Culturally, I mean.
What can touch us -- what touches me -- today with full on, no holds barred meaning?
I surely had my favs back then. In the day. As one does.
But you know what speaks to me the most? Today. That rambles around my head like a perennial house guest?
Samuel Beckett.
Supposedly Beckett was the high priest of meaningless. Like with all that existential crap.
But for me his words and his 'situations' explore the frustration of being human in a society that discourages us to be who we seek to become.
Like his 'Waiting for Godot', we wait...and wait...and still, things stay the same.
In this age of neoliberal bottom line ledgers, this is no minor point.
Is this all there is?
I suppose, if we were to tweak Beckett for today what we ask to wait for is so horrendous that our words would need to be even more strident and urgent than those deployed by his characters:
“Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed. Not indeed that we personally are needed. Others would meet the case equally well, if not better. To all mankind they were addressed, those cries for help still ringing in our ears! But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late! Let us represent worthily for one the foul brood to which a cruel fate consigned us! What do you say? It is true that when with folded arms we weigh the pros and cons we are no less a credit to our species. The tiger bounds to the help of his congeners without the least reflexion, or else he slinks away into the depths of the thickets. But that is not the question. What are we doing here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in the immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come -- ”― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
