Jonathan Bailey's Secret Obsession with the Sea

Hello, my name is Jonathan Bailey,

and my obsession is the sea.

[giggling]

[seagulls squawking]

The sea's calling.

I think there's a term for it called thalassomania.

I realize now I'm a thalassomanic man.

I didn't grow up near the sea, but I now live by the sea.

My mom's side of the family are all from Newcastle

in the UK.

They're all Geordies and that side all lived by the sea

and went to the sea every other day.

And I live very near to my nana, who's my mom's mom.

She's now 93, in eyesight of the ocean.

Why I think I love, I know I love about the ocean is

that it's the, it's sort of the humbling sort of power of it

and it's ever moving.

It's a piece of art that's always energized and moody.

The power of the ocean

is something never to be underestimated.

I remember going when I was 18 with my best friend,

we got like this tiny little boat

and we rented it for the day.

It was a bit of a dinghy, really,

and the engine cont out.

But we had an anchor,

and it was before I sort of really understood

what free diving was.

But we'd like use the anchor to go as deep as you can go,

which is probably really quite a dangerous thing to do.

But it's like being completely

submerged in the ocean, I think,

and the pressure that builds as you go down,

as you equalize and just like the silence.

There's also so much life down there

and far more successful life

than I think that we have up here sometimes.

It's quite an earnest thing to think about,

but I think the ocean represents everything, doesn't it?

It's like can be incredibly picturesque and calm

and it can be a place of like, reset,

but it can also be the wildest,

and most sort of viscerally unnerving place to be.

I think there's something about time as well with the sea

where no matter what's going on in the world,

no matter where you're at, where everyone else is at,

it's something that connects everything and everyone.

No matter what's going on, it will always be

pulling in and pulling out every time, every day.

And I think that's very sort of calming.

This goes on and on and on.