A Rogue on Rogue
The first time I heard Werner Herzog speak was last fall when he was interviewed on NPR. His voice stopped me in my tracks. He was discussing his then recent films, My Son, My Son, What have Ye Done? And Bad Lieutenant, Port of Call. He talked about his films like they had body parts and landscapes. He used words that unwrapped ideas, bending my ear to hear the silence between each thought that was surely tethered to a great mind. I wanted to know more. I set out to watch his films and quickly consumed Fitzcaraldo, The Enigma of Kasper Hauser, Stroszek, Even Dwarfs Start Small, Bad Lieutenant, and Wheel of Time: A smattering of the sixty some films he has produced. I devoured and left scars in the book Herzog on Herzog, edited by Paul Cronin.
Soon after hearing the interview I discovered Werner Herzog’s Rogue film School Seminar. Described as not for the faint-hearted: it is for those who have traveled on foot, who have worked as bouncers in sex clubs or as wardens in a lunatic asylum, for those who are willing to learn about lock-picking or forging shooting permits in countries not favoring their projects. In short: for those who have a sense of poetry. For those who are pilgrims. For those who can tell a story to four-year-old children and hold their attention. For those who have a fire burning within. For those who have a dream.
I announced that my new year’s resolution for 2010 was to attend the seminar. I applied in April and in May 2010 I was selected. From June 11th through the 14th I was privileged to attend the second Werner Herzog Rogue Film School Seminar in Fairfield, New Jersey. Many of my friends, knowing how much it meant to me to go, have asked what it was like. This is for them.
It was like sitting next to a mountain through all four seasons. It was like catching my breathe after six flights of stairs, it was like listening to my mother tell the story of Little Orphan Annie and then snuffing the candle out with her fingertips when she finished. I didn’t want to go to sleep, but the story was over. It was like chocolate all day.
Pens flew across pages as students took exacting record of Werner Herzogs delicious and incisive comments. Hardheaded and brilliant; he’s the quintessential master of nuance and perfect pauses, underscored by choices gleaned through intuition. He’s the intrepid taunting the divine; he’s the carnivore in the garden, thirsty, always thirsty.
I learned from him that I am the master of what I see and to bravely capture the charge of my own imagination tethering myself to it for the rest of my life, to dive off the edge with it, soar with it, and never, ever, put it to bed. Feed its restless wanderings, it’s clever adaptations, roam with it across the wasteland, past the soulless, beyond the bored. Stand with it to receive the rewards of spontaneity and intuition. Feed it with my passion and nourish it with the choices I make.
I learned these things from being inside my ear, listening to his voice in a space where he sat, then stood, then moved, then sat again, gazing across the uplifted faces, sponged fuller and fuller by his words and well told stories gleaned from over four decades of experience. We came to be enthralled, we walked away full, like ticks, ready to pop if someone dared poke. We left heading east and west, north and south – to the clouds, the stars, the unlimited expanse of imagination, the dessert bar of heaven, the aching groin of Pluto. The land of the Rogue; windswept, aching, but knowing the freedom of being self suffucent. We wept that it was over, but we were smug because we felt more than we had before and surely, it was more than enuf.
Well said
Wow. I have been thinking about how to put into words the experience that we shared with Herzog, but now I don't have to, because you have said everything that needs to be said far better than I could. Thank you.
Nice!
I was there too. Very poetic summary of how the seminar affected you. I'm still typing up my notes which I will post on FB when they are all done. Great job!
Rogue Comments
Thanks for your comments - Philip great work on your Facebook notes! You did an a scholarly job - if there is more to come - well lucky us...you brought it right back to the essential details. Great work!!