The Wood Sawyers – Millet
“Aside from our generation’s quest for authenticity, we are attempting to detach from the fear surrounding the many problems that need fixing. Issues like environmental harm, divorce, cancer, stress, and loneliness will only be quelled by the service of adventurous minds contributing a mix of cutting-edge innovation with creative detachment, not unlike Dane’s surfing. A lofty comparison I know, and it’s an equally strong point that surfing alone isn’t valuable enough of a contribution to warrant the wealth and status given to the top pro surfers. For certainly the fabric of our culture wouldn’t unravel if competitive or free surfing disappeared tomorrow. But the pure act of surfing is a great place to start, it’s an activity that takes a tremendous amount of workmanship and dedication to perfect, and those traits are building blocks towards living an inspirational life of any sort.”
“I want labor to be the point,” he insists, “because everything in our lives is miraculously made with no idea of how it’s done. As an active and critical consumer, and as someone who has attempted to make the flawless and failed, I wanted a transparency of construction here. If we know how it is made and how it falls apart, we will know how to rebuild it.”
LATELY
More important
than breakfast
is waking up next to someone
and having them gently touch your face
without even asking
“Here’s what I learned: If you want to do photography at a level that really satisfies your soul and your ego you’ll need to do it alone. Forget having the spouse or girlfriend or best friend or camera buddy tagging along. Forget the whole sorry concept of the “photo walk” which does nothing but engender homogenization and “group think.” Leave all electronics in your hotel room. Cut off all communications, during the day, from or to the “real world” and immerse yourself in the hunt for images. Learn what makes your brain salivate and why. Learn to operate that camera by braille. And make your decisions based on what your inner curator wants you to say.”
“On the evening of March 14th, 1932, the founder of Eastman Kodak and inventor of roll film, George Eastman, gathered a group of his friends at his home in order to witness a change of his will. Eastman was 77 years of age, and for the past few years had seen his health decline rapidly due to what is now believed to have been spinal stenosis. Later that evening, with the task complete, he asked his friends to leave and retired to his bedroom where, moments later, he was found dead with a gunshot wound to his chest.”
“When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write. You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again.”
“Surfing and being rich don’t mix. You either do one or the other.”
A New Englander through and through, Drew grew up in Connecticut / New Hampshire and got over educated in Boston. He also lived on a beach in Southern California for some years. Film, photography, music and literature monopolize his time these days. Drew lives in Brooklyn, NY, eats too many cheeseburgers at the Commodore and hopes to carry on simply one day on a big piece of land by the sea without the computer or YouTube.
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