We have to watch Stroszek, to prepare us for our trip to the USA, and read Marx, W. says. You have to read Marx, W. says, if you're going to the heart of capitalism. The heart of capitalism, the heart of darkness, W. says. Look what happened to Stroszek himself!
Bruno S., Bruno Stroszek, in Herzog's film, knew it was going to turn bad. He knew, even as he headed there, that America was, in its entirety, the wrong direction. He knew things were set in motion long before he appeared. What was left to him but suicide, after the collapse of his American dream?
But just before he died, before he rode his chairlift into death, he saw a chicken dancing in an amusement arcade. A chicken on a hot plate, made to dance. A chicken dancing, that could do nothing but dance, once quarters were fed into the slot. And what was Stroszek but a chicken dancing? What could be do but dance, all the way up to his suicide?
We have to be prepared for the worst in America, W. says. For the very worst.
What works of Marx should we take to the USA? Perhaps we shouldn't take any at all, W. says. We might get arrested at customs. We might get sent home for Unamerican activities. Perhaps we're already on a list somewhere, W. says. Perhaps they already have our photos.
We have to remember what happened to Stroszek and his friends, W. says. It's not as if we haven't been warned. We have to remember the chicken, W. says. We have to bear the chicken in mind.
Stroszek: didn't Ian Curtis watch the film just before he killed himself? He saw the chicken, W. says. He really saw it! And what else was left to him? What else could he do? Perhaps our trip to America for our Unamerican activities is only a kind of suicide.
Herzog speaks of finding images adequate to the world, W. says. We have to develop an adequate language for our state of civilisation, Herzog says. We have to create adequate pictures, otherwise we'll die out like dinosaurs …
The chicken is cosmic, that's what we have to understand, says W. The image of the chicken, the dancing chicken, is the secret of the world. It's a bit like that statue I have in my flat, W. says. Who is it supposed to be again?
Shiva, I tell him, the highest of the gods. Shiva, W. remembers. Shiva as Nataraja, the cosmic dancer. – 'What's your cosmic dance like?', W. says. 'Do the funky chicken', W. says. 'Go on, fat boy. Dance'. W. likes to watch me dance, he says. It's so improbable. So graceless.
Why do you hang out with Lars, everyone asks him. It's so he can watch me dance, W. says. So he can see my chicken dance.
Shiva's dance shook the foundations of the world, I had told W. His locks, whirling, collided with the stars, his steps split mountains asunder and his arms whirled throughout the full breadth of the universe.
Didn't the gods descend from heaven to watch him? Didn't they see the very dance of the universe, the great cosmic cycle of its creation, perdurance and destruction? Shiva, thus dancing, was called Nataraja, the Lord of the Dance.
What's sanskrit for Lord of the Chicken?, says W.
W. dreams of a thought that would be the equivalent of the image of the chicken. A thought, a single thought, adequate to the disaster, equal to it … In some sense, we'll have to exhaust thought, W. says. We'll have to run it ragged, right to its very end, like the car Stroszek set running in circles outside the arcade. It has to run until it burns, until it catches fire. Then and only then might something happen.
The chicken won't stop. That's what's etched into the runoff groove of the last Joy Division album. It's like a mantra to W. It should be pondered at length. – 'You won't stop, will you?', W. says. That's part of the horror: that I should show no signs of stopping. But it's part of my glory, too. Who put the coin in the slot? Who am I amusing? Not even him, W. says. And certainly not anyone else.
In my best moments, I do resemble Bruno S. playing Bruno Stroszek, of Herzog's film. In my best moments, W. emphasises. Otherwise I resemble no one but myself, more's the pity.
But sometimes I achieve a kind of pathetic grandeur, W. says, almost despite myself. There I sit, in the squalor. There I am, a squalid man, amidst the squalor, a bottle and a glass close at hand, some discounted sandwich boxes lying empty around me, and I'll say something truly striking. I'll make some pronouncement. I'll speak as though from the apocalypse, W. says. I'm like a savant. It's like a possession.
Bruno Stroszek speaks of himself in the third person, that's the secret. Haven't I told W. that everyone around me ends up speaking of themselves in the third person? That's the effect I have on people, W. says. Alienation. I turn them from themselves. From their seriousness. Which can be a good or bad thing, depending. Didn't I lighten W. up? Certainly. But there's such a thing as being too light. There's such a thing as being in danger of floating away.
Stroszek. W. supposes he can only resemble Bruno's elderly neighbour – what was his name? Scheitzer. Scheitzerhund. Just Scheitz, I tell him. Scheitz had an interest in animal magnetism, W. remembers. He bothered people with it. He confused them. Just like him with his interests, which are equally improbable, equally irrelevant. Messianism – who wants to know anything about that?
What was that town they ended up in?, W. says. Railway Flats – was that it? Railroad Flats, in the middle of America, right in the middle, equally far from any coastline. And why are we going to America?, W. asks. why did we accept the invitation? Wasn't the film a warning to us? Couldn't we see how it'd end up?
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