28 September 20264:23482 views on YouTubeWatch on YouTube
Plenty of riders describe their first eFoil flight the same way, as something they had already done in a dream. This one leans all the way into that. It runs four minutes and twenty three seconds, it is set to the song I Can’t Wake Up Now, and it is built around a single idea: that flying over water on a submerged wing is the sort of thing your brain invents while you are asleep.
The dream this video is about
The note that went out with this one is the clearest statement on the channel of why any of this gets filmed. The dreams came first, for years. Jetpacks, anti-gravity boots, every imaginable personal flying machine. Effortless freedom, and while the dream lasts, complete certainty that it is real. Then you wake up and none of it exists, at least not with the safety, simplicity and ease it had while you were asleep.
eFoiling is the closest thing to it that actually exists. The point being made here is that mid ride it gets close enough to the dream that a suspicion starts to creep in, that you are about to wake up and realise a board flying you over the water at thirty miles an hour on a battery was obviously not real. That feeling is where the song came from, and it is what the footage is cut to serve.
Two versions of one song
I Can’t Wake Up Now is not new to this channel. The RasterOps version came out last season on the Ride Forever album. This year Dev Yarusso took a run at his own version, and that is the one you are hearing here. If you already know the earlier recording, the comparison is half the reason to watch, because the two arrangements make quite different arguments about the same lyric.
How it was shot
The footage comes from the Antigravity A1, the drone behind a lot of the recent aerial riding on this channel. The grade is deliberately vintage inspired rather than clean and modern, and that choice is doing the same job the song is doing. A sharp, contemporary looking edit reads as documentary. A softer, older looking one reads as memory, which is the only register in which a dream sequence works at all.
If the drone is what you came for rather than the music, there are several episodes in the library that cover learning to fly it, tracking a moving rider with it, and the shots it gets wrong.
Where to get the song
The track is available on the Verdant Ride site, along with the rest of the music written for these videos. If you cut your own eFoil edits and want something to put under them, that is the place to start.
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