[ The Tao of Mick Fanning ]

The Tao of Mick Fanning

By Tim Baker

Kelly Slater is standing in front of a hushed adoring crowd, hanging on his every utterance, at the Sun Theatre, in Anahiem, California. It's the Surfer Poll Awards night, and for the first time in 10 years Slater hasn't won first place - occasion for a deep, heartfelt, reflective pronouncement from the Wonder Boy, to 2000 or so of the heaviest hitters in the US surf industry.

Suddenly, Mick Fanning wanders on stage, pissed to the eyeballs, like it's a Kirra Boardriders club presso or something, and starts calling their hero "Jimmy Slade" - Kelly's old Baywatch character.

Kelly stops his speech and allows Mick to come up and share the podium, throws a friendly arm around him and asks what would happen if Kelly showed up in Australia and acted like that.

"You'd get laid!" Mick retorts.

In the serious world of US surf commerce - where surf stars don't merely ride waves, they provide figureheads; seamless, flawless icons for a multi-billion dollar business - this was considered a serious black mark against Mick's career CV.

"It was quite poignant as well, because Kelly's speech, essentially a commemoration of the New School era and their clean living and respectfulness, was cut short by a newer school that doesn't embrace all of those ethics, as personified by Mick," observes Surfer mag's Ross Garrett. "It was a really interesting turning point and it will certainly have historical relevance down the track."

"Made the biggest dickhead of myself. Dick of the year goes to me," Mick concedes. "There was free drinks. Everything goes wrong with that shit - vodka and Red Bull. I think a lot of people were blown out with what I did. Whatever you could have done wrong I did wrong ... Cory and CJ and myself tackled Andy when he won the Surfer Poll. Some people were just so freaked out - 'You can't do that at these things.'" Mick ended up getting thrown out, despite finishing eighth in the Surfer Poll himself, and collecting the "Best Male Performance in a Video," for Fanning the Fire.

For some in the US, this was proof enough that the celebrated Coolly Kid was somehow unworthy of his sudden new status as world surfing's breakthrough performance pace setter -whatever his talent, that he was too rough-edged, crude mannered, to be taken seriously as the next great surf hero.

This, dear readers, is precisely the kind of blinkered, conservative, religious right, sanitised Seppo bleating that threatens to kill surfing's maverick spirit. We are not, after all, running a Mr Congeniality pageant here. This American homogenisation of our surfing culture cannot be allowed to continue. That magnificently fiery bloodnut Mick Campbell reportedly had his contract cut at least partly for expressing anti-American sentiments. This is merely the thin edge of the wedge. It is time to take a stand, before our surfing heroes are rendered a bunch of soulless, blemish-free, manicured and nuted choir boys.

Thus, in his defence, I have assembled a case that - far from rough-edged or crude-mannered - Mick Fanning is in fact an eloquent, deep thinking sage for our times, a prophet of sorts, who cloaks his profundities beneath a veil of disarming simplicity.

Consider the evidence:

- He is unfailingly humble.

Mick's self-depricating streak is legendary. He'll call himself a kook, wonder how a kid like him got his name alongside all those legends on the Bells trophy, defer praise to his Coolly mates Dean and Joel.

Despite being number two in the world at the time of writing, he doesn't consider himself one of the top contenders on tour.

"I see other people as top guys and not me," he says. "It's happened so fast, I guess other people sort of grow into it ... Sitting where I am, at number two, it's like, shit, I'm going for a world title right now. What's going on? It's weird."

- He reads widely.

Mick's packing for South Africa. There's boards and bags and clothes and his entire travel kit spread out in the entranceway to the smart, colonial-style hilltop home he shares with his mum in Tweed Heads. Several well-thumbed books lay scattered among the jumble. He's just finished "Killing Pablo," about the South America drug trafficker, Pablo Escobar, and has moved on to the new Harry Potter book - a literary leap if ever there was one. A couple of yoga books accompany him everywhere, as does a dog-eared copy of the enlightened new age tome, "The Four Agreements - a practical guide to personal freedom," by Dan Miguel Ruiz. "It's kind of a self help book, it makes you a better person - except I always forget it," Mick chuckles.

- He is unattached to material things.

Mick and Deano had a bit of a scare, towing in down the coast at Hastings Point during the last big swell. Trying a sketchy pick up in front of rocks, the boys lost it, and could only watch as Mick's $10,000 jet ski was totalled. "It didn't matter. I didn't pay for it anyway. Red Bull bought it for me," he reasons.

Mick reckons growing up with little money has helped give him a detached attitude to his sudden new wealth. "It was pretty tough. I always had hand me down clothes, I didn't care," he says. "I remember some weeks mum was like, 'Can you ring your dad to get some money?' ... 'I don't really want to,' and she was like, 'Well, you're not going to eat,we've only got 10 bucks until next week.' 'Oh shit, okay, I'll ring him up.' It was pretty gnarly ... It sort of brings out your characters - we might have no money but we're still going to have fun. Actually being with each other was more fun than having money."

- He has noble family roots.

Mick went to Ireland last year, to seek out a bit of family history. He met his godparents for the first time, saw the house his dad grew up in and immersed himself in the Irish experience. "I always wanted to go there, since I was a little kid," says Mick. "We had a spare week in between Mundaka and Brazil. I was geeing the boys up - Joel and Hedgey and Shagga came with me. We lost in the morning and left that afternoon ... The whole vibe of it was so epic, the people were so cool, so good to us. They haven't heaps of money but ... they just fully looked after us so well. At the end we just filled their whole house with food."

A framed scroll documenting the roots of the Fanning family name hangs by the front door. The most famous of the Fannings, until now, was apparently, "Dominick Fanning, mayor of Limerick, greatly distinguished himself at the siege of the city in 1651, hanged as a result of his patriotic and uncompromising stand."

The family crest hangs proudly on the opposite wall, representing, "generosity and elevation of mind." The symbol of a chevron - or rafters of a roof - represents protection. Fitting symbolism for a young man who looks out for his family and friends.

- He appreciates single fins.

Among the surf posters lining Mick's bedroom walls, is a single, framed, black and white photo of old Angourie legend Wayne Williams carving a brilliant cutback on a single fin back in the early '70s. It is one of Mick's favourite surf photos. "I just like the way people ride different boards and draw really nice lines," he says. "Sometimes I wish I had every different sort of board that I could just bring out for this surf when I feeling like surfing this board. I love riding old single fins and twin fins ... That photo of Wayne Williams, just how he's on rail on that sort of board, every time I ride a single fin like that I just want to see if I can do a turn like that. I know I never will. I just kind of get amped on different things like that."

- When he practices his art, he attains a higher level of consciousness.

Mick has an intuitive understanding that when his surfing is on, and he enters the realm of peak experience, something almost unfathomable happens. "I can be surfing the exact same wave and then sometimes something will just set off, even if I'm riding the same board the whole time. Something will just set off and it just feels like you can push just that extra bit harder ... everything just clicks." He pauses, groping for the words. "Sometimes things just happen. Sometimes surfing this bank from Snapper to Kirra, sometimes you don't even think what you're doing but you do it anyway ... You get to the end of a wave and go, what did I do? Sometimes you go into a totally different state of mind."

- He has suffered.

Much has been said and written about the cruel loss of his brother Sean and close friend Joel Green in a car accident five years ago. Consider the reality of it for a moment. Mick is 17, walking home from a roaring party, full of beer and good cheer and eagerly trying to tune a young girl, when an unmarked police car pulls up alongside them.

"Around that time our mum would get really worried about us, and she'd always be like, if you're not coming home ring me. She never used to be like that," Mick recalls. "This car pulled up. I was just thinking, ah, it's the cops, you know, we're just walking home, we haven't got any drinks in our hands or anything. We'll just keep walking. And then two of our family friends stepped out of the car ... They're like, 'Mick, get in the car' ... and they just told me and I just totally freaked out ... And I had to tell everyone in my family. I ran in and woke mum and told her. She thought he'd been stabbed or something. And then I had to ring my dad. Luckily my two brothers and my dad were all at the same place together that night ... My sister was in London at the time and I had to ring her and tell her. It was pretty wild, being 17 and having to tell everyone in your family.

"Afterwards I wasn't allowed to go down and see the crash site. No one would let me go down. I'm going, I'm going, tried to sneak out ...

No one would let me go down and see the tree until the car had gone. I didn't surf either, I just sat in my room ... I think I stayed there for about four days, and then I finally went surfing. I remember the first surf I went for. Everyone knew I hadn't been out of the house. The first surf I went for I just had all my mates there,

every single one of my mates. D-bah was uncrowded until we paddled out, there was just so many of us. It was so epic, everyone was screaming and hooting. I was still so overwhelmed by the whole thing. I remember I didn't do a turn, I was just going straight along the wave. It was wild to go surfing again."

There's no doubt the loss of Sean has profoundly shaped who Mick is today, and provided much of the drive for his extraordinary success. "I think it's just really made me appreciate life more. I've known people die before that and I was really rattled by it but when it hit so close to home ... it was just so different. I just thought about what I really wanted to do. I want to be a pro surfer and that's what I'm going to do."

Does he feel Sean's presence much? "Sometimes, I'll just be so happy, I'll dream a lot of him for like a week or something and just get super super psyched on that," he says. 'The dreams I do have when he's in them just seem so vivid and so real it just gets me stoked to see him again, like I wake up and I'll be happy that I saw him again. Sometimes I feel like I'm with him. Just the feeling that he's around gets me happy and amped ... Some people have like a certain person, when they're around they get like a gnarly energy. I see it in other people, if a certain person's around they compete really well or something like that. I think it's sort of like that."

- He admits and confronts his fears.

Mick's no big wave hero, but he's made impressive inroads in Hawaii, with six week stints there for the last three years, and has pushed his boundaries at Teahupoo.

"I focus on Hawaii a lot," he says. "I never really enjoyed it. I loved going there but just with the crowds and I was scared of the locals, just didn't want to annoy anyone and get hit."

Hanging out with Andy and the local crew at the Red Bull house last year gave him a valuable boost up the local pecking order, for the kind of skinny, blonde, young pro surfer the locals are fond of intimidating. "Just meeting them all was a real eye opener for me. I was still scared to get beat up but you sort of know who's who, you know you can paddle and sit next to one guy and he won't slap you for sitting there."

Tahiti's a whole different brand of fear. "It scares the hell out of me but I love going there. Every time I go there I just try and conquer personal goals, try and at least get one really good wave," he says. "There was one afternoon it was incredible, the gnarliest Teahupoo guys were out - Manoa was out there, Pancho was out there, Tamayo, Mark Healy, Cory, Andy, Bruce, just like the gnarliest guys. And I didn't surf, I was shitting myself, it was massive. I was just swimming in the channel, and those guys were getting the most insane barrels. If they fell off they would have been fucked up. And they were getting the biggest pits and charging so hard, it was like whoa, this is incredible, just to sit and watch."

- He contemplates the nature of existence

Mick'll talk about the supernatural as if it's the most natural thing in the world. "I think that sort of comes from mum's side," he says. He indicates a couple of framed, empty wave photos on the wall by Jon Frank. "Mum showed him there were phantoms in them. He didn't even know they were there," he says, pointing out a couple of obscure, ghostly faces vaguely discernible in the twisted contours of the wave face. "So he framed this one and sent it to her."

He has a couple of surfboards with hand-painted Aboriginal murals on them displayed proudly in the entranceway to the house, and he can recite the whole dreaming stories behind them.

What are his own spiritual beliefs? "What I believe is everything, all the energy stays in this one sort of ... ball, I guess," he begins uncertainly. "People talk about heaven and hell, and stuff like that. I believe in god but I don't believe in religion. I reckon it's a crock of shit. All it does is cause wars. I think it all just gets stored in the universe that we're in, and that's where the winds get created and that's where the birds come from. I don't know, that's just how I feel."

- He's comfortable with his vulnerability.

So, with all the riches, trophies, fame and A-list parties, how is life on tour for this young Coolly Kid? After a couple of afternoons of cross-examination, scrolling through the whole heart-tugging story of his broken family, tough upbringing, family tragedy, and his most outlandish grommet dreams abruptly realised, Mick gives an unexpected, almost whispered response.

"It gets lonely," he admits, haltingly. "Sometimes it's just like, really really lonely. And you want someone there just to hang out with the whole time, someone you can talk to and stuff. That'd be pretty cool sometimes."

And then he drops one of those little pearls of simple wisdom - about the loneliness of the long distance traveller - that seems to come from a much older, more worldly mind.

"Even though you're all going to the same place, you always check in by yourself."

- He wants to help kiddies.

Life after the tour? "I love working with kids. I'd love to help kids out or something like that, not a coach or anything, just love to be able to give 'em hints and stuff like that because people have done that for me. If they want to be a pro surfer or something just point them in the right direction, be a travelling team manager, just stay on the tour," he laughs.

- He cherishes his family.

Mick employs his mum as his manager and encouraged her to give up her regular job in nursing. "She was doing my stuff and also doing her stuff at work and she was so stressed," says Mick. "She was actually going for a new job and I said, why don't you work for me full time? ... She came home and she said, well, I didn't get the job, and I said, well, you've got a job already, working for me, and she just seems so much happier. Now she's gone to Africa before me. I try and give her a trip a year."

Mick's parents split up when he was one, and he says he's only really got to know his dad, an earth mover by trade, in the last few years.

"I took time out, I wanted to get to know him. I didn't want to have any regrets or anything like that," he says. "He's just worked his whole life. I just want him to quit one day and get on a farm or something, do something cool like that. Hopefully he'll stop next year."

- He's not the messiah or a very naughty boy.

So, to my many dear friends in the US surf industry, I am sorry if Mick's unpolished honesty offends your Southern Californian, white bread, Brady Bunch sensibilities. The fact is - apart from the Irons boys, who are from Kauai, which is in reality a whole other nation away from yours - Mick is simply the brightest, most creative, unfettered surfing talent you have seen in a decade, rivalled only by his Coolangatta mates Dean and Parko, and a few other rough-hewn Aussies who are unlikely to behave any better when shoved in suits, plied with free drinks and given an audience of industry moguls and fawning hangers on.

All this does not mean you should start some weird cult in his honour either. Mick's one of a generation of quite ordinary young Australian surfers, with extraordinary talent, not too interested in fame or celebrity or cultivating the consummate industry profile - but deeply in touch with the important things in life - family, mateship, doing what you love.

He's a surfer, after all. Let the boy surf.