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.

November 28th 2021

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…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.”