Editor’s Note: Have a question for Dibi Fletcher? She’s definitely got answers. Or at least a perspective. Don’t hold back, shoot her a DM on Instagram and ask away. Here’s this week’s dispatch from the Matriarch of Radical…
Hey Dibi… Herb was the kind of man seems they don’t really make anymore. What did a great partnership actually look like from the inside, the real version, not the legend? – WantedtoKnow
Hey WantedtoKnow… Herb is a man of his time, up bringing, and life choices. We’ve been together since the sixties and seen the world we grew up in change almost beyond recognition. We’ve been through personal tragedies and hilarious misadventures, but we were there together and carried each other’s past in our memories and share glorious dreams of future projects. It’s been a great ride, shared from two different perspectives and I believe we both feel blessed for the experience.
Hey Dibi… I watched my father surf until the week he died. He never talked about his feelings, never went to therapy, just paddled out, came in quieter and softer. Was the ocean enough for that generation, or were they just hiding? – His Daughter
Hey His Daughter… Sounds like your dad was raised in the generation of my father and his friends. Most had been in the service as young men before going to work and starting families. My dad loved going surfing and playing his ukulele under the palapa on the weekends. The only time I remember him speaking about his feelings is when he’d say “looking at the ocean makes me feel grateful” …. Maybe it’s that simple!
Related: Hey Dibi: Are Surf Towns Just Make Believe?
Hey Dibi… You’ve lived long enough to watch several generations of surfers burn bright and fade. As it seems to be a recurring pattern, is there any way to warn someone who won’t listen? – SeenItBefore
Hey SeenItBefore… You answered your own question with “someone who won’t listen”. Seems to be an old story, and it’s been much written about “youth being wasted on the young” or the classic “if I knew than what I know now”. The ultimate human paradox. You can’t change the past, but the wisdom you learn from it is the best tool in your medicine bag to shape a better future. I remember my mom trying to give advice and in my youthful arrogance thinking “Phewssss, what does she know” I hear her voice inside my head at different junctures, and I have to take a moment to appreciate how smart that old gal was and if I had just been able to hear her guidance clearly it would have saved me a boatload of grief and the life cycle continues one generation after another.
Hey Dibi…. I’ve noticed that surfers who seem most at peace in the water are often a mess on land. Is there something about the ocean that lets people avoid growing up, or is that too harsh? – BothFeet
Hey BothFeet… It’s not the ocean per se, it’s the perusing greatness in a single-minded fashion at the cost of everything else. Most team sports you enter through the school system that require the athlete to keep up a certain grade point average and being part of a team teaches many social skills that individual sports don’t. One is not better than the other they just take different skill sets and it may be a bit more difficult for athletes in individualistic sports to create the social graces necessary to ride into a fulfilling lifetime career.
Hey Dibi… I’ve given my whole adult to a surf brand I believed in. New ownership came in, gutted the culture, kept the logo. I feel like I’m grieving something nobody else deserves grief. How do you mourn a company? – LastOneOut
Hey LastOneOut… I don’t know that you’re morning a “company” sounds like your morning what you thought the company stood for and when it was “gutted” your wonderfully naïve vision was skewered along with it and that loss is what you’re grieving which is understandable after devoting so many years to something you believed in to find it stripped of all but it’s logo I’m sure has been devastating, but give it a little time, distance and a different perspective and know companies come and go but the culture is still alive for you to enjoy in multitude of forms.
Related: Hey Dibi: How Do You Find Your Voice In A Crowded Lineup?
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