From: Wenders, Wim. Die Pixel Des Paul Cezanne. Ed. Annette Reschke. Frankfurt Am Main: Verlag Der Autoren, 2015. Print. English translation: Ich schreibe, also denke ich. (13-21) R. Thomas September 2015
There are people who can think clearly.
Others are able to go with thinking only so far,
they lose their train of thought after a while
and again and again they must start from the beginning.
I’m one of those.
Only when I write,
can I think things through to the end.
If I see the words written before me,
the thoughts become from themselves more clear.
I believe, this is because
I otherwise always rely upon the seeing
and have sharpened this sense more than others.
If I only can see that which I have just thought,
it thinks itself free,
and becomes a written picture of the thought process
and can be thought from itself further.
If I write by hand,
no picture wants to emerge.
This is because of my chicken scratch (doctor’s son!) and because,
handwriting belongs for me still to thinking
and not yet to seeing.
For a long time I regularly wrote down my dreams,
in the middle of the night,
not even really awake, still half asleep,
simply following a self imposed discipline.
The next morning these handwritten notes
often indecipherable.
Their meaning just as fleeting,
like dreams a second after awakening
fading into darkness,
out of which one can never recover them,
except, sometimes. if one can reach a peak,
and with a small remain,
that is left over,
most likely as bait,
even still further dream images let themselves be
fished out of the dark again.
If however no scraps of images remained,
mornings I stared long and perplexed
at my hieroglyphics,
but out of the scribbles
no trusted word-image could make,
less so could read the clues of a dream.
Because this too often with handwriting occurred
--above all since the time of writing has become eliminated--
that I no longer could decode anything exact
(and others could never have done anyway),
I have learned with time,
instantly to write with a machine.
Earlier it was a variety of traveling typewriters,
of which the last was a red Olivetti,
standing around long thereafter and receiving her gold watch, so to say.
Then along came the first “Word Processors”
or “Textverarbeitungsmaschinen”.
I remember:
The early ones could only
remember a few lines,
one must first write them out and then save them,
before one was permitted to think further,
and they could only be printed on thermal paper.
That was something like invisible ink.
If a sheet laid around for a while in the light,
nothing more could be seen…
The thoughts upon it lived dangerously,
always near fading away,
(Aside from this,
this paper had the intolerably trait,
to constantly want to roll itself up,
as if it did not want to share at all
that which was recorded upon it.)
Then finally there was a real computer.
My writing and with it my thinking
made a quantum leap,
although first, after they had survived a shock:
My first text on my first Compaq PC
had disappeared without a trace the next day.
And with it the thought paths invested in it were also gone
and no longer wanted to reappear,
just like forgotten dreams.
That has not happened since then to me ever again.
And in the meantime I write much more than earlier.
In the middle of the night, when I cannot sleep.
in the early morning or whenever.
I am an enthusiastic traveling-writer,
favorite locations in trains and airplanes,
but also in taxis, S-Bahnen and buses.
Hotel rooms have also inspired me,
cafes, park benches, public libraries.
Even the high platforms,
built by some hunters on the edge of a forest,
are perfect for it.
A text, that is in the process of becoming
(like this one here),
likes foreign surroundings,
and it is pleasure for it, to move around.
If I can think better, I ask myself?
Not necessarily.
I have only made myself more accustomed to it,
to look at the thinking while writing.
My strange verse form, that you see here before you,
helps me with this quite a lot.
It creates patterns or “visible thought blocks”,
in every case a structure,
in which a type of image-grammar helps me,
to keep the the thought-grammar in sight.
With “Verses” as such has this little to do,
more with the wish,
that the thoughts like to to find a rhythm,
which brings them to movement,
like for example a film still
wants to make a river of images.
The thought in the best scenario,
by this type of writing, gets me into such a flow.
Like the film on a non-linear editing system
on a computer I can cut a thought,
lengthen, re-arrange, remove, make more precise, discard, overlap, fade, loop, or let jump…
My thoughts can when written on a computer
become more playful,
than in a “simple thought” they ever could.
The written image and rhythm releases it from its lethargy
and helps them on their way.
My first short texts
I wrote for the Filmkritik
in the late sixties.
That was a small scale zine
with an edition of a couple thousand
for the few cinastens in the Federal Republic of Germany.
Enno Patals was the publisher,
but above it included writing from Helmut Färber and Frieda Grafe,
two of my biggest role models in writing about pictures.
Once I included a picture in a text,
I had taken it from a comic-strip.
(I let it “flow” into here as well.)
I had singely cut out of the window,
what had been visible outside.
So, it appears to me,
I wanted then like now to write and to think:
like one looks out of the window peering into the sky,
or earlier onto an empty sheet of paper
and now onto an always ready screen
that not only takes up my thoughts
but also suggests corrections,
now and again recommends a synonym,
and it never tires,
to process and to format everything,
which I into, pre- or re-think to it.
Earlier, by Filmkritik, it was much more complicated.
A text, at the time, I first wrote out with long hand.
“in the rough”, only bits and pieces of words and thoughts,
next I “thought about it” while typing
(or reversed),
then pulled the paper from the typewriter,
with a pencil crossing out words or sentences,
scribbling corrections over or next to
and then typing the whole thing again.
And possibly after that again.
Laborious.
Now all that happens in one single process,
but which still includes all previous methods
or as a memory has saved,
that only more playful, faster
and more intuitive progresses.
With the writing-thought/thought-writing
that is simultaneously a “Single Image” and “Film Editing”,
I am able, to make myself clear about things,
by which with thinking alone I have been unable to do.
The words, written and brought into a context,
the grammar, given rhythm and formed to a written image,
let the thoughts out, air out,
become and finally solidify.
A type of empirical thinking…
I cannot but help, this means of thinking and writing
to also connect with my filmwork.
And when the episode, that comes to mind regarding this,
I have written down,
perhaps I will also understand.
where the thought wanted to go.
I remember,
how by the preparation for Amerikanischen Freund
my camera man Robby Müller and I.
(for the first, but not the last time)
strongly influenced by the pictures of Edward Hopper.
had thought out a visual concept,
by which we wanted to compose each scene,
that the camera must not be moved,
rather the actor moves himself into this framing
or could move himself in and out and again and again.
Every shot (like one calls it in Film)
should solidify itself even more to a “Picture”.
We were very convinced from our concept.
The first two days of filming we stuck to it.
No camera movement!
The picture frame was the measurement of all things.
What was contained within was saved,
what was outside it, forever unseen.
(Tellingly the film was still titled at this time
with its working title “Framed”, or “Eingerahmt”,
whereas in German unlike in English
this has another meaning of being Falsely Played or Accused.)
On the evening of the second day we looked at our printed rolls of film,
the filmed results of these first work days.
(Back then one needed to wait,
a simultaneous looking at or with
that, which one filmes, did not yet exist.)
We sat silent next to each other in our cinema chairs
and took the film reactionless in.
The light went on, and a long silence dominated,
until we raised the courage, to look each other in the eye.
Then we both nodded at the same time.
And I said, only to confirm that,
what we already knew:
“Okay will film that all again!”
And we did exactly that.
We completely repeated the first days of filming.
With one difference,
the preconceived concept we told to go to hell
and the we moved the camera again.
That was a relief!
Suddenly everything came alive again,
which had appeared to us frozen and lifeless before.
The rigidity of the camera
had pulled with it a rigidity of emotion.
Or more likely:
The preconceived rule
had prevented from the start the development of pictures,
rather from the beginning labeling them as still births.
Since then my camera (almost) always moves.
And I make a big detour around preconceived concepts.
It appears to me:
For my thoughts and writings it is the same.
An opinion should not already preceded them.
And my writing also needs the freedom to move around,
this camera movement, if you so like.
I must be able to “circle around” my thoughts
or look at them “from above”,
slowly approach them
or to stand back from them,
so that they become alive.
It is very important to me,
that I can see this process.
My thoughts reveal themselves,
like a Film’s narrative in editing becomes visible.
You can follow it by this,
while I also must be able to follow it,
in order to move ahead.
So much for the instruction manual
to read (think with?) this book.
-Wim Wenders, Spring 2015