ERRUPTIVE INSPIRATION

THEY ASKED
Soon, I will be going to a volcano.  If you have any thoughts on volcanoes

I said:

Volcanoes. Volcanoes. Volcanoes.
 arent volcanoes rather frightening.
arent they?
its so rare that they explode or ooze... and whatever. 
Arent they linked to earthquakes sometimes. With platetectonics
Those are scary too.  
lets say a word together, Outloud.
MAGMA
MAGMA
LAVA, MAGMA
VOLCANO
ERUPTION 
terrestrial planets  
magma chamber 
 subduction zones  
  Vesuvius
volcanic ash 
Vulcan, the Roman god of FIRE

VULCANOLOGY


ok that was several words. But wasnt it good.
I love Werner Herzog. 
I dont know how he became the person I trust so much in life. 
anyway, take his volcanic activity, ALTHOUGH, maybe you already have, but let's cherish it together. 
HERZOG VOLCANO MAN 
La Soufrière is, as Herzog explains, a documentary of an unavoidable catastrophe that didn’t happen. When Herzog learned in 1977 that the volcano, La Soufrière, on the small Caribbean island of Guadaloupe was about to explode and that one man had decided to stay behind, he assembled a small and daring crew and went to interview the man. Once on the evacuated island, Herzog wanders though the empty streets of Guadaloupe’s capital overrun by donkeys and starving dogs. He eventually makes his way, in a feat of either glaring stupidity or daring bravado, to the crater, but is forced to turn back by a plume of toxic fumes. When he does locate the “last man remaining” he finds that there are in fact several men, all homeless and all unafraid of the looming danger.

What makes La Soufrière a particularly beguiling film is Herzog’s banal tone. As is clear, almost from the outset, the volcano didn’t erupt. Yet Herzog insists that during his entire time of the island, the ground shook and the volcano may have been minutes from exploding. In hindsight, he realizes the idiocy of his traveling there and attempting to capture the explosion, the idiocy of sacrificing himself and his crew for apocalyptic footage and some insight into the meaning of life and death. What he comes away with is a striking rumination on absurdity.

While Herzog insists that there is no difference between his fictional and his non-fictional films, it is evident that in the real world, the world that has boundaries, the foolishness, the audacity and the madness that Herzog seeks at the heart of human existence is much closer to the surface than any of us truly realize.

Akas: Die Große Ekstase des Bildschnitzers Steiner, La Soufrière - Warten auf eine unausweichliche Katastrophe.



WHAT ELSE COULD I SAY, 
my dear friend. 
but, enjoy the volcano , 
and I love Werner.


truly ava k