Today, another from Werner Herzog. As you’ll know if you’re keeping count, I may as well drop the charade and simply turn this into a Herzog fan site.
This one is from his memoir, Every Man for Himself and God Against All:
At nightfall, I went out to sea. I was working for a few nights on a fishing boat; it would have to have been on the few dark nights either side of the new moon. One boat towed six skiffs called lampades out to sea, each one of them with one man on board. There we were all dropped a couple of hundred yards apart and left to drift. The sea was as glossy smooth as silk, no waves. An immense silence. Each skiff had a big carbide lamp that was shining down into the deep. The lamp attracted the fish, especially cuttlefish. There was a strange method of fishing for them. At the end of a fishing line was a small shiny piece of wax paper about the size and shape of a cigarette. That attracted the cuttlefish, which grasped the booty in their tentacles. To help them hold on, the bait had a wire wreath fixed to it. You had to know just exactly how far down the lure was below the surface because the instant the cuttlefish felt themselves being pulled up into the air, they would straightaway relinquish their booty and drop back into the water. You had to accelerate the last arm’s length of line so that you were able to swing the cuttlefish onto your skiff.
The first few hours were spent in silent waiting until eventually the artificial moon of the lamp began to take effect. Above me was the orb of the cosmos, stars that I felt I could reach up and grab; everything was rocking me in an infinite cradle. And below me, lit up brightly by the carbide lamp, was the depth of the ocean, as though the dome of the firmament formed a sphere with it. Instead of stars, there were lots of flashing silvery fish. Bedded in a cosmos without compare, above, below, all around, a speechless silence, I found myself in a stunned surprise. I was certain that there and then I knew all there was to know. My fate had been revealed to me. And I knew that after one such night, it would be impossible for me to ever get any older. I was completely convinced I would never see my eighteenth birthday because, lit up by such grace as I now was, there could never be anything like ordinary time for me again.
I can’t help but think of the few, similar memories I’ve had: when it seemed the present was so vivid, so tangible, so all-encompassing that it dwarfed all past and future.
I’ve just never been able to describe the feeling so well.
Reading it makes me share Herzog’s belief about his own work:
I’ve been a writer from the very beginning. And it’s important to say one thing because people are puzzled: films are my voyage, and writing is home. And since 40 years, I keep preaching to deaf ears that my writing will arguably outlive my films, all of them.
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