Daan Verhoeven

Cornelis Verhoeven - the detour of words

2012-02-02T15:41:00.000+01:00

Today would have been my father's 84th birthday. I miss him a lot, and often, but i never quite know how to express that. The essay i've put on his blog today explained a little to me why that is the case. Part of it is this:

"We continuously need new words to express old experiences. And especially within the expression of those elemental experiences lurks the kitsch. This is what makes them inexpressible."

The rest of the essay, 'The detour of words', can be found here:

http://cornelisverhoeven.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/the-detour-of-words/

Blue Hole portraits

2012-01-31T15:42:00.000+01:00

Here are some of the lovely people i get to play with in Dean's Blue hole:

This is Liv at the bottom plate

and Livvy upside down

and this is Georgina

and Georgina being lovely on the platform

There is the ridiculously good-looking couple of Tomoka and Igor

and me on one of those rare occasions where i get to see a bottom plate at depth

(picture by Liv Philip)

and more commonly, me and my ass

(Picture by Liv Philip -to who i apologize)

the Spirit of the Blue Hole

2012-01-30T02:32:00.000+01:00

There are those who don't believe in magic. They reckon it's not logical, not rational. A few years back i was walking down an old street when a beautiful loud noise made me turn my head, and towards me came bobbing over the cobblestones an Aston Martin DB5 -you know, the car James Bond drives in Goldfinger. My jaw dropped, i might have drooled. A traffic cop saw my expression and said: "It's just a car, you know.""No it isn't," i replied, "if that's just a car then Rembrandt is just paint, Handel just sound, life a variation of carbon, love a mere bunch of hormones." Well, that's what i wished i said, anyway -it took me a couple of hours to figure out why that 'just a car' attitude made me so mad. That kind of reductionism sucks all the joy and magic out of life, like expressing a good meal in terms of carbs and proteins.

Now i have the bizarre good fortune to be in a place that is magic, actual, factual magic. Dean's Blue Hole, Long Island. It is unfathomably beautiful

and magic happens there: every day people venture into that darkness on a single breath of air and reach depths no man thought possible until recently; scientist still can't really explain how they do it

it's enough to turn your world upside down

As usual, my dad said it better: "A is not A; if A = A, life shrivels to an erotic-less, urge-less, amorphous mass of banalities. Only through negation can we become speechless spectators of the great Presence, for which we live."

Magic works in mysterious ways: i have no underwater camera capable of capturing it, but a friend does, and on this magic day, he graciously lent it to me, allowing me to not only become a speechless spectator of the magical Spirit of the Blue Hole, but photograph it. To all those dull deconstructing rationalists, she says hi

crazy creatures

2012-01-24T17:04:00.000+01:00

Turns out that paradise makes its creatures quite bonkers. The wasps are twice as long

because of a champagne bottle in the middle

there are bugs with sticks as eyebrows

and some with carrots on their heads

the dragon flies wanna hump pegs

and the spiders have green asses with dots, white skull heads, and yellow legs with black furry pompoms

plus they're huge

and of course i'm gonna like orange butterflies, but this one took it to the next level: orange fur and even his eyes were orange

what's really crazy cute though, is the lizards. Not only do they hang at strange angles

they play peek-a-boo

playing in Dean's Blue Hole

2012-01-23T02:55:00.000+01:00

Here's the first of i hope many Bahamas videos

putting the art in earth

2012-01-19T17:30:00.001+01:00

I often wonder who painted the sky, but when you're in the sky, you can wonder who drew the earth, for it can be quite mad. All this blue and green can be Rothko on a not-so-linear day

and these spots can be Pollock using a fatter brush

but this looks like Japanese script

betcha it says "hurricanes fuck off"

Wordsworth probably had something to do with this

and maybe Miro had his hand in this

but who made these alien eyes?

though i suspect O'Keefe designed its tear ducts

the angles of january

2012-01-15T19:48:00.000+01:00

little nibbler

2012-01-14T20:05:00.000+01:00

Squirrel outside the house today

lessons learned in 2011

2011-12-31T16:17:00.000+01:00

it was another mad year

met some interesting smelling characters

saw some interesting things

and it turns out that god is indeed a DJ

and drives a fiat

but some of the land was designed by Miro

and some plants by Freud

this is how cherries ought to be eaten

though you can always complain about a lack of condiments

some pants are very boogie woogie

some are unforgivable

and that's not a snorkel in my pants -i'm just happy to see you

talking about pants, them Brits be well classy, innit?

especially when pole-dancing with a parasol

and the Frenchies do mysterious things with their thumbs to British women

the Dutchies don't need fingers for nose-picking

or suits for static

but they do appreciate the classic girl in dress

the Greeks have some deep glasses

their boats almost fly

it is a lot of work keeping Santorini white

and this happens when they fart:

which gets them in all sorts of Darwin Award-winning trouble

they have interesting ways of dealing with nature

though the Austrians of course take a different approach

goats like a day at the beach -provided there is some shade

cats can play peek-a-boo

dogs can conduct

so can my nephew

extensive investigations were done into the phenomenon of water

turns out it's extremely fun

you can jump around in it

and play hula hoop with buble rings

and pee in it, for yellow is as yellow does

which brings us to the unexpected melancholy of a solitary toilet roll

on a lighter note, there is such a thing as a convivial birdie, for all your action, music and penholder needs

and Bee Town has a new sheriff

What else was up in 2011?

well, this is where music comes from

and rain only adds to the rock'n'roll of it

the king is dead and the emperor is still looking for his balls

god might be in the details

but the devil is in my eyebrow

so grooming is extra important

streets can become pregnant

feeding babies do some existential things to you -which can't be good

but it's always good to curl up with a friend

and you can't have too many party horns

Have a wondrous 2012.

Dedicated to those who went around the corner in 2011

december light

2011-12-20T17:37:00.000+01:00

So the lights are about to go out on the 21st, only to be reborn soon after, but in the 5 minutes they shone this month i ran outside to try and capture it. I wasn't alone there -bugs were still around, mid-december

even though there was frost on the ground

and on the moss

though most of the leaves had fallen

some green tried to persevere

as did some red

it reminded me of Dylan Thomas; it raged, raged against the dying of the light

dancing with Drooler

2011-12-16T15:59:00.000+01:00

Met a cat
at work today
did the cat-meeting dance
you know
one step forward
(miaow)

step back

step forward
(sniff)

name was Drooler
-or at least that's what she did.
And purr.
Nice lady.
Or dude
-it's rude to check,
innit.

the Emperor's wet nurse

2011-12-10T20:02:00.001+01:00

Seems emperor Johnston is pleased with my recent portraits of him, showing him as the relaxed feline leader he can be

and as a sharp, intelligent & ravishingly handsome czar he often is

He was so pleased, in fact, he promoted me to be his wet nurse:

But upon discovery i don't lactate, especially not in my armpit, he got back to his usual pissed-off self

be water

2011-12-10T11:18:00.001+01:00

My friends Eric van Riet Paap (aka Mr Van) and Danny Martherus have started a freediving school with a twist: next to regular courses, they also teach 'Water Mindfulness' -a form of meditation aided by the weightlessness you experience in water. It is a fantastic and very relaxing thing to do, and they are excellent teachers, so if you find yourself in the Land of Nethers, drop them a mail.

They can be found at http://www.be-water.nl/

photo © Ivo Zagorchinov

the crow: posing

2011-12-09T17:59:00.001+01:00

Modeling for me yesterday morning: Lady Crow, giving it all her best angles, front

side

other side

back

after which she gracefully fucked off

in a very 'hate to see you go, love to watch you leave' kinda way

November portraits

2011-12-06T16:48:00.001+01:00

It was a bit of a slow month for portraits, hence a week late, but i did see my favorite girl

and one of my favorite men

and Socrates, oddly enough

and someone whose legs were as thin as the wheels on her bicycle -i'd like to call her Nicolette -Nicolette bicyclette

and for weeks i thought this would be the loveliest thing i'd see this month

but then i turned around at the train station in my old home town and saw this

a tree of knowledge

2011-12-02T19:47:00.001+01:00

Last weekend i was in Holland to present a book to my sister. The book is about my father, in a roundabout sorta way: he and his work inspired an artist, Jeanne Schouten, who made several pieces with his book titles or key words as their names. She had a beautiful exhibition in my hometown, and i kept staring at her piece 'een boom van kennis' (a tree of knowledge):

In the essay, my father describes the moment he became aware of himself as a spectator; he'd just come home from school, and was standing on a little stump of a tree, watching his mother talk to a merchant through a window. "The image in my head, not forced onto me by anyone and not shared with anyone, my inalienable and precarious possession, shows little more than an apparition of my mother and a rim of ginger hair on the skull of the merchant. That is indeed not material for a story and cannot compete in levels of epic with even the scent of a cooky, about which Marcel Proust wrote his masterpiece.

But what is especially connected to it is the look backwards from that unexciting scene to myself and the rickety stump I was standing on, in that moment the navel of the earth, and the realization: i’m standing here, and there behind that window something is visible which I’m looking at now and which I fiercely want not to be a delusion, but evidence of my return home. From that fierce will my me as witness of my own life was born. Suddenly and permanently I couldn’t see anything without seeing at the same time that I saw it and that I was watching it, or: without knowing that I knew and recognizing my knowledge as mine. I saw everything double, there where it was and in my head."

(you can find the whole translation of the essay here: http://cornelisverhoeven.wordpress.com/2011/12/02/a-tree-of-knowledge/ )

I've always been touched by that essay, wondering how a 4 year old boy can be that deep, and when i saw what Jeanne had done with it, how she'd found the right kind of stump, how she'd made it rickety by giving it only three feet, how she incorporated the shine of old metal my father was so fond of, how she used gold and patina to indicate the apparition, i instantly felt a fondness for that piece by her. All of her work is marvelous (check out this great one called 'detour': http://www.jeanneschouten.nl/gaandeweg16.html) but the tree touched me especially.

So i made mention of that during my little stuttering speech. Little did i suspect at the time of writing that speech that Jeanne had remembered how much i enjoyed that piece, and i was enormously surprised when she gave me it as a present when i had done mumbling. It was a scary thing transporting it, but luckily i have the large bags, rigid fins and soft suits that come with freediving, so the tree was protected and now stands where i can see it when i go to bed and wake up, reminding me of that wonder is a matter of perception -you see it when you see it if you realize that it's you seeing it.

black peter

2011-11-29T21:33:00.001+01:00

There's a lot of things us Dutch can be proud of -Mondriaan, Vermeer, Cruijff, my dad, Rembrandt, interesting legal herbs, enormous skies- and some we're rightfully ashamed of (apartheid, Indonesia, 2Unlimited), and then there's some questionable stuff. I've had to explain the concept of 'Zwarte Piet' (Black Peter) more often than i care to, but pictures say a lot:

I don't know if it's racist or not. I'm inclined to think not -it's a holiday thing for the kids- but i've had black friends visiting and raising an eyebrow. It's a little close to golliwog. I hope it's more innocent than that

But sometimes it looks just plain wrong

It reminds me of a story my dad was fond of telling me. He had an African colleague at school, and when i first saw the man -i must've been around 4 years old- i went up to him and asked him: "You're Black Peter, aren't you?" He asked: "How can you tell?" I got shy and said: "By your curly hair."

November abstracts

2011-11-21T20:43:00.001+01:00

November is turning abstract on me. For example, the Peace Lilly in the bedroom decided to first go all wayang

then it turned into ET phone home

the smoke tree -normally a stable favorite- became kinda Rothko meets Pollock when mist dropped drops on it

and the mist, THE MIST, it makes everything ghostly, say Hopper meets Stephen King

and when the mist is gone, the dusk is kinda rushed, like an O'Keefe in 2 minutes

So schizo lilly's, mixed mists, rushed dusks -it's a challenge to keep up with november.

kitty on bed

2011-11-18T13:50:00.001+01:00

His royal highness Emperor Johnston was not pleased with all the attention given to the canine kind last weekend, so in order to make up i did a session with him this week. First he was all coy

but eventually he came round and let me take a portrait -though of course he refused to leave the bed for it

The Romans were right, purple suits emperors.

doggie in the window

2011-11-14T19:24:00.001+01:00

the puppy in the window is intolerably adorable

but the one below the window begs to be checked out as well

but neither of them is for sale. Woof woof.

figs

2011-11-10T19:49:00.001+01:00

They're everywhere

because we got figloads of 'm

Liv Philip attempts UK record DNF

2011-11-07T22:38:00.001+01:00

This weekend Liv Philip, 2010's best overall female freediver, innit, attempted to break the UK record DNF. Here's what happened:

Liv broke the record previously held by, well, Liv.

cotinus fell

2011-11-03T16:55:00.003+01:00

for a bigger version click here

october portraits

2011-10-31T22:33:00.000+01:00

for reasons unbeknownst, or maybe absent in total, the portraits i did in october were all a bit odd. Some were metaphorically fruity

some literally bubbly

some had strange tones

others strange object placement

some were oddly perfect

and some just gave me an odd look

i wonder what oddity november will bring.

freediving peek a boo

2011-10-29T20:19:00.001+02:00

lucifer

2011-10-24T18:58:00.001+02:00

my eyebrow has spawned a devil

photo by George Miller

don't say i didn't warn you

Falling leave

2011-10-23T18:37:00.000+02:00

To combat the onslaught of autumn melancholy i translated a piece by my dad about the homesickness he felt around this time of year. He put it beautifully: "What we achieve will forever lag behind what we desire. Looking back from the point where we are to where we started from, all we see is an insurmountable distance. Homesickness to me seems an attempt to measure that distance, to gauge its haziness."

More here: http://cornelisverhoeven.wordpress.com/2011/10/23/falling-leave/

bottle rocket man

2011-10-22T13:46:00.000+02:00

freaky freedivers

2011-10-05T10:10:00.000+02:00

ok, so now that there's some distance between them freedivers and me -in some cases several thousand miles- i can finally reveal that when god created freedivers, she made them freaky

they bend in weird ways

they hang around in odd angles

get the most unlikely of tans

do strange puffing of the mouth

and, even freakier, it looks cute on some

which might have something to do with their baby-butt shaped tongue

that comes out regularly

though some attempts fail

and when nothing's coming out, they try to put stuff in

that, by the way, is not the freakiest thing about Christian -whose ears shine pink

Some of them take a little too much pleasure in trying to break shit

which makes others cry

Some look perpetually pissed off

and others ever-adorable

There's disturbing facial hair going on (mine, for example, and this one's)

and disturbing facial features (mine again, but also this one)

They find medical posters hilarious

but that might be due to the gasses they inhale

But freaky though our bunch is, the chicks rock

and some dudes are so hot, they fart sparks

Long live freediving freaks, i say -hope to see you again soon.

PS Jody Fisher reminded me of the following, and she has a good poin:

freediving Stavie's Blue Hole

2011-10-02T22:14:00.002+02:00

pretty freedivers part II

2011-09-18T18:18:00.000+02:00

There's so many of them -they keep popping from all over the world. The French Englishman Greg Borel was looking tres fabulous -even in pink- at registration

Fine Fin distributor of licorice Jonerik in his cowboy best

a lot of ridiculing adjectives can be used for German hair, but in the case of Ilka and this light, it plays well together

talking about hair, undisputed champ is Samo from Slovenia

i mean, it's heavenly -it's got a halo

though Max from Sweden has a pretty cool fro going from him too

and even eyelashes can be backlit

oh backlit, backlit...here's Czech Alena's back lit

and Czech Jarmilla's front

lovely smile award is a split between French Solenn

and Swedish Åsa

and i thought the prettiest was Guillaume Nery

but it is Greece's George

pretty freedivers

2011-09-07T18:31:00.002+02:00

Kalamata is filled with them. For example, Iru, from South America somewhere

And Jody from Australia -who's hair catches fire around dusk

and from a bit further down under, the sultry kiwi Chris Marshall (to whom i'm quite partial)

and Ken, who's not Barbie-like at all with his exotic looks but actually is Danish

from Åland, Ingela Pingela, who's pretty serious

and pretty retarded

From Japan we have the superstylish Ryuzo

and in his team there's the Japanese version of Audrey Hepburn

even the Eastern Europeans are pretty

and our Russian champ is flawless as usual

but the prettiest of them all so far is of course Le Marc

but next week the Swedes arrive, and they're notoriously perfect. And some more frenchy Frenchness is coming. And i have yet to capture some of them fine Brits.To be continued.

janna pouts

2011-08-28T16:58:00.001+02:00

This is Janna -she does a good pout

and you can put a lot of chopsticks in her hair

TVRrrrrrrr

2011-08-23T22:45:00.000+02:00

luke dixon, sheriff of bee town

2011-08-22T22:11:00.002+02:00

he bee the law

what's up?

2011-08-21T15:01:00.001+02:00

and what's going down

where there's smoke tree there's firelight

2011-08-13T11:23:00.000+02:00

The Cotinus -or smoke tree- doesn't only have leaves that play with light till your irises twinkle

it also has a flower that's equally dazzlingly misty in color

as it is in black and white

interview Cornelis Verhoeven 1979

2011-08-13T11:15:00.000+02:00

This is an interview with my dad conducted in 1979, just after he'd won the Netherlands' most prestigious literary prize, the P.C. Hooftprize. If he appears to be somewhat/very grumpy and edgy, it is not just because they'd sent him an arrogant interviewer who'd never heard of him, but mostly because he was going through a divorce. But what he says about the word being a middle position between thought and action is a major theme in his work. For me this is not an easy video to watch or translate, and it isn't my dad at his best, but it does show some vulnerable sides of him i think are beautiful.

one more reason why i love water

2011-08-07T16:40:00.000+02:00

spiders can't swim

where pebbles live

2011-08-07T16:34:00.000+02:00

Turns out pebbles are from Brighton

which is understandable for it's a nice place to hang out

we bee pollen

2011-08-07T16:18:00.000+02:00

Bees are a bit obsessed

i mean, they really get into it

but then, sometimes they get reflective about it

can i take your portrait?

2011-07-31T22:28:00.001+02:00

After years of battling my shyness and losing, finally there was a face so etched with experience, so wonderfully lit, and with such kind eyes, that i had to get over myself and ask the hard question: can i take your portrait?

His name is Lawrence, he lives on a wagon, he has a shih tzu. It's not the first time someone asked to take his picture; he was in the Guardian, in an article on people with alternative lifestyles. But it was my first time asking a total stranger to sit for me -or remain seated, as the case was.

Thank you, Lawrence. You made a difficult thing very easy.

pets & animals

2011-07-21T18:05:00.001+02:00

cobwebs

2011-07-20T21:26:00.000+02:00

Cobwebs can be used for all sorts of things, can't they? They can be reigns to ride furniture shaped like a horse

or a nice hammock in the sky

and even when they've served their function

they can still make pretty

Superman and the innocence of water

2011-07-16T21:28:00.000+02:00

After Adel's accident i think we were all in shock; we lost a friend doing something we love, and that kind of loss is too big a deal to digest instantly. It is confusing still because we don't know exactly what happened, and even if i rationally know we did everything we could and everything went technically as it should have, an emotional and very stupid part of me thinks 'if you were superman you would have gotten him.'

Superman used to represent the fun side of freediving to me; i'd made a couple of videos where i dressed up as a superman caricature to ridicule that whole misconception of freedivers having special superhuman skills. (Actually, i was just mucking about having a laugh, but in hindsight it could be interpreted as something vaguely meaningful) I have always taken safety and being a safety diver serious, because that's not about me, but when it came to my own dives, i like to keep it light. Make fun of it. Pretend to be superman.

But then there was the accident and how do you deal with that? How do reconcile your love for the lightness of water with its inherent dangers? It invites us to play but one mistake and you're gone. Suddenly, superman wasn't fun anymore. Back on shore, after we'd frantically looked for him, I got out of my wetsuit in a daze. Everything was a blur. The only thing i recognized was a need to go back into the water, go back now or forever stay out. So i went for a swim and dove to the bottom at around 10 meters, laid down on a sandy bit and then did my favorite thing: let the water bring me back up. As i drifted up slowly, watching the rays of light in the waves, a sentence of my dad's popped up in my head:

"Water is innocent of the temptations that well up from it; it even washes away its own sins."

Water is innocent. That comforted me -it felt true to what i was experiencing. I also made it easier to cope with what i was feeling: that i had to get back into the water, despite the horrible thing that just happened there. I'd keep diving, there was no question anymore about that. The memory of Adel would not be served by us stopping doing what he loved to do. But could it still be fun?

It's a strange thing after a death -when can you laugh again? When are you also perhaps allowed to laugh again? It's not just a personal thing, you want to show respect. After my father died of cancer, i started making bad jokes about cancer the next day, because i was angry and wanted to vent in a non-violent way, but at that time it was clear i had some social leeway -if the jokes were in bad taste i'd instantly be forgiven. With Adel, i wasn't sure of the procedure; when will we dive again, when will we mess around and crack jokes again?

The answer became clear quite quickly: everybody felt the same way, we all were shocked, we all lost a friend, and we all wanted to go back to the sea as soon as possible. Of course we had to take a couple of days off for bureaucratic things, but there was room for laughter almost instantly, remembering the funny side of Adel. As deeply a religious man as he was, he never let that get in the way of joining us when we were cracking nasty jokes. His jokes were always more sweet and far less disgusting, but with some of the things we said (remember, this is just men together for 10 days without the civilizing influence of women) he could have easily taken offense, but because of his beautiful sense of humor and calm dignity, he never did. The day before he'd missed a step transferring from one boat to the other and he dropped into the sea with less grace than we were accustomed to of him, so we called him 'Ah-fell' -he really enjoyed that. He was one of us, he would have wanted us to go on.

So we went back to the sea and back to having fun, this time with a hint of tension in the water and an edge of morbidity on land. Since there were only men around, rather than tears, humor became a welcome relief of the shock. One of the disgusting things we discovered was this trick by George:

And you'd think that the presence of some girls a bit later would improve matters, but actually, things just got more disturbing. Check out what Guillaume is doing to this plate of Baklavas -and the effect it has on Liv:

Guillaume is not only good with Baklavas plates, he's also good with bottom plates, even when they hang below 100 meters. That requires some serious safety, hanging at 30 meters. The first day back in the water was a bit of a test, seeing if i could deal with staring down that rope into the endless blue again. It's a safety diver's worst fear to not see your athlete come up, to have to make that decision to go back up without him or her. After having made that decision once, staying down there as long as i could and not seeing him anywhere, i was not entirely sure how it would be hanging down there again. The only way to find out was to go.

At 25 i couldn't see Guillaume yet, so i kept falling, not quite as relaxed as usual, and definitely with visions of Adel in the back of my mind, but i wasn't freaking out and i felt enough reserve to stay there for a while and be able to bring somebody back up. So i waited at 30. The sight of Guillaume coming up is always lovely, since he's got beautiful technique and a real sense of water, but on that day it was especially wonderful, feeling the relief wash away all trouble. He's a cool cookie, winking at me when he sees me. He's fine, you know everything's gonna be ok, you swim up together and just enjoy the dive. It's almost like it used to be, just beautiful and fun, though over the next weeks i notice there's another element, that a bit of the innocence is gone and replaced by a touch of grief. I think anyone who's experienced loss will recognize this, after a while it strangely enriches your experience with a new dimension, a realization you are lucky to be here, and that it could have just as well not happen at all. You take things less for granted. I fell in love with freediving -and especially people coming up- all over, and made a bit of a love-song-video:

Another thing to fall in love with was an initiative of the big genius that is George Papadopoulos, who takes enormous delight in blowing air into plastic bottles at depth and the letting them rocket by over-pressure once back on the surface:

George and i had many talks about the deeper things in life:

And even superman returned; on my last day in Santorini, the wind was sweeping the waves a little too high to take the boats out, so a bunch of us went into one of them impossibly beautiful Greek towns on an impossibly sheer cliff, and after descending we went for a swim in the harbor. When i came out i dried myself with a towel my girl had given me, one displaying a very questionable image of superman, apparently wearing lipstick. The wind caught it and pressed it tight against me, and for a giggle i put superman's face over mine and assumed the pose. Guillaume spotted it and made it his picture of the day (his photography is annoyingly good: http://www.onedayonepicture.fr/)

It wasn't till i got back that the emotional, irrational part started acting up some more. The first few days i was quite out of it, forgetting what i was doing, since there was nothing serious to be done -except some bills, which i forgot. Every other thought was of his family, and going over everything, calculating whether i could have gone down to 60 after spending so long at 30, if at 60 i could've seen him, if i could have done anything there, if i could have...

4 days after i'd gotten back i was at a pool competition. At around 70 meters, Adel flashed through my mind, and i had to put everything to work not to stop swimming right there. You want life to pause sometimes, and it never does, which is also its cruel solace. We go on, knowing we can live with the pain. I'll miss Adel, miss that shy smile and those sharp eyes, his friendly and calm presence, even that slightly dodgy ponytail of his. I know i'll re-live those last moments of Adel over and over again, that june 7th will be a date that is burned in my memory, and that looking down an empty line when an athlete is slower than expected to come up will freak me out a little more than it used to. I also know that i can handle that -regretfully, that don't make me no superman.

bella under a chair

2011-07-09T11:25:00.000+02:00

through the ring

2011-07-06T10:28:00.000+02:00

Giorgios coming up

2011-06-21T21:18:00.002+02:00

how to make Canadians smile

2011-06-14T18:07:00.000+02:00

Canadians are a tough bunch

till you offer them a beer

Cornelis Verhoeven

2011-06-11T08:50:00.000+02:00

It's ten years ago today that he died. In order to commemorate him i started a blog for him:

http://cornelisverhoeven.wordpress.com/

I've posted some new translations on it, and a bit of a video interview with him from 1985 that i've translated:

I'll gradually put all the work i've translated here on that blog as well.

Missing him isn't getting any easier.

weeds at dusk

2011-06-04T17:10:00.000+02:00

arches of Santorini

2011-06-03T17:27:00.000+02:00

3 days here and there's a theme developing

to the gate

2011-06-02T17:50:00.002+02:00

a colorful week

2011-05-24T16:47:00.001+02:00

Upon reflection

it was an incredibly colorful week

which you'd expect when you hang with gardeners

but i was thinking more of this

and this

but even there you'll see some fantastic things

merely getting around was colorful

and often painterly

there were some blues Miles Davis could have worked with

and some blues that were yellow (don't wanna know why)

some yellow quite mellow

But often the most colorful moments were those with the bugs

like this extremely green thing

or this huge one -who had an orange mouth, which i slightly envy

but as is often the case, red-hot red was hottest

tube

2011-05-15T19:49:00.000+02:00

You might think the tube's a bit grey

but it can actually be surprisingly colorful

All the Queen's Ravens

2011-05-09T22:03:00.000+02:00

Finally got to see this band live

They're called All the Queen's Ravens, fronted by the fantastic Charlie and Laura

with the awesome Luke on guitar

and a really strong drum'n'bass section

Normally they have a bigger line-up and play amplified, so it's a real testament to their rock-your-socks-off abilities that the songs were strong as ever unplugged and bare. Here's an example of the band in full swing

a bit rainy

2011-05-08T22:31:00.000+02:00

They say London can get a bit rainy

but that's not necessarily a bad thing

may movements

2011-05-02T13:05:00.001+02:00

It was a nice day for a drive, be it in something fancy-ish

or a bit less so

(check out the gorgeous white-cheeked rear tyre)

be it leisurely

or professionally

but no matter how nice of a drive it was, nothing beats flying

q-day in t-town

2011-05-01T15:25:00.000+02:00

Yesterday was Queen's day in Holland, which officially is the birthday of our Queen's late mother, but actually an excuse to go out and drink

Since our queen comes from the House of Oranje-Nassau, it is traditional to wear orange while getting drunk

though other colors get served too

and some just wear white

and a badass drumkit

in spirit it's all orange

Freud's fig-leaf

2011-04-27T19:02:00.000+02:00

If you don't think there's something freudian about this

then you can fig right off

bonkers

2011-04-25T14:35:00.001+02:00

some people think i'm bonkers

but i just think i'm free

being mooned by a 4x4

2011-04-20T18:16:00.000+02:00

Thought i saw my second cute spider of the spring, one with 4 giant legs and 4 tiny ones

but then it mooned me

and followed that with a plié

which moved it beyond cute and into the category of the coolest animal this side of the Thames.

apology to emperor Johnston

2011-04-17T12:52:00.000+02:00

This will not be so much a retraction of the previous post about his royal highness emperor Johnston -he is, after all, our universal ruler and benevolent leader- it is more of an addendum to it. Factually correct though the elder post is, it seems that the pictures used in the post were, let's say, less than flattering. This was delicately pointed out this morning, when his feline divinity awoke the author of said post by transferring his svelte yet surprisingly dense 20 pounds through his regal claws into an area of the poster that wasn't designed for this particular type of pressure (nor this type of kitten).

He has made his point(s), for the truth is, he is a magnificent beast

who takes the gravitas of his position with grace

and though the pressures of ruling this world might make him seem aloof

and though he might be a little overly fond of the feeding bowl

he is a strikingly handsome kitty -eh, emperor

whose balls should never be the object of one's attempt at humor if one values his own.

All hail magnificent Johnston!

dust to more dust

2011-04-16T13:43:00.000+02:00

When renovating a house, a few things become apparent. The work is a bit dusty

without the right tools you're screwed

so it's good to have step brothers

and even better to do it with friends

so, though the dust does go everywhere

and the rubble might seem endless

there is, as always, real beauty to be found, some literal

some more abstract

his royal highness, Emperor Johnston

2011-04-10T23:03:00.000+02:00

Meet the ruler of the universe, Emperor Johnston

The reason you might not have heard of him before is that he was looking for his balls

then got distracted by the birdees

and eventually became part of the bench he was laying on

but he is the absolute chief of the galaxies, and all us mortals in it are alive merely because he benevolently tolerates our presence -remember that.

He never did manage to locate his balls, though

Hyacinth's final glory

2011-04-07T18:49:00.000+02:00

itsy bitsy orange

2011-04-04T21:35:00.000+02:00

it's not often i find these mofoes cute

god's car

2011-04-03T12:10:00.000+02:00

You'd think she'd drive an Aston Martin, for the divine lines, or a Ferrari, for the almighty sound, or a Daimler DS420, because that would be wrong in a suitable way, but no, she drives an old Fiat 500

I think it's because she saw Umberto and five other dudes with gear getting out of one in Ocean Men and thought that just miraculous.

1520

2011-04-02T10:34:00.000+02:00

Can't figure out what this is, besides a grave

Is this how they bury nameless people? Is 1520 a significant year? Is it code?

Can anybody help me figure this one out?

remix to the remixed ignition

2011-04-01T12:45:00.003+02:00

lovin' this:

a dive with lovely

2011-03-30T16:34:00.000+02:00

There was a competition in Namur last sunday, and these Belgium comps are notorious, not just for being the scene of the first ever Constant Apple world record, but also because they involve 3 disciplines in about 3 hours and that makes them deadly. Plus it's not the most forgiving of pools, with an ever-changing profile, very shallow turn at one end and weak lines that will not support a diver's weight, so going in you know it's going to be tough. Adding to these difficulties was my digestive system, which had been varying between moaning and screaming at me for about a week, and i wasn't really in the mood to max, so i created my own extra drama as well.

On a huge plus side, my lovely girl had come over to compete and be supercoach. She helped me get to a 5:11 static where i normally would have given up at 3 (constant mental battle is very tiring) and convinced me to do a dynamic despite my whining. I did a quick 101 to get it over with, bad result but good to get over myself. She managed to do a 5:40 and almost immediately after a 75 dynamic, despite no preparation and having to borrow weight and fin from the previous competitor. So far things were going a bit rough.

But then we were up for no fins together

photo by Danny Martherus

and the light in the pool was all pretty, and standing next to all this loveliness, i felt suddenly relieved in a non-smelly way, and decided to go for a good technical dive:

Lovely did a PB with a 62 meter dive which proves she can do no fins and do a lot more. She ended up with a silver medal for her static, and i with a gold for the no fins, although in the overall results, i was ruthlessly beaten by Danny Martherus (and 3 others), on whom i'd declare war but he's way too nice and he shot the picture and the video of lovely and me. That's him next to me, with a silver medal for no fins -he's too pretty to beat

pretty apple

2011-03-29T22:53:00.000+02:00

willowy triangle

2011-03-26T20:19:00.000+01:00

the extraordinary Mr Van

2011-03-23T23:03:00.000+01:00

This is Mr Van

He does extraordinary things; he can hold his breath for more than 8 minutes, he can swim 200 meters underwater with a bigass fin, and 155 without it. By being so extraordinary, he singlehandedly raised the level of Dutch freediving. But what is truly great is that quality extraordinary people have: he makes it look easy. Check out what he did today, just for fun

Much like laughter, and a bit like yawning, extraordinary feats and people inspire extraordinariness. A man like Mr Van inspires not just by what he does, but how he does it, because it might seem easy but it actually is very hard and he works really hard at it. He got good, he got better, he got extraordinary. Inspirational man, Mr Van.

dusk to dusk

2011-03-22T12:25:00.000+01:00

it was around dusk

and dusk changes things, doesn't it, it mixes things

and forests become branches

and branches become waves

and bushes become fire

and silver turns to gold

and birches start playing tag

and clouds get all grassy

and grass turns white

and homes are made of sky

an explosion of crocuses

2011-03-20T03:57:00.000+01:00

park-side observations from a pre-pensioner

2011-03-18T13:36:00.001+01:00

After a particularly unsuccessful day of trying to get an actual job, i went to the park to watch the birdees and take an advance on being a pensioner in 30 years orso. I thought it would be relaxing, and it was

till these punks flew in

and some more dropped by

and they started chasing each other

and before i knew it, i found myself photographing what can only be described -i'm sorry- as a duck gangbang

Now i grew up reading Donald Duck, and that magazine doesn't feature this kind of behavior (i think the magazine that does has a humorous variation on the word 'duck' in the title), so i felt slightly queazy and a bit dirty (not in a good way), but thankfully this guy broke them up

after which the seagulls got over their embarrassment and came back

but the flock of pigeons -a perverted bunch- were disappointed and took off

and the calm returned

I love springtime, but next time i see ducks, i'll focus on something else -seeing Daisy being treated that way is a bit shocking

speed apnea II: Pieter time

2011-03-16T23:30:00.002+01:00

The list of world records for the 100 meter freestyle swimming is mind-boggling if you ever tried to do a bit of a quick swim. First off, you get exhausted after 6 strokes, but also if you're trained and figured out how and when to breathe and not die and things, there still comes a point where the water just turns to custard and your limbs with it. I managed to do 100 meters in 1 minute 20 once, a couple of years back, and spent the rest of the day recuperating and crying. Since starting freediving, i gave up on the whole notion of speed in water.

But then there was that speed apnea thing and messing around with the monofin was quite good fun, the water going 'woosh woosh woosh' by your ears and the sensations of speed washing away all thoughts, so i tried going a bit faster, and ended up doing the 100 meters within 50 seconds. I did that in what is officially called the 'Pieter van den Hoogenband zwemstadion', which is part of a larger swim complex called the Tongelreep (for us Dutch are good at coming up with sexy names), but is known affectionately by swimmers as the Pieterpool. It is a fantastic pool build for a legendary swimmer: Pieter van den Hoogenband was the first man to do the 100 meter freestyle in less than 48 seconds, a record that stood for 8 years.

Less than 48, without fins. That's insane. But when you look at that boggling list of records on the 100 meter freestyle, it starts making a bit more sense. I mean, Tarzan is on that list. It's a list of quite extraordinary people. It begins over 100 years ago, in 1905, with a Hungarian called Zoltan Halmay. Now with a name like that you're destined to become a magician, but he did 100 meters in 1 minute and 5.8 seconds. Impressive, especially when you take into regard this was well before lycra and he was wearing his woolen underwear. The first to break the minute is Johnny Weismuller, aka Tarzan, in 1922 with a time of 58.6, but he was being chased by a crocodile. It progresses slowly; by the early seventies they're in the low 50's, with Mark Spitz leading the way, probably with dribble out of his mouth. Then in 1976 a man called Jim Montgomery breaks the 50 by 1/100 of a second -whilst leading a tank division. Now Matt Biondi is a name i remember, also because it would be a good name for a futuristic superglue, but mostly because he was damn quick and broke the 49 in 1985. He had the world record until '94, when Popov broke it with 48.21 -but that was controversial because of the really big red shoes he was wearing. And then this dutch boy Pieter comes along.

On the 19th of september in the year 2000 the then 22 year old Pieter swims everyone and everything to shreds with a time of 47.84. And for 8 years, no one is able to beat him. No wonder they build that pool for him.

You still see him around there; he is HUGE, 90% chest and the rest smile. I always get a little starstruck when i see him. I look at him and think "Dude, i can't even swim that fast with a huge fucking fin on." But then i did it in 49 seconds, and that 47 seconds of his started calling me. I looked at the footage of my dive and saw i could improve by applying more backstroke, and pretty much just gunning it right from the start. So i did:

This was last monday -it still hurts. The whole idea of supple strength was thrown out about midway, to be replaced by blunt force. It wasn't pretty, and i swam right into custard at around 60, but it was slightly satisfying to get to Pieter speed -even if i had to cheat by wearing a fin.

There are a lot of kids training in that pool who can break the minute, lots of little Johnny Weismullers -though less vocal- and i admire them. I wonder what they can do with a fin. But can someone please ask Pieter to put a fin on and break one more world record? I would, but i stutter around him.

PS anonymous but German sources tell me the video cannot be watched by our fine neighbors. Youtube isn't always the most forgiving of hosts when it comes to private little parties like this. I hope Vimeo can solve this grave injustice:

branches and pond

2011-03-15T13:54:00.000+01:00

monster in my shed

2011-03-13T19:42:00.000+01:00

My mommy said there were no monsters.

My mommy lied

the infinite bubblering

2011-03-12T11:48:00.000+01:00

In collaboration with Mr Van

speed apnea

2011-03-11T14:20:00.001+01:00

Inspired by Peter Pedersen's 200 meter in 2 minutes, a legendary dive in freedive circles, the first time somebody did the 200,

i wanted to test if i could even do half that: 100 in a minute. 100 under normal conditions is a bit tough, even if you can do more than 150, since the hard part tends to be between 50 and 100, when the contractions are at their meanest and your body isn't fully into oxygen-saving dive mode yet. Normally it would take me about 1 minute and 20 seconds to do 100, so i'd have to sprint a bit. Best i'd done sprinting full-out is about 23 seconds for 50 -not very fast. So i'd have to go nearly full-out and maintain that for a minute. I was worried about that: it'd burn a lot of oxygen and probably hurt loads. But i tried, somewhat apprehensively and reluctantly.

The advantage of speeding is that you don't really have time to think, so it never gets mentally hard. The disadvantage is that if you really go all out, you start hurting quite badly quite quickly after the turn. Though 100 within a minute is not so tough, to do 200 in 2 is borderline unbelievable. To maintain that pace for such a long time is a monster achievement, and it took a couple of years of much slower long dynamics until a new king of speed and distance arose in the form of Fred Sessa, who did 255 in 2:37

Fred commented afterwards that it hurt pretty bad at 100, and got progressively worse after that.

It is an interesting discipline, more finswimming than freediving perhaps, but could be useful as training. I wonder how quick Fred and Peter can do the 100. Probably faster than the current official CMAS world record, which is 42.85 seconds, held by Cosimo Garofalo

The pre-fab hipness of Camden

2011-03-08T17:51:00.000+01:00

Zoomed over to Camden Market

which once was a stable but since the 80's has been the stable for hip Britannica

yet it had the definite air of a well-established cutting edge, the commercially viable version of counter-culture, where hip is just another fashion to be followed and being alternative is a matter of hair color

now as a 36 year old white dude who only thinks of clothes in ways of "Does it fit?" and "Does it smell?" and thinks a haircut is good if it doesn't require more than 20 seconds of work after a shower, i'm much closer to hip-replacement than to hip, but still, i was disappointed. I was hoping to feel very alien and old and out of it, overwhelmed by the new and the groovy. Instead, i was amused by the classics being repackaged in smaller portions

and in tiny canine portions

but at no point did i see anything new, which made me think i was probably in the wrong place. Hip London must be far far away from Camden, for Camden is as cliche as a stencil of a palimpsest. It is the blunted and bluntly commercial version of what might have been sharp and edgy 30 years ago.

So i still have no clue of what is hip. What i find odd is that we've had a major technological revolution in the last 15 years with internet and cellular phones, which has affected almost everything we do in daily life, but in fashion and in music, we seem to get rehashes of old. I don't know, but the coolest thing i saw in Camden was this guy

maybe 'cause his clothes didn't fit. And they probably did smell.

Streetlights in the mist

2011-03-01T22:55:00.000+01:00

cars in the mist

2011-02-25T20:40:00.001+01:00

Very swooshy, all

even the busses got in on the action

Peter B does PB

2011-02-24T23:22:00.000+01:00

Swedish rockstar, sex symbol and freediver extraordinaire Peter Boivie does a personal best Constant Weight No Fins in the Blue Hole, Dahab. He also smashes the Uppsala Club record by 9 meters.

X marks the ceiling

2011-02-24T14:46:00.000+01:00

normal vs. extreme

2011-02-22T14:38:00.001+01:00

One more thing bugged me about this teaser for Breathe:

at 57 seconds into it, they ask Will the question "Do you consider yourself a normal person?" That question is about as loaded as Bill Gates with a .45 Magnum.

There's the aspect of the whole chewed-out 'what is normal?' discussion: what do you base a norm on? You can base it on averages, which for the general public would make Will a superfreak, and by freediving standards still quite exceptional. You can also see a norm as normative, setting the standard, so the highest achievable. In that case Will has set the bar, eh, lower than anyone else, and he is the current norm in CNF. But being the norm is quite abnormal.

Obviously Will is a normal person in that he sleeps and eats (though from the look of it not quite enough cake), he has no gills or fluorescent eyes, he is not 18 feet tall and by all accounts his farts don't smell of baby powder. But he does do extraordinary things. He has dedicated years of his life to do this, which in and of itself is exceptional, and he has worked hard to get where he is. It is, then, quite normal that he is where he is: training yields results, there's nothing new about the story of dedication and perseverance. He didn't just drop down to that 300 feet or the 100 meters, it took him literally thousands of dives.

I think it is normal for a freediver to progress to a point where you're getting deeper than you thought you could when you started freediving, and because of this progression, you get used to the depths and don't consider them extreme anymore. I can see how my friends who don't freedive would think that what i'm doing is extreme,

photograph by Erika Schagatay

but among freedivers i'm really quite average. And i've seen enough beginners progress very quickly to know that normal, non-freediving people are just as extreme as were are: people can do extraordinary things, our bodies can handle much more than we think.

That's one of the things that bug me about that question; it doesn't seem to hold into account that normal people with normal bodies are quite capable of doing extreme things. It belittles normality. Another thing that bugs me is how both that question and the 'why risk it?' question seem to be excluding questions: they separate Will from the interviewer and the audience as an abnormality. But i think freediving, much like the Olympic Games, shows what humans are capable of. It is a celebration of human capacities rather than a freak-show. Will is a front-runner in that celebration. The same kind of questions could have been posted to him in an inclusive way, so instead of 'why risk it?' you'd get 'what compels you to go deeper?' and instead of 'do you consider yourself a normal person?' you'd get 'do you consider yourself an extreme person?'

Personally, if they asked me 'do you consider yourself a normal person?' and given the opportunity and means, i would have yelled "Yes!", then socked the interviewer in the nose with an eel while standing on one hand with a Hula-skirt on my head and a pan-fluit up me bum, screaming "I'm Buddha's baby bro and my wee is green!". I doubt Willy will do that, but i'm very much looking forward to seeing his replies this documentary. Two of the questions in the first teaser i find utmost crap, but the interviewer might just be teasing Will. And the imagery in the second teaser is again stunning.

People are quite extreme -maybe extreme is the norm.

'Why risk it?'

2011-02-20T23:02:00.001+01:00

This thing has been bugging me for about a month. In the excellent trailer for 'Breathe', the upcoming documentary about William Trubridge, a question is asked. It's at 1:39 in the video below:

At first i thought Will's search for a response was the best part of the teaser, but then i noticed the question tickled me more and more. I wanted Will to come up with bogus answers, like "i dropped my goggles and want them back", or paraphrase George Mallory with "Because it's down there." Now though, i'm at a point where i'm hoping he doesn't answer the question in the documentary at all. It's a crap question.

I understand why the maker of this documentary, Martin Khodabakhshian, had to ask this question, as it is something an outsider would want to know, but it is misguided. Risk implies choice. Asking 'why risk it?' is assuming there are different options, and i don't think there are any options or choices in this matter. I don't dive anywhere near as deep as Willy, but i can't help wanting to dive as deep as i can, and i suspect a lot of freedivers have this. It is an urge to keep falling, to keep dissolving into that pressure, to keep going to that point where only in retrospect you can say that you became one with what you were doing and where you were doing it. It's not about choice or risk, it's about the love of depth.

Depth's reward is intrinsic. It's one of the things that makes freediving so pure. The mere sensations of depth, be it the elephant sitting on your chest when you struggle or the huge hug when you let go, are enough. And of course within that depth you'd want to discover the depth in you, how deep you can go. Isn't that the case with all passion?

We don't choose what we love, just as we don't choose the length of our limbs. We do what we love because we can't help it, we can only surrender to it like we can only surrender to the pressure at depth. The only risk is not doing it. When you don't do what you love, you risk turning into what my dad would call a passionless amorphous mass of banalities. And why risk that?

Hard Drive

2011-02-19T14:14:00.000+01:00

asleep on the train

2011-02-16T18:19:00.000+01:00

Portraits

2011-02-15T22:35:00.001+01:00

Updated my portraits set on flickr:

red couch

2011-02-11T01:14:00.002+01:00

the light of spring

2011-02-08T21:05:00.000+01:00

I heard today that springtime is on average 17 days earlier than it used to be, and this year they're even expecting it 3 weeks sooner. Now i'm not sure how they measure the arrival of spring -i'm assuming that march 21st hasn't moved that much, though it would be funny if March 3rd was now followed by the 21st instead of the 4th- but i measure it by the light, and for the last 2 days, we've had spring.

But don't peg me on it

This guy was basking in it too

as was this one was riding high on it

and even these buggers were early with their dance

Spirituality, by Cornelis Verhoeven

2011-02-07T20:37:00.000+01:00

Spirituality

With the word 'spirituality' i stillinvoluntarily think of monasteries or congregations and of the subtledifferences that used to exist between them. For that is the contextin which i've gotten to know the word. There was for example abenedictine, a dominican and a franciscan spirituality. That way ofecclesiastical life or that mentality could be more or less describedby experts and even in its effects be read on faces, but it wasmostly a matter of empathy and inner kindredness. I never got reallyfar into that myself, but i think i remember that 'redemptorists' hada somewhat creaky voice and strong-willed chins because of their highcollars. But despite those odd memories the word 'spirituality' hasremained extraordinarily dear to me and the value of spirituality hasnever become the object of any skepticism. For it has to do with thecharacteristic of being 'spiritual' and therefore isn't completelydictated by things that are material, worldly and fashionable, butmore by an interest of matters of the mind -to put it solemnly. Withthat comes firstly the refusal to deduce those matters to moresuperficial affairs. In which way and within which tradition a personis spiritual is then already much less relevant and i assume thatthere is little interest for it outside of the convents.

Why the word had been used so littlefor a while i couldn't say with certainty, but it is possible that itis related to the fact that it used to be connected to someexplicitly religious and clerical associations. Lots of people seemto have become allergic to that. Despite that, for the last couple ofyears i've been seeing the word more often and it seems as though thereligious pressure has been lifted off of it. It still fits very wellfor religious affairs, but it looks as though a spiritual dimensionhas been discovered outside of religion, for example in austerity, aculture in which the environment is spared and the destructivetendencies of commercialism and consumption are acknowledged. Butwhat was predictable, has in the meantime happened: for spiritualitytoo a market was discovered. And if there's one thing that isn'tspiritual, it is a market. The word will therefore probably not bearound for long, even when different brands of spirituality startcompeting, like they did in the old days. In this situationspirituality can show how resistant it is. If it turns out not to be,it will rightfully be discarded as one of the uncountable fashionsthat are based solely on imitation and have no content of their own.Then it would have to start again as a hidden, inner life.

Austerity as a spiritual attitude and acharacteristic of a spiritual life has long been preached, perhapssolely to justify a poverty that was considered inevitable. In a timeof poverty it then becomes almost something suspect, but in times ofplenty it gets the chance to become a style of living that cannotsimply be reduced to a lack of fat and vitamins. Spirituality, frommy point of view, is mostly a matter of style, and style is at itsbest when it is a voluntary restriction of available means, thereforea form of austerity. The new spirituality has possibly risen from aresistance to a style-less submission to the dumb fat and wallowingin consumptive abundance. For this abundance feeds an insatiablegluttony and develops into a form of poverty to which there is noend. Spirituality represents the style that can limit this.

~ Cornelis Verhoeven

looking forward to spring

2011-02-05T12:43:00.000+01:00

Cornelis Verhoeven, Attention

2011-02-02T00:34:00.000+01:00

He would have turned 83 today. I miss him.

Attention

In his book 'The interior of reality'Marc Schabracq says something about attention that struck me. Namelythat he doesn't connect it to the pricking up of the ears, like wesee in dogs, but to the aiming of the eye to a certain point; and hethinks this is a purposeful process. At the base of this thereappears to be a goal-oriented selection from the multitude of thingsthat are detectable to our eyes and ears within the bandwidth towhich our perceptions are limited. For we can't see everything thatin principle is visible nor prick our ears up to what we can't hear.I quote a short extract: “In everyday life attention is apurposeful process. (...) We don't just take notice of something andwe don't just divide the world into separate events and objects. Theobject of our attention represents for us a meaning that can haveconsequences in the light of our own goals and actions.” What isimportant in this description seems to me the presumption that theinitiative for attention comes from the observer himself and not fromeye-catching affairs that unconsciously draw our attention byalarming or fascinating us.

It seems unmistakable to me thatattention always has this ordering function or serves it, but i doubtwhether it's always so purposefully and actively chosen and used as ameans. Within the wait or watchfulness that is attention, there isalso always room for the unexpected that as object of attentionremains undetermined. And the way we usually use the word doesn'texclude, but more so seems to imply, that attention isn't our ownproduct or an act of our will, but that it is being caught fromoutside and forced by something that strikes us because of its ownimportance, without any special effort on our part. Attention canalso ambush us and be forced upon us. The object of our chosenattention can be shoved aside by something else that distracts usfrom the first attention. The effect of that is that our own image ofthe whole doesn't become more clear, but is instead disturbed. We canno longer make heads or tails of it and the necessity of a completelydifferent and no less temporary order of the whole can suddenlypresent itself. In attention as a form of wonder things loose theirobviousness and ask for a new appraisal.

Attention is, i think, not aninstrument we can wield at will. For practical life, in which we witha certain stubbornness -also a form of attention- strive for our owngoals, this can have some drawbacks. It seems more likeabsent-mindedness than like concentration. But for a contemplativeframe of mind or a way of thinking that isn't directly geared towardsa product, this change of perspective can be very fascinating andgiven some time even very fertile. It is that mostly because prettymuch every different perspective leads to new insights. Or, to put itin less relative terms, attention, produced from within or dictatedfrom outside, is always rewarding. Reality owes a lot of its meaningto being the object of concentrated and dedicated attention. Thingsapparently thrive with a form of attention in which they are allowedto be present and not be neglected.

~ Cornelis Verhoeven

Free Immersion

2011-02-01T15:33:00.004+01:00

"And for a while i was half skin half breath"

Without this training dive, and more specifically, the advice of Nanja van den Broek afterwards, i could have never done my record the next day.

Poem by Alice Oswald found in her marvelous book 'Weeds and Wild Flowers'.

Egypt

2011-01-30T00:08:00.000+01:00

It is a shameful contrast in Egypt between its complex and hideous political situation, and the simple beauty of its land, sea and people

World Record! Deepest Superman pants

2011-01-25T12:56:00.001+01:00

In my quest to make freediving a serious and respectable sport, i've encountered many an obstacle, the primary of which is the outfit. Face it, dressing up as some kind of burned sperm in those tight black rubber outfits is somewhere south of kinky, innit? Blue and silver suits are already much more spacey and funky, but i figured the missing touch was some decent underpants. So my solution was as simple as it was elegant:

And in order to give the idea of adding style to this sport some thrust, i decided to try and go for another World Record; deepest Superman pants. Surely the massive media attention that my ventures into deep records gather would be a great catalyst for this more stylistic and fashionable approach to freediving.

As good fortune would have it, Dutch freedive champ and instructor extraordinaire Nanja van den Broek was organizing a competition in Dahab with the help of Freedive International, providing me with the perfect forum for my attempt. Here's what happened:

A resounding succes. I can only urge you to try for yourself -you have nothing to loose, except for some underwear.