Editorial: Freediver breathes inspiration

Freediver William Trubridge. Photo / Alex St. Jean

If you're reading this today after 7.40am you'll know already whether freediver William Trubridge snared another world record.

At this time in the Bahamas the ex-Bay boy is/was due to plunge a depth defying 102m.

Here's a guy who can hold his breath for close to five minutes.

I resent that talent. When diving for paua I need to resurface after 5-6 seconds; my appetite writes cheques my lungs can't cash.

Years back when I first interviewed Trubridge he presented as a human lab rat with a death wish. It's an arcane pursuit, after all.

But my judgment was way off.

Now when he hits the water I see only primordial charm in what he does. After all, "How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when it is quite clearly Ocean," author Arthur C. Clarke said.

When he dips below the surface he invites Freudian psychoanalysis, snakes his way downwards into psycho-geography, returns to the womb in a search for Edenic innocence and in the process teases out another conversation about evolutionary biology.

I embellish of course, but it's all there and too fascinating to resist.

By forgoing the oxygen tanks he renders the scary, unknowable darkness into something beautiful. It's no wonder Steinlager "Pure" saw an opportunity to align.

The upshot is he gets to live in the jade-like Bahamas, surfaces daily with fresh crayfish and is paid in New Zealand's finest lager.

But I'm jealous mostly of his state. While I shamble through the kelp like a yak fallen overboard, underwater he's poised, centred and childlike. Those of us perpetually exhausted can only watch on, aghast at such tranquillity.