Werner Herzog, 81, just released a new memoir, Every Man for Himself and God Against All: A Memoir, and was a guest on NPR’s Fresh Air Wednesday, keeping me company while I drove to the hospital for a CT scan. He seemed so feisty and vibrant. One thing especially struck me. He warned listeners who might be interested in his book not to expect a “deep confessional. I'm not into that business. I never liked too deep introspection… It is not healthy if you circle too much around your own navel. And it is not good to recall all the trauma of your childhood. It's good to forget them. It's good to bury them.”
Ugghhh. I’m trying to write a memoir. I’m having enough trouble with that already— between a shaky memory, long stretches with a lack of diaries and other documentation, and desire to not hurt anyone’s feelings who’s still alive… My friend Danny Fields— who I first met in the 1960s at a Doors show at Stony Brook I was promoting— told me last week that writing a memoir is so troublesome. It is, it is. So these words of warning from Herzog. You know this guy? I was living abroad when some of his greatest films were released and he was already a star in Europe when Aguirre, the Wrath of God was released in 1972 but I was back in the U.S. for the release of Nosferatu the Vampyre in 1979. I was too scared to go see Grizzly Man.
My friend Michael Snyder is a professional film critic. I asked him about Herzog yesterday. I have a feeling he heard the same interview I did. His response was “When Herzog is engaged in conversation during an interview, his way of looking at and highlighting minutiae may seem oblique. But it's indicative of the eye for detail that's always served him well as a filmmaker. It also may inform the precision that he brings to his acting which (I am gleeful to say) generally features that idiosyncratic vocal cadence of his.”
Everyone keeps asking me when this things is coming out. I don’t know; when I’m done writing it. I write DownWithTyranny all day— from 4 or 5 AM ’til 4 or 5 PM. So it’s hard to make time. I’m a post down now, but I figured I could knock this page out fast and us it for the blog too. One of my friends reminded me that writing a memoir is a journey, not a destination. I have to keep that in mind while I’m remembering how important honesty and self-reflection are when I’m writing about my own experiences, especially if the painful, even traumatic ones, especially when major characters in my life— like Roland and Stephen keep discouraging me. They’re less comfortable than I am about me sharing my (and their) personal stories with… whomever might read this thing. I need to keep focused on the memoir Jonas Mekas wrote in 2017, A Dance With Fred Astaire, since it’s what inspired me to try doing this thing. Where the hell is that anyway? My car is like a library and I’m thinking may be on the back seat (or worse).