Godot

Am i cheating by throwing up my articles on here? I don't think so. Here is the most recent addition to Curmudgeon Corner. I think this is probably the best one I have written so far. Able to actually get my thoughts down the way I would like in 900 words or less.

enjoy...

The art of waiting for our Godot’s

“Have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time? It's abominable! When! When!”- Waiting for Godot

November 3, 2007 was opening night for the outdoor performance of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot in the lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans. Journalist Cain Burdeau of the Associated Press was in attendance and described the outside setting of the play as surrounded by “ruined houses still untouched since they were flooded by roof-deep water.”
The lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans is one of the poorest sections of New Orleans and was most affected by the destruction of Hurricane Katrina. Today, much of area is still destroyed and has yet to be rebuilt.

This rendition of Beckett’s play, which centers around two men attempting to escape boredom while they wait for the elusive Godot, draws intentional parallels between the characters awaiting his arrival (which never happens) and the residents of a destroyed city awaiting the help of the Red Cross, FEMA Vouchers and other government aid. Marked with elements of existential doubt and moments of insanity, the themes throughout “Godot” additionally connect to the daily condition of life in the Ninth Ward that its residence must experience.
Director of the play and artist Paul Chan expands on the similarity between the play’s theme and the state of the place it is being set in.

“The longing for the new is a reminder of what is worth renewing…“Godot” was my way of re-imagining the empty roads, the debris, and, above all, the bleak silence as more than the expression of mere collapse. There is a terrible symmetry between the reality of New Orleans post-Katrina and the essence of this play, which expresses in stark eloquence the cruel and funny things people do while they wait: for help, for food, for tomorrow.”

The theme of waiting is something that seems to permeate our society on various different levels. Most of these experiences are not that of what Katrina victims have had to endure. However, all of us live our lives in anticipation. We are characterized by a perpetually waiting for something or someone that can be emblematic of our own, personal “Godot”. Despite its different interpretations, Beckett’s play is wholly connected the human experience in society and on a universal level.

If you are religious, you are constantly waiting for a savior, the after-life, or that moment when the space between the divine and one’s earthly existence can be bridged. For others, it can be a life constantly in pursuit of an ambition or that which will make you sense a purpose. Some live their lives as it comes but are not free from societal constructs leaving us in a long grocery line, or stuck on the freeway as time flees by, making us late or simply cheating us from our freedom of how to spend those lost minutes.

As Katrina victims in the Ninth ward know, waiting is tedious and unbearable.
"We waited for Red Cross. We waited for George Bush. We waited for rescue. We waited for housing…" stated 53-year-old Tyrone Graves as reported by to the Associated Press on the night of Godot’s opening.
Yet this can also further emphasize a great outcome or a tragic end. All of mankind must at some moment experience both these polarities.

Waiting was the prisoners of Auschwitz on those last few days before liberation. It is what the third-world child experiences as they await sustenance, the soldier for his target, the elder on their death bed or nine month pregnant mother. It is our sense of anticipation as we wait for our hair turning the color of ash, the orgasm, the alarm clock to ring, the day to be over, dinner, the light to turn green.

And yet all these are more that just solely the act of waiting; they are events that change and define our passing time. Thus the essence of waiting lies in the experience of the moments which we “wait”.

The characters of “Godot”, despite all their longing, are able to discuss and comprehend the nuances of their waiting. What is discovered is a necessary of the “now”. One is only “waiting” if one lets it be that. There is still time to operate until then.

Kierkegaard wrote that “unhappy individuals who hope never have the same pain as those that remember. Hoping individuals always have a more gratifying disappointment”. By constantly committing the recollection of what is to come but continues to not occur disallows us the ability to hope. Yet, to wait and constantly remain in a wishful anticipation and desire is a whole other kind of waiting. It allows us to forget and no longer see our waiting as idle, and ultimately allows us to better act and exist in that condition of waiting.

The residence of the ninth ward assuredly believe that to be able to continue and exist in their devastating condition, they must find a certain balance between all of that which is, and an attitude of continual hope for what may or may not come. It an unfortunate lot to be in. However, to a certain degree it is something that is universally experienced. “Waiting for Godot” and the situation of the ninth ward is a precisely appropriate coupling and a stirring testament towards our human condition. The result is an uncommon example of real life closely interacting with art.

“Let us not waste our time in idle discourse! 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…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 once the foul brood to which a cruel fate consigned us!” –Waiting for Godot