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My set-up and plan werent terrible, but each had fatal flaws. As a preface, just after I arrived Id dropped my only flashlight into a tide-pool. Maybe I dropped it because I was distracted by the poetic urge to Beweep my Outcast Fate, like my poem suggests, but the only thought I can remember having was the "Oh shit" when I realized the light was taking on water. I repeated that imprecation when the sun sank below the horizon more quickly than Id expected, and the billions of stars overhead didnt brighten the beach in any way useful to a guy trying to operate twin stereo tape recorders from a log. A more serious flaw still was the one I didnt see at all. The stretch of foreshore where Id set up shop was flatter than Id realized, and the tide snaked up it more rapidly than I was prepared for. Cold, salty water was soon bumping aggressively against my log, and it wasnt as stable as Id have liked. I had just three safe minutes to make my recordings instead of fifteen. Before I could pack up and move to the higher log--perhaps this was when I paused to notice the White Snarl of the Breakers, or Love Slipping Away--the waves undermined one of the microphone tripods. I lunged to catch it as it teetered toward the salt water, my arm caught the strap of the Uher it was plugged into, and both the mike and the Uher made a brief, but terminal, visit to Davey Jones Locker. I did rescue the other three microphones and the second Uher, and I even regrouped to record almost twenty minutes of perfectly usable surf ambiance later that evening. I did it by standing in the bone-chilling seawater up to my knees with the surviving tape recorder slung across my shoulders and two of the microphones held at arms length, still on their tripods, to obtain the maximum stereo effect. I half-rescued myself from a major fuck-up, in other words: half-fixed a bad situation Id created through my own stupidity and inattention. Thirty years later, I can see that this was a seminal moment in my life, one in which Id acted characteristically: That little piece of slapstick-on-the-beach was me, then and today. I also note that as a writer, I failed the moment miserably. I wrote only a sappy nature poem about how many stars there are once you get clear of the cities, and how lonely and confusing it is to be in your late 20s and be attracted to every female you encounter who doesnt have a horde of nose warts worthy of the Wicked Witch of the West. Those insights werent even news to me at the time, so why was I recording--and then for Gods sake publishing--them instead of delivering the deliciously revealing piece of slapstick Id performed with the Uhers and the Pachena Bay tide? The insights I might have gleaned from the slapstick had profound (and for me, permanently relevant) implications. They are, from the specific to the general: 1. If one is going out into
the big world to make the worlds first quadraphonic audio taping
of surf, one ought to take some competent technicians along if one doesnt
want to risk
a. catastrophic failure and b. the destruction of expensive equipment;
2. The tides are caused by the moons gravity, not by ours; 3. Dont run in the surf if youre not prepared to get wet; 4. Dont be stargazing unless youre in a warm, dry location; 5. There is more safety in foresight
and planning than in trusting to technology.
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