"When you are there, you are. With words, you aren't"

The statement from Klaus Kinski points to the stark difference between direct experience and its intellectualization through language. Existence, in its purest form, manifests in moments we are fully present, where awareness and being align seamlessly. When one "is there", immersed in a moment, there’s an immediacy of life that transcends thought, analysis, and, crucially, words. The flow of sensations, emotions, and consciousness forms a unity untouched by language’s fragmenting influence.

Words act as intermediaries; they translate experiences, but through translation, subtlety and wholeness are lost. The firsthand richness of being is filtered, abstracted, and categorized when subjected to verbal description. In speaking or thinking in terms of language, a gap opens between the lived reality and its representation. You are no longer at the raw edge of experience, but at a step removed, observing rather than inhabiting.

Kinski's paradox encapsulates a struggle familiar to artists, performers, and spiritual seekers. On stage or in life, the moments of total presence bring a rare intensity, often described as transcendence. Language is meaningful, yet insufficient for such immediacy, it can evoke, but not reproduce, the fullness of being. The underlying idea resonates with philosophies that see consciousness as diminished by constant internal narration and conceptualization.

True presence is inseparable from silence or wordlessness. In those spaces, thoughts and expectations recede, and one simply exists. The compulsion to verbalize, internally or publicly, draws us away from what is actual; it is a form of absence, a retreat into intellectual constructs. Thus, to "be" means to relinquish the filter of words, to experience life in its self-evident existence, not as a narrative but an unfolding reality. Kinski implies that the more we articulate, the less we truly inhabit our own life.