Waiting for Godot

http://i.imgur.com/3nDU0.gif

no better time to post about beckett and waiting for godot than the middle of the night before the week starts, when one hemisphere is heading to bed and the other is still waking up and and pissed and groggy. i watched the 2001 version of Waiting for Godot the other night and it was the most invigorating and creatively inspiring thing i've encountered in forever. so since once again i can't sleep, i thought 'hey why don't i post my uninformed interpretation of it at excruciating length, so that when people wake up and click on the thread they can set the tone for a disappointing week?!'

i'm new to beckett. a while back i somehow ran across a performance of Beckett's Quad on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPJBIvv13Bc

Quad is absolutely brilliant imo. i was in the middle of a john cage and morton feldman kind of month and it was just the kind of thing i wanted to see, open to interpretation and cold and calculating and somehow really emotional as well. when i checked out beckett's wikipedia page i was really surprised to see that it wasn't even mentioned (except as a single entry in a list of his numerous works) because it seemed like it would the highlight of most artists' careers. then about a week ago a friend mentioned Beckett on Film, a big project to film each of Beckett's plays and then sell them in a huge box set that no one can afford. i obtained a copy using my usual methods (varying around a theme but always involving a shootout and then a slow motion motorcycle jump across a bridge that's opening up to allow a ferry to pass through) and decided to view it chronologically by order of when they were first written. Waiting for Godot (1949) happened to be first up.

i realize that the popularity of the play is due in no small part to the fact that it holds a mirror to the viewer and people walk with their own conclusions. but here's my take on it, at least. waiting for godot, to me at least, seems to play with ideas of dualistic, interchangeable relationships and roles, and coping in the wake of the realization that there is no god.

pozzo (P) is a great example of the dualities. when he first arrives vladimir (V) and estragon (E) mistake him for godot, and P even makes a remark that he's surprised that he is of the "same species" as V and E. he's on a pedestal. but even during his time onstage in the first act he morphs. lucky (L) is P's slave, but in some respects P is totally dependent on L. P speaks mundanely and tritely but it's L who delivers the impassioned speech which grows increasingly frenetic and turns in on itself like a feedback loop (but buried in the middle of it is a beautiful sentence - "Given the existence...of a personal God...who...loves us dearly...and suffers...with those who...are plunged in torment...it is established beyond all doubt...that man ...wastes and pines wastes and pines...the skull fading fading fading"). in the second act P is blind and feeble, literally guided around by L, and responds affirmatively when E calls him both Cain and Abel. so in the course of 2 acts he resembles god and humanity, master and slave, and cain and abel.

V and E are simply extraordinary. when i scanned the internet and ilx and found so many people complaining that 'nothing happens' and that the play was boring i wanted to rip my hair out, because every interaction between the two is a goddamned national treasure. the first act of the play - the first time you watch it - is maddening because their dialogue at times seems to be a cruel trick that beckett plays on his listeners. it's difficult to make sense of what they're saying when you're expecting a linear plot, but much easier to understand when you realize that they're switching characters and roles and personas every 1 or 2 minutes. i guess that idea is what drove me to make this terrible ILX post, because no one else who watched it with me agreed, and i didn't really see much commentary online that supported it either. but are they not morphing into different characters continuously? at times they are an old couple, so used to one another's opinions and thoughts that they've elevated their communication to a fascinating meta-level where they each seem to comment on what the other would probably have said, without anyone ever stating the actual thing. at other times they are elderly to the state of falling apart, approaching death. that then easily morphs into parenthood/childhood (E usually seems to play the more vulnerable role of the pair in each of these situations. in general he focuses on physical needs-hunger, clothing- while V is usually the more philosophical of the two), and scenes where the 'tramp' aspect suggested by their clothing gets amplified into an odd feeling that, somewhere in another dimension, they are actually wandering the streets of 1940s chicago, begging for food. this shifting between roles is consistent, and at times the breaks between characters is even announced by certain lines in the dialogue. for example, early in the second act (which is pretty much the best 45 minutes i've enjoyed in the last year or two i think) E says "That's the idea, let's contradict each another", and then for a while they do nothing but just that:

V: Impossible.
E: You think so?
V: We're in no danger of ever thinking any more.
E: Then what are we complaining about?
V: Thinking is not the worst.
E: Perhaps not. But at least there's that.
V: That what?
E: That's the idea, let's ask each other questions.
V: What do you mean, at least there's that?
E: That much less misery.
V: True.
E: Well? If we gave thanks for our mercies?
V: What is terrible is to have thought.
E: But did that ever happen to us?

which brings up two MORE things (sorry). one, this play is LOL hilarious throughout. secondly it's the idea that V and E have to constantly talk in order to keep themselves from confronting the idea of their mortality, and of the realization that there is no afterlife or peaceful heaven awaiting them. there are some tragic moments near the end that combine these two themes:they go to the tree and E takes off his belt so that they can try to hang themselves. E's pants fall down to his ankles, which is comedic. but (at least in the film) it also creates a silhouette that makes E look like an elderly woman wearing a dress, and suddenly they morph into a very old couple, forgotten by everyone, conversing with each other nonstop because that's all that's left in the world - no god, no family, no friends, no support, just the other, just the conversation, avoiding the direct mention of death or poverty or meaninglessness, but always dancing around it. and then there are these great two lines:

E: I can't go on like this.
V: That's what you think.

ugh. UGH. it's too good. E and V dance around each other for two acts like balancing spinning weights, and then at times they come into close orbit and almost sing together, like this bit, again in the second act:

In the meantime let us try and converse calmly, since we are incapable of keeping silent. / You're right, we're inexhaustible. / It's so we won't think / We have that excuse. / It's so we won't hear. / We have our reasons. / All the dead voices. / They make a noise like wings. / Like leaves. / Like sand. / Like leaves. / They all speak at once. / Each one to itself. / Rather they whisper. / They rustle. / They murmur. / They rustle. / What do they say? / They talk about their lives. / To have lived is not enough for them. / They have to talk about it. / To be dead is not enough for them. / It is not sufficient. / They make a noise like feathers. / Like leaves. / Like ashes. / Like leaves.

anyway it's 2:30 am and i realize i'm just rambling now, but i'm very exciting to continue on through beckett's work, starting with the plays that are captured on Beckett on Film and then working through his novels. as (i think?) i mentioned near the beginning of this, near the end of his life he came up with Quad as an exception minimal performance piece for television around 1981, and i think it's absolutely brilliant, so i'm really exciting to see what he created in between the two. believe it or not i have other dumb things to say but i'll just stop

PS i guess it's pretty lame in 2014 to say you're 'inspired' by something? but fuck that, i am totally inspired by waiting for godot. it's a goddamned masterpiece

awesome post. this play didn't click with me until years later, basically until I read krapp's last tape which is v distilled and easily digestible and I still think is a good skeleton key for getting into beckett, at least the plays. the version with john hurt on that boxset i thought was p good overall.

been meaning to jump into one of this guys novels bc godot/happy days/krapp's are some of my favorite plays ever but his Books feel like too much of a slog to me, and while I'm aware that this is more my problem than his, my eyes still tend to scan right past those spines on my shelf when I'm looking for something to read next. somebody on one of these boards (maybe scott) said reading beckett made him "feel like a zombie" and I can identify with that, but I wish I didn't. anyways it's been a cpl years since I've had a go, maybe they or I have opened up in the meantime, you must go on I can't go on I'll go on etc.