After thinking about what you wrote I realized what you were saying about the difficulty in describing the tangible affect he had on your life. I realized because you turned the question back to me and I had trouble answering it.

You asked who has affected me and I would have to say Gao Xingjian the Chinese Nobel prize winning author of “Soul Mountain” and “One Man’s Bible.” His writing breaks all the rules buts still sticks to the gut. He was a victim of Mao and in exile he delved into the self, his writing takes me on that journey. I love how he plays with pronouns and with genres. Most of all I’m moved by the connection I feel to him. I’m moved by the fact that we couldn’t be more different as people but I still feel some direct link to him – some link to his humanity.

It’s funny, I was googling Mr. Xingjian tonight just to see what he is up to and I came across info that mentioned his major influence as Samuel Beckett. He has even translated Beckett into Chinese. It’s cool how things connect.

A low-quality version can be found at http://mysite.verizon.net/scottralph/Cascando.mp3

I would be happy to send you a copy of the high quality MP3, if you find you like it.

If you have heard several of the “silly” renditions, as have I — renditions surely
departing from the intended depiction, this recording will seem like a breath
of fresh air (IMO).

When I first heard this, I was living is a terrible basement apartment in Vancouver, BC, while in
graduate school. My roommate and I rigged up an analog oscilloscope to run off of the stereo output
(left channel being the vertical signal, and right channel being the horizontal), and dimmed the lights
and played this recording with the aid of several glasses of wine. The effect was
truly magical! The instruments and vocals made some truly lovely patterns.

I know your sorrow and I know that for the likes of us there is no ease for the heart to be had from words or reason and that in the very assurance of sorrow’s fading there is more sorrow. So I offer you only my deeply affecctionate and compassionate thoughts and wish for you only the strang thing that may never fail you, whatever it is, that gives us the strength to live on and on with our wounds.

Also, it would be cool to hear something more personal about Beckett’s impact on you; that’s the beauty of blogs you can let it all out and I won’t look at you funny in the morning.

From the show I learned he had the rigor you speak of – for is art. But listening to Mr. Seaver, we also learn that Mr. Beckett was very chill, very relaxed about his art. He was like “what do you think about the word clothed instead of dressed?

That’s the best thing I learned about Beckett, he isn’t anal. Being anal or uptight isn’t worth it – even to the rigoress Samuel Beckett – especially to the rigoress Beckett!

I went to Dublin specifically to celebrate Beckett’s centenary. There were plays, events, and great symposium at Trinity College. A week ago last Thursday, on his birthday, I bought an atlas of Dublin and took the train from Dublin to Killiney, from there I walked to “Cooldrinagh”, Beckett’s childhood home and birthplace. It was originally in a semi-rural setting, but it’s now a fashionable and expensive suburb, still called Foxrock. The house is currently surrounded by high fences and security cameras–a private residence and not much to see. But I could barely make out the 2nd floor room with bow windows where Samuel Beckett was (likely) conceived and born–see “Company”. There was no one else about and no commemorations of any sort. It contrasted nicely with the multitude of celebrations in Dublin, and though I was disappointed, it was probably fitting.

I’m curious about the word “rigor,” I looked it up – “Strictness or severity, as in temperament, action, or judgment.” Do you mean we should take away from Beckett a lesson of rigor, in how we deal with death only, or in every day life? Personally, I try to face the hills and valleys with a relaxed temperament. Although, I realize that when one of my loved ones inevitably dies, “rigor” might be in order – if only to keep me sane until enough time passes to forget.

I’m a little confused by the “terminal” idea and how that relates to Joyce. Do you mean that he finally confronted death and nothingness full on in his work?

You don’t have to answer these questions concerning my confusion, along with my relaxed temperament, I move through life in a state of confusion.

I will say one thing before I listen to the podcast today. I’m struck by how many people recognize the name “Samuel Beckett” beyond the works of Samuel Beckett. It reminds me of John Cage and how people can tell you his philosophy on music when they haven’t even listened to his music. Many people can tell you about Pollack’s style of painting, without ever have seen one of his paintings.

It tells me that the ideas that some artists introduce to our world transcend any specific piece of art they created.

The idea is the art. Another example is Andy Warhol.

In this way, these artists become philosophers, do they not?

Although, it would seem that the other side of the coin is, they sometimes create a specific piece of art (like “Wainting for Godot”) that trancends both the idea and the artist.

Just rambling.

I really enjoyed the program. I like to see more programs on literature and philosophy aired as well as painting.

Also from PROUST: “Habit is the ballast that chains the dog to his vomit.” It’s a line that sticks with one.

I love Beckett’s optimism. He keeps “going on” even when he says he can’t.
A favorite quotation (from MOLLOY): “And having heard or more probably read somewhere in the days when I thought I would be well advised to educate myself or amuse myself or stupefy myself or kill time, that when a man in a forest thinks he is going in a straight line, in reality he is going in a circle, I did my best to go in a circle, hoping in that way to go in a straight line. And if I did not go in a rigorously straight line, with my system of going in a circle, at least I did not go in a circle, and that was something.”

In his novel Watt, he writes the following beautiful passage: (again taken from Banville’s article)

“The crocuses and the larch turning green every year a week before the others and the pastures red with uneaten sheep’s placentas and the long summer days and the new-mown hay and the wood-pigeon in the morning and the cuckoo in the afternoon and the corncrake in the evening and the wasps in the jam and the smell of the gorse and the look of the gorse and the apples falling and the children walking in the dead leaves and the larch turning brown a week before the others and the chestnuts falling and the howling winds and the sea breaking over the pier and the first fires and the hooves on the road and the consumptive postman whistling The Roses Are Blooming in Picardy and the standard oil-lamp and of course the snow and to be sure the sleet and bless your heart the slush and every fourth year the February debacle and the endless April showers and the crocuses and then the whole bloody business starting over again.”

He was greatly interested in Cezanne’s take on nature: In a letter Beckett wrote:

“What I feel in Cézanne is precisely the absence of a rapport that was all right for Rosa or Ruysdael for whom the animising mode was valid, but would have been fake for him, because he had the sense of his incommensurability not only with life of such a different order as landscape, but even with life of his own order, even with the life . . . operative in himself.”

As far as his connection to Joyce, Beckett wrote that he:

“realized that Joyce had gone as far as one could in the direction of knowing more, in control of one’s material. He was always adding to it; you only have to look at his proofs to see that. I realized that my own way was in impoverishment, in lack of knowledge and in taking away, in subtracting rather than adding.”

I found all this in an article by John Banville in the Irish Times.
http://www.ireland.com/focus/beckett/

From the archives

We’ll miss you Serious Lee. Don’t be gone long

;;;;;

That five word sentence says so much. First of all, it’s funny; second of all, the overt contradiction tells us – question anything I ever write; and it’s lastly, it tells us he thinks semi-colons are ugly.

I feel handicapped when I try to read a play- preferring to see a play acted out. I am wondering if Beckett is different however.

I was listening to the audio clips above, some of the same play, different performances. It’s interesting what a different feeling you get from each. Is this moreso with Beckett than with say Shakespeare because he is so minimalist?