The most fascinating [question]...is whether we do live in a virtual reality all the time anyway, in some sort of virtual ambiguity...
The only time I [felt] I was not caught in a virtual reality is when I travelled on foot.Werner Herzog
Las certidumbres sólo se alcanzan con los pies. (Certainties are arrived at only on foot).Antonio Porchia
Ecstasy comes from the Greek 'ekstasis', meaning 'to step outside oneself' like the medieval mystics did to experience faith and truth in an ecstatic, visionary form. Ecstasy in this context is something you would know about if you had ever been a ski jumper. You can see it on the flyers' faces as they sweep past the camera, mouth agape, with their extraordinary expressions.
Ski flying is just an athletic pursuit: it's also spiritual, a question of how to master a fear or death. ...There is a profound solitude in what these men do. These are lonely people who train for ten years to prepare themselves for a few seconds in the air, when they step outside all we are as human beings...from Werner Herzog: A Guide for the Perplexed (2014)
When I was a child, before I was like this, I watched a ski-jumping competition. And one thing keeps coming back: those men going through the air. I looked at their faces. I wish you could see that.from Land des Schweigens und der Dunkelheit by Werner Herzog (1971)
