Fear

If you look at the sea, your view is unspoiled. This ‘sea or ocean panorama’ is to me. the only one that gives rise to a sense of infinity, adventure and expectation. The sea suggests the chance to explore → I see the horizon as something that you can never reach but you would like to get at anyway. This is linked to a certain fear of the unknown.

I used to perceive it as something related to pleasure and joy – to freedom. It was “nature” and I always associated (good, positive feelings) with it. Living in Greece was my first
encounter with it → like a big discovery of this sensation of nature + of freedom. I was living in Volos at the time + I was travelling all along the coast. At the time, I had never thought about what the ocean really means or is. I had never feared it.

Since last summer, after the accident, I’ve been very afraid to go into the sea. After the accident, I went to the sea (in Spain). This was not as traumatic as I had imagined it to be, because I was well accompanied. I was with someone who I trust very much + also because I don’t have any memory of the accident. But now I cannot swim far away from the shore anymore.

E.R.B. The ocean is in all the apocalyptic movies + fears.

After the crew are overcome with acute states of distress and fear from hearing these disembodied voices, the ship's captain provides an explanation to the source of such noises. He points out that they are sailing very near the edge of a frozen sea and that a year before in that very same spot there had been a bloody and wild sea battle where many men, women and children had been brutally killed. And accordingly, as he explains it, all the frightful noises of the battle had been frozen in the cold sea air and were now a year later beginning to thaw, and this was what Pantagruel and his comrades were now starting to hear.

At Byron Bay (in Australia), there is one beach where people drown regularly. I’d often experience a dull pain in my kidneys just before entering the ocean there. Later I found out that this type of pain comes exclusively from fear.

In Bonaire, the sea is very transparent. When swimming out into the sea, there is a point where all of a sudden the bottom of the sea deepens so abruptly, it goes from seeing the seabed clearly, to a huge black hole, without any transition, it completely disappears from view. Reaching this point left me . Even though it has no physical consequences for my swimming on the surface. Still, I almost did not dare to swim past this point. I felt like standing on the edge of a cliff.

When I was a teenager, I almost drowned. while learning to kayak. → My kayak capsized and I couldn’t get out of it. So it left me with a strong swimming anxiety. I could easily panic when in the water.

Elements make you feel small. Respect and fear → define one’s relation to the ocean. It's work. A fisher friend from Brittany once said that when you fall far into the ocean, knowing how to swim doesn’t change anything. Cause any way you cannot fight it.

P.P.My personal, intuitive relation to it is defined by fear + fascination. I love to walk on the seashore with my dog: its a form of meditation for me.

In the old days, there was no connection with the shore during the journey. Our families would ask us: When do you come back? And we’d say: We don’t know yet. Because it’s not possible to plan on the sea. Because you never know what will happen. You should never say how long a journey is going to take. As a skipper, you should never show that you have negative thoughts.

T.v.A To start, I want to say that I’m totally in love with the ocean. I’m also very afraid of it. Or, rather, I’m in awe of it. It’s the most fantastic body that exists. When I was small, it was my parents that first brought me to the sea.
(It was in Middlekerke: we had an apartment there where we used to go for the summer.)

Even when the sea is at its wildest etc. It will always be frightening only if you try to contain it. If the rocks were not there, it would just keep on rolling. If you don’t fence it in it will keep on rolling, it won’t attack. Eventually, the rocks will have to go.

So it felt like there was just ocean + birds + me + no land. It felt like I was flying with them. It felt like there was no difference between what they were doing and what I was doing. It felt fantastic. I was too close to the cliff to walk around. I get scared really easily.

In fact, I do have a practice of painting the sea every day – this does open my mind. I go to the same spot on the beach in Ostend and make a polaroid image of the sea. Then I paint the polaroid. Every time I think: Puh, this is a difficult one; I don’t know if I can do it. But when I start, I don’t have that thought anymore. I conquer the fear of starting and that makes it easier to start.