Catching a wave

A zine about The Beatles, surfing, and the creative process.

So many people have written interesting things about how the new Peter Jackson documentary, The Beatles: Get Back, shows off the creative process…

Ted Gioia @tedgioia

I’ve never seen anything like this on film before. Paul really has nothing at the 30 second mark—but 45 seconds later he’s got the makings of a hit single.

…but the most original take I’ve heard came from my wife, Meghan. She said it was like watching 100 Foot Wave, the surfing documentary.

This insight inspired me to draw a zine about surfing as a metaphor for creative work. (Scroll to the end and there’s a link to download and print it.)

I started thinking about this surfing/creativity connection while reading William Finnegan’s fantastic surfing memoir, Barbarian Days. There’s a great sentence in that book that sums things up: “You just have to know where to go when.”