michael Frampton
What I want to get at is that I think we all have it—the elite athletes, they have it to an extreme level—and then we look at Tom and he’s learned to manage it. Yep. And I was wondering whether—you alluded to the fact that maybe you had redirected it into writing. Was that easy or hard or like—

Jamie Brisick
For sure. And no, it was really hard. I mean, I think—and this relates to where we started earlier—is, you know, when I was a pro athlete, there was a very—I don’t want to say direct—but I felt like the blueprint of what made a great athlete was pretty—it was a fairly obvious thing. And I learned it from Willie Morris, and I learned it from Tom Curren, and I learned it from Tom Carroll, and I read every surf magazine. I was—you know, you get your boards. There’s this sort of—like there’s the variables. There are all these variables. You know, the competition—competitive surfing is so fickle, and it’s so about getting the best wave, and it’s about not making the wrong turn and making the right choice on that wave, and you know, not cutting back and rebounding so that you lose the section, but knowing when to keep driving down the line—all that stuff, right? And all that stuff is in this improvised, spontaneous—that all is all happening. But to prepare for all that, you get your fitness as best as you can, you get your boards, which was always a huge deal—get your boards just right—and you train a lot, and you surf a lot, and you just try to get as in that rhythm as you can. And then the competition comes, and you hopefully do well. When I started writing, I realized that—you know, first, I just needed to sort of abandon my ego. It was like—if this isn’t—but that kind of bombastic, “I’m the man” attitude that can make for a great athlete—you don’t—like the person that says “I’m gonna write a best-selling book,” I’m immediately suspicious of. You know? Like that’s kind of like—that’s not even the point, really, when you get into that thing. I mean, sure, it might be nice, but if that’s why you’re doing it, you’re not—you don’t—when the Booker Prize happens, and the writers that win—or the Pulitzer or whatever—it’s not like this fist in the air, like, “Look at me, I’m glorious!” like a boxer that just won the heavyweight bout of the world championship. It doesn’t work that way. So it’s a much more kind of quiet and humble, long education. And so—to teach myself, really, just to sit in the chair and to read and write every day and to just listen. And I guess just learning that—like writing, I guess, is just—it’s a commitment that’s to this longer thing. And it almost has a sort of spiritual—it’s like this spiritual journey on some level where there might be years and years where you’re not bearing any fruit from what you’re doing, but then it might come later on. So it’s like an act of faith. And surfing felt way more immediate. So it was just sort of almost like my entire—what’s the word—like my tempo, I had to almost slow down.

Michael Frampton
Is that because writing—does writing need to have an element—or it has to be a sort of pioneering aspect to writing, like an originality? Yeah. Yeah, whereas in surfing, it’s like you can almost just be another cookie-cutter, air-reverse, you throw the spray and you make money. Would you—like, did you watch Thank You Mother, Torren Martyn? Like, to me, I’d way rather watch that than, yeah, you know, another—yeah—from so-and-so.

Jamie Brisick
I think so. I mean, that thing of finding your voice, for sure. From a—no, that’s a very good point. Yeah, I’ve seen it. Yep. No—well, I guess the thing is, there is almost a formula to what wins a contest on the world tour. You know that—it’s like there’s this judging criteria that, if you focus your surfing to feed into that—if that’s—if your goal is to win, if your goal is to be a world champion, or if your goal is to be on the world tour—that’s a fairly narrow scope of how you’re supposed to surf. Whereas Torren Martyn or a lot of free surfers—there’s this sense of self-expression, and there can be—I think maybe—a more original voice, so to speak, to use a writerly term, in the surfing realm. You know, yeah. Well, that’s an interesting thing. I’ve thought about this a lot. I mean, I recently wrote a piece about how I see a lot more kind of theatrical stuff happening with surfers—a lot more stuff that seems posed. And I think, you know, my—there are probably a lot of reasons why. But there’s a self-consciousness, and it might be fed, to some degree, by the fact that there are cameras everywhere, and we’re all being shot, and we’re all posting stuff on social media, and therefore looking cool carries more weight. You’re not doing it in private—you’re doing it in public, or you’re intending for it to become public, so you want to just look good all the time. You know? It’s just like checking your hair in the mirror. I mean, I was up with some friends the other night, and we were gonna do a picture at the end of dinner, because we were friends that hadn’t seen one another, and as soon as the camera—everyone fixed their hair in the mirror. It’s the same kind of thing. But I think—I mean, I think like we learn everything—well, I mean, generally speaking, we learn through mimicry, right? It’s sort of like—to be a good surfer—I did this—I had my favorite surfers. Tom Curren was a favorite surfer. There was a time where I was in my head trying to hold my arms the way he did and do all that. But what you hope is, as you reach a level of excellence, and then that going out into, say, a kind of mastery, you lose any of that. And then it becomes very second nature—it’s just in you. It’s just like you’re your thumbprint, right? It’s just like you’re not—you have no—it’s just you. And I think there are like pursuits in surfing—if it’s to be on the world tour—there are these surfers that are really worth looking at and studying to get there. And then if your thing is to be like a Torren Martyn or Dave Rastovich or whatever, that’s a different one. And I think that one has—maybe there’s more kind of wiggle room, so to speak. There’s more—it’s more of a vast space in which to do your thing.

Michael Frampton
How do you think one goes about finding the original voice as a surfer? But even if you're still inspired by something outside of you, yeah, whether it's Kelly Slater or Rasta, yeah, but where's the inspiration from within?

Jamie Brisick
Yeah, that's a great point. No, you know, there was a really—when I—in my generation, there was a really impactful video that came out. Jack McCoy made it. It was called Kong's Island, and Kong was Gary Elkerton, and he was one of the top surfers of my generation. And Kong had grown up on a fishing boat with his father in northern Queensland, if I'm not mistaken—like super sharky area, not a lot of surfers—and basically he worked with his father on a fishing trawler. They would go out and fish, and then on the way in, like, his dad would—there were these islands that had these great waves, and they were big, gnarly waves and no one out. So Kong was this almost like raised-by-wolves surfer that came onto the scene, and he did have a unique scene—a unique style—and all of his—yeah, there was—it didn't—there wasn't this kind of like mannered style that he'd learned from watching videos. You know, the flip side of that is I've seen—I've definitely been to remote places where I've seen surfers who look exactly like other surfers, and then I've learned that they watch videos of that surfer all the time, and that surfer had never visited these particularly remote places. So there—it's like there's this—you know, the influence can be a good or bad thing. Like too much influence can—maybe, you know, you're almost like hamstrung by it, or you're kind of—you're stuck in the things that you absorb growing up. And I think—you know, we're talking about in terms of surf styles—I think of it in terms of the writers that I've read. It happens to all of us in probably our peer groups and the people around us and our parents and all that. It's like you're—you can be so limited. And that finding out who the hell you are is—whether it's as a surfer or whether it's just as in—on a broader scale—it’s interesting. I think about this stuff for sure. I mean, I look at it now and I can see—I can—my influences are apparent, and it's almost like with writing, I almost did exactly what I'd done with surfing, which was—you know, I mentioned the Town and Country surf team: Larry Bertlemann, Dane Kealoha, etc., showing up at Malibu—those guys became my heroes. At that time, when I was 14, my friends videoed—or not videoed, but they shot Super 8—we would watch them projected on the wall in the bedroom. And I was a regular foot. Most of these guys were regular foot. When the goofy footer got up, I watched it with a mirror backwards, so it imprinted upon me. Later, when Aki and Curren were some of the more influential surfers, I would watch Aki on a mirror. And I had friends who were goofy foot and they'd watch Curren on a mirror. So it was just sort of like filling your head with these people that you aspire to be like. You know, I started writing early, but when I got serious about it, I was about 25, and at that time I did almost the exact same thing—it was just like, read all these folks that I like and then go try to do some version of what they're doing. But it took a long time before I kind of shed that and shed that like mannerist—that kind of obviously like trying to bite from them. It took a long time just to simply have the courage to have my own voice. And it wasn't necessarily a conscious thing either. That's where I'm—that—just to kind of riff here—that's where I say when my wife passed away, I became a better writer because I just stopped giving a fuck, quite frankly. And it was sort of like, I don't even have the time to do this—or the energy, I should say. I didn't have the energy to try to sound like someone anymore. I'm barely even here, you know? And that's where—going back to earlier in the art-making—you know, in the sense of, in the sense of self-expression sometimes, or in this—I guess being an artist is the best way to put it—things that are—the trauma, things that don't seem like good things in the short term, they can actually affect you and imprint themselves or become a part of you that is actually really good later on.

Michael Frampton
Yeah, so in your early days of writing, do you think a lot of that was just mimicry somewhat? Completely? Yeah. So you mentioned the shedding—well, you mentioned not giving a fuck—but that’s it. That’s only—you said not giving a fuck about what, though? What others think? Because you certainly still—you can’t just not give a fuck about writing, because then you’re not gonna write.

Jamie Brisick
I mean, I went through it in such a way where I was like—I’m not quite plotting my exact suicide, but I really don’t know if I want to hang out here much longer. Yeah. Because it was almost like—this is when I realized I guess I am a real writer. Big—and I felt like an imposter for many years, because writing was like one of the things that made me feel good. It was like, okay, this is—it was like this life raft of somehow—you know, that I—weirdly, if I were—you know, I could get super cosmic about this, but in many ways, like coming to writing around age 25, I started getting stuff published at age 25, I was keeping journals all through my years on tour—was almost preparing me for something that would be a huge traumatic loss, you know, a huge loss in my life. Because when it happened, surfing certainly felt good, and I did that almost like just like a—I just like sleepwalked my way down—it was just somehow like, okay, just do that. Some survivalist thing went, go to the water and go out and ride a few waves or even just swim around, just get in the ocean. That might make you feel better. And then writing was that too. And then writing—actually it wasn’t even—it wasn’t—I wasn’t consciously going, I need to write my way out of this, or writing is my savior or salvation right now. It was more like I’m just broken inside and I’m writing and I’m not even trying to write. It’s just like somehow that need for self-expression was really strong, and it was put to the test in a way that I would wish upon no one, you know.

Michael Frampton
Yeah, but you were still writing. Need for self-expression. Yeah. Yeah. So that need to immerse yourself in surfing when you were a surfer—is it the same as the need to express yourself as a writer? Is it?

Jamie Brisick
I think so. You know, I think they're coming from the same place. That’s the interesting thing that I think about. Because I was kind of a—I was a kid that sort of covered up by trying to be witty and funny. And I was definitely like—I don't—I wasn’t like some introverted person that couldn’t mingle with the crowd. I was like able to mix with the crowd and be funny and probably appeared to be like a well-adjusted kid. But I had this inner life always. And it was sort of like—I was almost trying to cover up because I was afraid of that. And so I would try to be the funny guy, the clown, the class clown. I was like a guy that was shouting across the room in class in high school and stuff like that. But the other side was surfing was my way of kind of dealing with a lot of that awkward stuff. And it was almost as if, like, I can’t express my feelings verbally and all the hormonal stuff going on in your teens, right, in adolescence, but I can do it out in the water. And I totally remember, like, liking this girl so much and I would—I was so shy I couldn’t—she was—she—I liked her so much that she just made me stutter. Like, I couldn’t speak a word to her. But I would always imagine her on the beach and I would just tear apart waves to the best of my ability thinking she might be watching. And it was almost like, this is my love letter to you, or this is my way of communicating to you. So there was—it was a vehicle of self-expression and one that—like, it was coming—it was pouring out of me and gushing out of me. I think so. I mean, I think when you're talking great surfers—I think, like, all the guys on the world tour, let’s say that—yeah, just to go into that—if it didn’t start that way, it sort of became that way. I mean, I do—there is almost a thing where it just got, like, snowballs or it gains its own momentum, you know? I mean, I think there are some folks who are way more natural at it than others, and then there are the ones who had to really kind of cultivate their craft or their skill as a surfer. But once they—so the one—you know, I mean, I saw it, watched this growing up. There were surfers who were so naturally gifted, and then there were other surfers who were definitely not my favorite surfers, but they just had this kind of desire, this like determination, and they just maximized everything that they had. But if you kind of—if they stopped trying, they weren’t necessarily the great surfers, but it was their determination that made them so great. Those ones—I think once they push on, it does become like a second nature form of self-expression. You know? It's just like—that’s where they’re most comfortable.

Michael Frampton
Do you think that’s an element with all great surfers—self-expression? So with writing, like the self-expression—so you said that you said when you lost your wife you became somewhat indifferent. Yeah. But you continued to write? Yeah. And did you continue to publish? Yeah. So there’s a dichotomy there of not giving a fuck what people think but then publishing.

Jamie Brisick
That would be true, although my—for 25 years now, for what—somehow I’ve managed to pull off—I’ve earned my income via writing. And so when I reached the levels of despondency after my wife died, and this sense of like, I don't—the world is a terrible place and I don't want to be a part of it anymore and it's been cruel to me in ways I never ever imagined—and that was kind of the skipping record in my head—there was this other thing of the only thing keeping you from living out of your car and being—and then eventually being homeless, like watching these—this—like, I’m like a couple bad moves away from becoming an alcoholic, not earning enough money to pay rent so I’m sleeping in my car, and then I lose all self-esteem, and then maybe I’m like living on the side of the road. Writing was my source of income. So when I published, it was more—I remember imagining—I remember going, life has gotten so tough right now, I'm just like—I’m a primal man and I’ve got a machete and it’s a thick jungle and I’m just slashing my way as best I can to get through that jungle to some other place of—some vista where it opens up again. But right now, that thicket is so dense. And the way in which—the—I guess like—this sounds like a total cliché, but my writing was my machete. I mean, it was my way of, like, earning an income and making sure that I'm, like, putting decent food in me. It was my livelihood. So—and I have no dependents, I have no children, so it was sort of like—I could easily give up right now, but I'm not going to, because I just got to stay alive. And so writing was—getting—having my work published was $500 here, $1,000 there, $2,000 there. I’m cobbling together enough to pay the rent on the shitty little place that I just moved—

Michael Frampton
Into. So it sounds like the indifference drove the writing, and then this necessity to live drove the publishing. Yes?

Jamie Brisick
Yeah. And that’s what made it original.

Jamie Brisick

There you go. For sure. And when I say that, just so you know, it's not like my wife passed away, I was in deep despair, and then I sat for three days and wrote the best thing I've ever written. What I'm getting at is—over—it's been six years since she passed away. In that time, I've just watched. I've watched. I've gotten more relaxed in my voice. So it wasn't something that happened overnight. I mean, some of the stuff that was really good—when I say really good, things I'm proud of—they came out three years later. So when I was in the deepest despair, it was almost—it was like a processing stage that would reveal itself over time, but not necessarily immediately. Do you know what I mean? Time—I mean, as cliché as it sounds—and I—well, surfing was a big one. And this is where, you know, in terms of what we're talking about today—as I said, I've had a love-hate relationship with surfing. I had a period where I was trying to actually consciously get away from it. It was almost as if I wanted to—like if we have a trail of history of our lives, like however many years we've lived—it was like I was trying to cut off the tail and just move on in the present, because I felt like—you know, I felt like just surfing was dictating all of my moves. It was almost like there was the great surf god puppeteering and going, here's where you go now, right? Like—and I went, well, I can keep doing that. And to put it in more simple terms, I think if we really love surfing as so many of us do, it feels like our birthright to go surfing. It's sort of like surfing comes above all else, and then my life will fall into place around that. And I had that with writing. I had a thing where I was living in Venice for a while, and all I would do is chase waves. And then I'd come home in the evening, and I would sit for an hour maybe and write, and then I might read a little before I go to bed, and that was it. And I remember going, this is like—my contemporaries who are writing good stuff, they went to Yale, they went to Harvard, they went to Princeton, they went to these great schools and they studied, and they built up this facility to work every day and be alone in a room that I was not knowing. I was like a kid in Cal—I was a hedonist. I was a Southern California hedonist. So I realized I'm gonna try to change that. But when I had this thing happen—i.e., my wife passing—I thought, now it's time to be easy on yourself. Now it's time to just do whatever the hell is gonna make you feel good. And among all the things that I tried, surfing was the thing that made me feel best. Yeah, I mean, I could say—I won't put it in those terms, but on some level it was doing me tons of good. And writing too. And writing in some weird way, because I've assigned it this sense of purpose and I've assigned it as something that's—you know, I believe in writing and I believe in what it can do. And I think because I had—because I'd spent years—and I do—it’s almost a spiritual practice, or it is a kind of act of faith in this thing of like you're—you know, you're every day you're sort of praying or setting intentions in what you believe that literature does and can do—or art, for that matter. You know, it's this thing that can inspire and transport and transform and trans—you know, and transcend. And so because I'd done that for so long, even in the lowest state, it was sort of like my rote response, my reflexive thing, was just to just like sit with my journals and scribble stuff every day and make notes for things. I mean, I guess the faith is—okay, this is an interesting one, and this relates to—this is a perfect kind of analogy of the two, where I was—we were talking earlier about how surfing has this sort of expiration date. And at least for me, it always felt as if there was an hourglass, and it was like you're a pro and you've got like five years to do your thing, maybe ten maximum, and then the sand’s gonna run out of this thing and you're done. And then what are you gonna do? Because for me, writing is a lifelong thing. Writing often is—a lot of my heroes, most of my heroes—most of my favorite surfers are in their 20s or early 30s. Most of my favorite writers are 60s, some in their 70s. So there's this longer line. So with regards—you asked the question—faith: if you're a pro surfer and you want to, you know, make the top ten that year or win the Nationals in the NSSA and the amateur ranks, it's all more immediate gratification. It's all kind of coming very soon. The kind of—a friend of mine once described it as, the writing world works at a glacial pace. It's like you may not write anything great for two decades or more, but if you every single day make your practice what to you feels like the productive, the right moves, right? Which is just sort of taking in great literature and making sure there's some output every day. And you do that—it's like prayer. And what I found is it doesn't—it’s not—it’s kind of like praying for the goodness of everyone versus praying for like, I want to get—you know, I want to earn $100,000, I want to get the promotion at work that I've been wanting. It's less of a selfish kind of prayer. It's more of like, I'm in this vast realm of ideas, and hopefully I will be able to somehow channel some of them, and it'll make it into the work that I'm doing every day. Do you know what I—yes. It's a purpose. Exactly. Yes. Yeah. And that's where, again, we're kind of going back to this thing. If you're some kid who got on the world tour and you've been on for a couple of years and you're now in the top ten and you're going, this year is gonna be my world title—that direct thrust towards winning the world title that year is totally appropriate and healthy and part of what it is to be a pro athlete. If you're a writer and you're going, I'm gonna write the bestseller and I'm gonna win the Pulitzer this year—yeah, those writers kind of—it doesn't work that way. So it's like this longer game—you're playing this long game, and you're playing this thing of—so when I say faith, it's sort of like you're just doing this thing because it's not necessarily about some kind of ego gratification. You know, typically—I mean, again, there's people who probably disagree with me, but that's my sense of it. So that's the faith. That's the sense of faith. That's the sense of prayer, of like, I just believe in this thing. And that's where I guess on some level your own life, be it—parallels the work that you do. You know? So it's just—in many ways, it's like trying to be a good person.

Michael Frampton
Yeah. What do you think got you through that deepest despair? What got you through? Time? Surfing saved your life? Yeah. Coming right back to surfing. Yeah. What does faith got to do with it? I mean to a sense of purpose, like to contribute to society through your chosen art? Yes. Interesting. It’s interesting you mentioned the long game because—and you made the analogy of the hourglass of surfing—like we’re all surfers, we’re faced with that, for sure. As we age, our surfing ability is going to decline. Yep. The boards are gonna get bigger. Our waves are gonna get smaller. Yeah. To the point where, if we’re lucky enough to live that long, we might not even be surfing. Yeah. So we need something else. Yeah. To supplement that. Yeah. That’s something that Andy Irons didn’t have, right? It’s something Tom Carroll discovered. Yeah. But for the everyday surfer—I just, I feel like there’s a lot of surfers holding on to that for too long. No. And becoming—they kept them frustrated and angry, and it contributes to the sourness in the lineup.

Jamie Brisick
No, well said. And I told—I—funny you say “sourness” because I see a lot of that. And that’s where—and I’m 52 years old, I’ve been doing this for a long time, so I—I’ve probably—I’ve been that guy at one stage of my career, you know? Probably—you know, up until 30, I had a sense of entitlement in the lineup and I wanted to be alpha guy and I wanted—you know, I don’t think I was ever a dick, but there was definitely a part of me that was like, I want to be one of the best surfers out here right now. And if there was someone ripping, I would lift my game. And that kind of acquiescence to “I’m not that guy anymore,” and now my surfing is a much more private thing, or it’s not about like trying to show off for everyone on the beach or show off for your fellow surfers, and it’s not about—or just trying to prove to yourself that you’re the best guy. Yeah. That’s like—that’s not something that can last. There’s no way it can last. I think I learned it slowly over time. And I think I started to see the diminishing returns of surfing. I remember distinctly one really cool thing that happened to me is when I stepped off the tour and I officially retired, and there was a thing where like I was sponsored by Quiksilver and they were like, we could put you on a photo incentive and you could try to get back in there. And I just went, you know what? I did five years on the tour. I’m done. And then I was living in Sydney at the time. A friend of mine was the editor—Andrew Kidman was the editor of Waves magazine. He gave me a job as an associate editor, and I was really curious about writing. And it was kind of like the blinders of my athletic life came off and I was like, holy shit, there’s all this great stuff in the world that I’ve been missing out on because I’ve been trying to get in the top 16. And then working at the magazine was great because it was Mason Stewart Publishing and there were multiple magazines, so there were all these folks who were making magazines. And there was just like this—they were fascinated by pop culture and current events, and there were conversations that I didn’t have in the limited world of pro surfing. So all that was opening up. That year—that first year—while on the one hand I was starting to understand kind of what I would call intellectual curiosity, I’d almost given up on my—not given up on surfing, I was not trying to, you know, make it anymore as a surfer—and I did some of the best surfing of my life. It was like this weird thing where I just let go. You know, there’s that Kelly Slater film, documentary, Letting Go, and it was a year when he just sort of stopped caring, but he’d been working so hard on his craft or his surfing that it was like it just had its own—it had its own momentum. And I felt that. After a year in Sydney, I moved back to LA. I was living in Venice. I was coming up to Malibu all the time, and I was still part of the gang at Malibu, and I was still probably one of the best surfers out there. But what would happen was like—if there were good waves, I would see all my friends and I would go out and surf three times and have a great time and be kind of like buoyed up by the praise of those guys going, “Dude, you're ripping, bro,” and blah. And then, you know, the swell would pass, and then the next day would be a foggy day and there’d be no waves, and I’d go up to Malibu because that was what I did—my inner compass just took me to the Malibu parking lot every day. And there’d be no one there except for the guys who sleep in their cars, who never got careers, and they would have that sour, bitter stuff. And I would look, and I had right glowing in front of me was, don’t go down this track. Figure out your shit. Find a life for yourself. You don’t want to become a surf bum. You don’t want to put all the eggs into your surfing life because it will maroon you and you will be a lonely and bitter guy. And so in some weird way, like seeing that kind of shadow side of the vibrant surfing world—surf scene—totally, those were the days I’d go home and I’m like, I’m gonna read that book I’m supposed to be reading because I’m pretty sure this is how I become a better writer. I’m gonna enroll in that class at Santa Monica College or Art Center so I can do a creative writing class too, so I can get a conversation going. So it was almost like—it was almost seeing those examples. And I think slowly—you know, just over time, my ego, my identity was less wrapped up in surfing. And then, as more work got published—and less even about trying to get published—like the thing that I found great with writing is it wasn’t necessarily about like, look at me, I’m the shit, bro. It was more like, God, I get to go—I get to travel to this place and meet people and ask a lot of questions. I mean, what was really refreshing for me when I got into journalism, it was like, it wasn’t about—like, it wasn’t the Jamie show. Whereas my pro surfing life was trying to make the Jamie show happen, when I got into writing it was like, all I’m doing is like getting to absorb all these great stories or these great places that I was traveling to. So it really became less about like—I’m not the front man for this. I’m the—I’m just—I think Paul Theroux was a writer who’s a great mentor of mine—he once said, writing is an education in the eyes of the public. In other words, like, the things that I’m interested in I would go out, get to learn about, and I would write about them. And the thing was not so much about like, here’s my piece in print, I’m going to show it and share it with all my friends. It was more like, it’s in my head. I had this incredible—I spent the last month researching this thing—how cool is that? So that was the thing that allowed me to have less ego in the surf. As that was gaining momentum and my life was veering in that direction, it was like, okay, I’m not the best surfer at it now anymore, but that’s cool. I got a really—I’m excited to get home and keep working on this piece I’m writing.

Michael Frampton
Yeah, and how did you learn that lesson—to have that long game? I mean, it's awesome. A lot of people, a lot of surfers, don't have that. I know. And it was something—sometimes they have it, but let's say they've committed to a writing class at Santa Monica College, and then there just happens to be the swell of the year when they're supposed to be in class. Yeah. And they go to class and they can't even focus on class. Yeah, that happens. How do you deal with that?

Jamie Brisick
I know, a very common thing. I mean, I think I don’t have it anymore because at one point I just made the conscious choice, and it was almost like a white-knuckling thing. You know, it was almost like that thing of—we were talking about addiction earlier—it was like, I'm addicted to this thing, but I've got to retrain myself. And it didn’t happen overnight. It was just slowly being like, okay, I’m gonna have to miss the good days. And it was, you know, out of necessity. I mean, look, if I came from a wealthy family, if I was a trust fund kid or something, I might never have—I’ve lived long enough to watch friends who have real cushy setups with regards to that kind of thing. They don’t have the pressure on them and they don’t really give up the surf lust. You know, they’re unable—they’re enabled by virtue of the safety net of the family fortune or whatever it is—to keep surfing. So I never had that. So it was like my livelihood depended on it. And my, you know, my mom and dad were great people, and I could have crashed in the spare room, but I was never gonna do that. So I’ve got a rent I’ve got to keep up. And yes, the surf is good today, but I’ve got a piece due tomorrow. I’ve got to sit and write. And now I have no problem with it at all. In fact, I almost enjoy the smaller days. And part of that is just because it has gotten so crowded, and when there’s a swell, everyone’s on it. But no, I mean, I just surf when I have time. But for a decade or more now, I wake up every day and it's about what I'm working on —I'm working on a book about surfing.

Michael Frampton
Cool. What is that called?

Jamie Brisick
Two Birds One Stone. No, I'm writing a novel—a kind of autobiographical novel—about the very stuff we’re talking about: coming up in surfing, my brother’s passing, and all that. About five years ago, I started writing kind of vignette short pieces for Birdwell, for the Birdwell blog, and I've been working on them five years. I think we've done 112 now. And so last year at one point—we talked early on about doing a collection of them—and so last year, end of summer, we started talking about, okay, well, let's edit and put together the best ones. And so I did that, and we released the book just recently. It just came out.

Michael Frampton
And what are you working on at the moment?

Jamie Brisick
Can I—stuff. Cool.

Michael Frampton
Yeah, excellent. And then you just released another project with Birdwell, correct?

Jamie Brisick
Yes.

Michael Frampton
Yeah, and it’s available on Birdwell.com?

Jamie Brisick
Yes, Birdwell.com.

Michael Frampton
Too easy. Yeah. Any final words to the surfers out there?

Jamie Brisick
Kindness in the water. Practice kindness in the water. I guess that’s—yeah. And keeping the fun alive. I mean—and it’s hard for me to say that because I can say that now because really, it is about fun for me. And all I’m really wanting from my surfing experience is just to go home feeling like—with a smile on my face. And so when it does get super competitive or overly crowded and there’s the big swell on, people are like fighting for not only the waves but the parking on the street—that, I don’t want it to be. I don’t want it to be such a cutthroat environment. But you know, there was a time when I probably contributed to that kind of stuff. But I—thank you, Michael, for having me on the show.

Michael Frampton
The thing—I like that. Kindness. Keep it simple. Yeah. Yeah, thanks for doing it. Yeah. Appreciate it. All right. Until next time. Thank you.

45 Jamie Brisick - Former Pro Surfer, Writer, Author.

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