PS Waiting For Godot was first performed in Paris in your actual French sixty years ago today. Not sure when we started celebrating 60th anniversaries, but what the hey, I love Samuel Beckett - the joyless fuck.
PPS I have this picture in my bathroom - to remind me of the absolute misery of human existence while having a poo.
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Human existence is not a misery, though, is it?
ReplyDeleteSometimes, but also the opposite too, and everything in-between.
"They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more."
I read and saw some Beckett when I was an even-more-pretentious-than-I-am-now teenager and it was just too dark and despairing, for me. I know the humour lifts it or transforms it beyond just that and I can absolutely see that he was brilliant and his work is "true", but... well, I just think it's unhealthy to wallow in that. Or it can be for me. I suspect I'm just not clever enough and/or perceptive enough to see it fully.
Anyway, I shall now prove my point thus: having a poo is a good thing and a near-miraculous thing when you consider the mechanism involved and its purpose and the evolutionary processes that have gone on to bring you to your karzy taking a shit and a'pondering the misery of existence whilst staring at old Sam in his Paris cafe reverie.
I don't see much value in existentialism either, since you asked...
(I don't see much truth in his quote above neither for several reasons, but I've blathered enough)
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"I don't see much truth in his quote above neither for several reasons, but I've blathered enough"
ReplyDeleteOh do go on...
"They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more."
DeleteOkay, is this supposed to be some bleak summation of "life"?
"They give birth astride of a grave" - sounds good, but who the fuck are "they"? Humans? People? In that case, if he thinks we're living "astride of a grave" then it's so unbelievably nihilistic it's untrue.
I think for people like Beckett, maybe he did live astride of a grave - because his quote suggests an irrational focus on death over life.
We are not living "astride a grave" - we're fucking alive, right now (as Beckett was when he wrote that tripe), full stop.
As well as being utterly despairing and so completely useless a view of life, it's also completely egocentric.
"...The light gleams an instant, then it's night once more."
Again, egocentric. Life is ongoing, constant. Every individual life has some effect on the world. They change the world in some way and those changes aren't reversible. Everything moves forward, constantly changing and we all have a part in that and are a part of that. And when we do die, what's left of us becomes fuel for other life (both literally, in the grave, and you know the things we did during our lives).
Look at the beauty of the stars - not just the visual beauty, but the beauty of what they are, how they came into being, their age, their power, their astonishing distance from us - we came from those stars. Without the carbon from "dying" stars, life would not exist on Earth.
One day the Earth will no longer exist. Species (as well as our own, probably) will have become extinct long before no doubt... and eventually the Universe will cease to be.
But - and to try to simplify my incoherent point above - if life on Earth shows us anything it's that everything goes in cycles. I think it's safe to assume that even once this Universe kicks the bucket a new Universe will form and the whole thing goes on.
All of that is hippy guff and I am a little medicated right now, but what I'm essentially trying to say is: great art is about regenerating life/people. You know, productively? Motivating or moving people in the present to engage with the present, their lives in the present.
Not wallowing in the fact that, woah dude, you know, we all die.
As I say, it's egocentric: life has gone on before any of us were born and will go on long after all of us are gone.
The more I think about that quote the more repellant I find it.
If being alive is being astride a grave, then a newborn baby is also astride a grave.
What about babies who die or young children: Beckett should tell their parents that he's living astride a grave.
The big old Irish twat.
Sorry for long bollocks post.
Love you, Fagburn!
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Breath
Deleteby Samuel Beckett
Curtain.
1. Faint light on stage littered with miscellaneous rubbish. Hold for about five seconds.
2. Faint brief cry and immediately inspiration and slow increase of light together reaching maximum together in about ten seconds. Silence and hold about five seconds.
3. Expiration and slow decrease of light together reaching minimum together (light as in I) in about ten seconds and immediately cry as before. Silence and hold for about five seconds.
Rubbish. No verticals, all scattered and lying.
Cry. Instant of recorded vagitus. Important that two cries be identical, switching on and off strictly synchronized light and breath.
Breath. Amplified recording.
Maximum light. Not bright. If 0 = dark and 10 = bright, light should move from about 3 to 6 and back.
Oh, jesus fucking christ.
DeleteWhat the FUCK has this got to do with anyone's life???
What a load of useless shit.
Sorry, I was performing the role of a drunk wanker last night.
DeleteI don't know anything about Beckett and haven't got the intelligence to appreciate him anyway.
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S'okay.
DeleteDon't think you need intelligence to appreciate Beckett...
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That's because you need intelligence to not think you need intelligence to appreciate Beckett. :(
DeleteHe liked his 'football' too!
ReplyDeleteWhat team did he support, pls?
DeleteThe 'More Pricks Than Kicks' team.
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