identify

…been thinking a lot about identity lately. Quite a few of the bloggers in this little community are either born in other countries and eventually have found their way to North America, or perhaps have spent much time living abroad. I wonder what about these similarities brings us together across the internetland? People like Gaz from Raw Waters in Cedar, Patch from Patchies Hideout, P from Foulweather, and there are probably more, all come from diverse backgrounds and all share a passion for surf among other things.

I have always struggled with my own identity. As a toe headed kid growing up in the foothills of the Andes Mountains I was often called El Gringo even though I ate arepas and loved queso frito and enpanadas. Then as a teenager in Bartow, Florida I heard it all; from spic to stupid skateboarder. “No we didn’t come over on a banana boat.” I loved, lived and breathed skateboarding from about age thirteen until I started college and began surfing. It wasn’t just t-slids and slappys that attracted me to skateboarding. It was also the FTW attitude that I’d see in my skate buddies and Thrasher Magazine.

Now as an adult I still struggle with cultural identity. I have lived in four countries, speak fluently in Spanish and English and can chat Jamaican Patois as good as any “white” man. I have an easy time of flowing in and out of conversation with just about anyone and feel comfortable meeting people of various cultures. On the other hand, I’ve never comfortably identified with any specific culture or sub-culture. Why is this important you may ask? And I’m not sure that I can answer that. It seems that it should be important as we are social beings, unable to stand alone no matter how our American ideology of “the Individual” tells us differently.

Below is a clip of a Cuban street artist doing a charcoal portrait of a woman from his barrio on a building in Barcelona (gracias Baldiri por el detalle). He raises the question of cultural identity. He talks about people claiming their neighborhood, and not in gang sort of way, he’s talking to grannies, but in a sense of belonging. His work is important because it is fleeting. Like life is fleeting. Or like the exhilaration of a good surf is fleeting. I guess it’s best that I don’t think too much about my identity and instead devote time to experiencing this one life that I have. To getting to know the way my body moves through space, the way that my fingertips strike the keys, the way the eggs flips when it’s perfectly fried, the way my bike tires feel when I’m speeding though a turn picking the perfect line.