Art, Flight, Surf

“Me @ typewriter. ‘paintin in a cave’ windowless room. Jail cell looking sort of thing. -->typewriter: First Chapter…pause…section 1: cut to heavy ripping intro.” -Dane Reynolds

“Margarita is here from Milano. She is pregnant and I volunteer to be the godfather before she has a chance to ask." -Keith Haring

"After repairs, at 20 min. after 11 o’clock Will made the second trial…"-Orville Wright

Dane Reynolds, a world-renown professional surfer. Keith Haring, an 1980’s pop-art icon. Orville Wright, one of the Wright Brothers, who invented the first airplane. Each from different centuries and decades, what do these three men have in common? All three kept notes. All three kept a diary. All three kept a journal.

Dane’s legacy is still being forged as he continues to push the sport of professional surfing. In the late 1980s, Keith Haring left his deep and memorable impression on the world of street/fine-art. The perseverance through countless failures of the Wright Brothers can be seen everyday with a simple glance through the clouds. Beside each of their innovations and dramatic effects on their respective fields, they kept a documentation of their days, data, thoughts and plans, all evidence of their individual mindfulness.

Dane’s journals spawn from the more than a year-long making of his debut surf film. At 20 years old, it’s interesting to see how present and meticulous he was about the making of Dane Reynolds: First Chapter. He divides the film into sections and his journal carrries notes on how he wants the film to look and progress. His journal is a very VERY rough draft of a “screenplay” to his movie. “Me @ typewriter. ‘paintin in a cave’ windowless room. Jail cell looking sort of thing. typewriter: First Chapter…pause…section 1: cut to heavy ripping intro.” The writing is sloppy along with his cross-outs. Reynolds uses a lot of questions, creative thoughts and ideas that he isn’t 100% sure on. His notes are specific and exclusive. “section 1: heavy shredding? Opener. Something fresh. Not punk. Wierd beat. Section 2: Ideas cut up. Olivia tremor control?” He is simply focused on the feeling of the music and presentation for his introduction. Apparently these notes are just notes because the song for his intro is raw gritty punk music, ideas that he isn’t 100% sure on. His writing was based on planning for his production. Things to come in the future and his desires for the end product.

Keith Haring’s journal has a more traditional feel. His entries were detailed as Dane’s, but the contents are different. Haring wrote about his days, who he saw, met, and how he was feeling. His entries are from 1987, at the age of 29. Blue cursive on white grid-paper. He wrote of his friendships. “Margarita is here from Milano. She is pregnant and I volunteer to be the godfather before she has a chance to ask. She is delighted. That was the most exciting thing of the day besides the unveiling of Jeff Koons’ sculpture.” He also explains he meets Jeff Koons for the first time and says Koons seems nice. “He’s one of the few people from this group who are really interesting to me.”  It is a very detailed look into his life and how he was constantly surrounded by names that are respected, esteemed, famed. Koons, Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquait, He goes on to explain the rest of his night. Surprisingly, his entries are—in my opinion—dry, basic, dull, which is contrary to all his work and paintings. It seems he sits down at the end of the day and writes about what he did and when, I say at the end of the day because most of the times he discusses are rounded, “I wake up at 8AM…At 5PM I returned to BBDO with Jean…at 6:30 I began to paint with black  paint…we get to school at 8:30…” so on and so forth. Daily journaling.

Orville Wright’s journal was the most impressive in the sense of details, form, structure, and presentation. With beautiful cursive, annotations, and minimal cross-outs his data was clear. His entries were from December 17, 1903. Wright must have had a small notebook to write down numbers and data from flight trials and then later transfer data to a more formal journal. “A sudden dart when out about 100 feet from the end of the tracks ended the flight. Time about 12 seconds (not know exactly as watch was not promptly stopped)… After repairs, at 20 min. after 11 o’clock Will made the second trial… Dist. not measured but about 175ft. Wind speed not quite so strong.” This must have been an extremely exciting and inspiring time for the Wright Brothers’ work. Their machine was in flight and they were working on the controls. Orville writes in a very mechanistic-style, with little emotion mostly statements of occurrences, numbers.

These three gentlemen used journaling as a different tool. An artist used his journal for day-to-day remembrance. A surfer used his journal to plan and transcribe his vision. An inventor, determined to defy the laws of gravity, used his journal to document his data and research. Each of these individuals have/had their own purpose when it came to writing. Orville Wright’s and Keith Haring’s journals were far more similar than to Dane Reynolds’. Wright’s and Haring’s were similar in the sense of recapping and stating things that occurred. Mr. Reynolds’ journal encapsulated feelings, thoughts, ideas, questions, far from Orville’s recalling or Haring’s. The lesson to be learned is that these three dudes were aware and present.  

Orville Wright

Keith Haring