Unknown

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 wonder sometimes if the fact that the ocean is so unknown makes us not take care of it. We treat it as if it were a hole. Where you can throw all the trash. I read somewhere – I don’t remember exactly where – that the ocean is known less than the moon.

There is this quality of invisibility about the ocean that’s really special. The invisibility of the wind, for instance, matches and points to the invisibility of what’s below the surface of the ocean. All these qualities have an enormously captivating presence that is wielded in mysterious ways in the ocean. It actually makes me quite aphasic and dumbstruck when I try to describe all this, and hence my wish to splutter and stammer when speaking about it.

What is visible in terms of the surface of the ocean remains endlessly fascinating, whereas there’s all that is unseen lurking beyond this visibility or below the water’s surface and which ignites so many fantasies and imaginings.

As the world’s underbelly, full of unknown potential and forces. Floating: in the ocean is such an anti-gravitational experience. The older one gets, the ocean isn’t as attractive as it used to be, but as a counter to the force and effect of gravity, of aging and falling down in fact, the ocean still offers much. Though it’s more something of the past.

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. Power (on the one hand) – don’t want it to be the power, not the power that comes.
Approachability /friendliness. But the sea is not friendly, at least not in an anthropomorphic sense.
Completeness. So complete that it represents so many things at the same time. I think that’s what attracts me so much.
→ It’s Depth. But a depth on all levels. It resonates on multiple levels/there’s a complexity.
It’s impossible to know it. Like the spot where I take the photographs: I don’t know anything about it + I have been there 150 times. You think the sea is predictable but it’s totally not. Even though all those things are true, I don’t feel frightened by it.