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Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her

if i look back, i am lost
art blog(derogatory)
Misplaced Lens Cap

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Xuebing Du
Sade Olutola
Peter Solarz

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YOU ARE THE REASON

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Love Begins

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boucher.avi.avi - 697.6 MB

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“Stigmadness” by Corey Boiko
Apart from discourse, It was par for the course. My eyes saw the patrons as they see themselves. my mind soothed, All are equal, it's well. Yet now, as my brother George lights a cigar, The social ladder slips. I tread beneath it, Stepping on a crack. That is when I see Him as the house does. How could I have been Blind to my brother, His Impression Ragged and Ill mannered, Our reflection. the company I keep Does not work here. In that moment, I didn't realize That's okay, so apologized to each, For having naught but the bearded grain.
I am curious to see well, george, Deserting the real for a deep veil. My eyes materialize in my own reflection, showing a refracted me, Stuck between stations, Just another True me. There is... no excuse for light treatment. Though it destroys me, I am now becoming depth.
Corey Boiko: I always wanted to live in the future, someday I will. check out more of his work at http://ididntrealize.com
“who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath when the blond & naked angel came to pierce them with a sword,” - Allen Ginsberg in “Howl”
Hunger is a Monster
“whose hag arms received
dead Matter of the world
whose wolf head devoured
tough, bloodless corpse
howling like pity w/ in
unopening tomb”
from Diane DiPrima’s “Loba”
the breath that shakes the poison hemlock
Daylight… the mind of the neighborhood was busy withholding a blueprint, sub rosa, very hush hush el cielo se esta cayendo what is the exchange rate of attention span to human life? imagine having a ceiling above you following you wherever you go (or can't go) slowly descending predetermining everything, down to the very last blink save ur breath, might come in handy sometime— It might count for more than what it is, elevate you past the physical. the breath that shakes the poison hemlock get the drop on fate if the demands are met then so is progress but only in the mind What redeems it (salvages it, really) is the idea at the back An unselfish belief in the idea —(only an idea)— At the front of it: a wave of mayhem and ruin just scraping by, achieving its heady, antisocial aims off the rush of 4 million head tilts wait, where did everyone go? where they always go, where they have less to lose, of course. “have u heard the one about the cat, who Read to kill a mockingbird?” he got halfway through but couldn’t find a manual, anywhere, not even after decoding, endlessly atticus, finch at. a. kiss. at a kill (a finch, expendable (no one important, anyway)) no grey area, no interpretation, only instinct and domesticated nonchalance at his disposal what other recourse than to Learn by doing because as anyone will attest
**Anything else
beats the sight of Napalm
in the Evening,
in the Living Room. demand a fee for every Single Favor never compromise

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where is It going? / where has It been?
leaves snap under your shoes, the cracks in the sidewalk sending a shock straight up yr achilles tendon and right on to yr neocortex, altering the daily route. it guides u up the rafters of the city, gives you oversized, inflated hands to barter with among your neighbors. its metallic edge, light or dark depending on the surrounding company.
“They spoke to you about the sacrifice?” an uninvited guest speaks Thru you, precociously waving to others (just like U) to make way, or realign themselves with this new deal. it almost spills your drink, what with all the cacophony of shoving and posturing. All the way thru, u stumble in the bright light emerge from the haze arrive at the terminal, and wait. tag now you’re It.
the layover, the jet lag, the ordeal. What turns out to be an overrated and irreversible affair. the coming and going, doppelgangers of lesser dissenting voices, whether fulfilling an obligation, or lured by exoticism, Still waiting. for what, though? some clarification on their status. hold your ground, and don’t let the threshold between skittish humanity and this cutoff, utopian place govern u, lessen u, tear u apart
Senior project in High School (Spring 2011). I went to NOVA in Seattle, WA. Made over the course of a semester. Images were almost all taken from National Geographic issues from the 1960s through present day, and some ads from the 1950s. All original score made by myself.
For more of my music, you can visit http://souncloud.com/linusmusic
Krimora
illustration by Juan Kurtzman-Gonzalez
I plunge deeper into a slouch in the booth’s cushion, slip on a pair of shades, then fold my arms together. I watch the passing scenery while Khloe periodically takes generous sips from her iced coffee, without breaking her focus on the pages in front of her. Now where did she pick that one up? Oh, just around. My mind wanders. I let it. Several years ago, our family spent spring break at our vacation house in Arizona. We stayed up late one night gathered around a fire pit eating s’mores. I took a swallow from the mezcal. What could we call a chihuahua bought on a impulse from a Native American man earlier that day. Khloe sat on the ground playing with the dog, until he snatched one of her golden brown marshmallows off the stick while it was roasting. He kept jumping around the fire and barking at the shadows on the rocks. We pass out in our chairs around two or so.
Later that morning, my father wakes me up for an early hike. Just the two of us. Says he wants to show me something. Now? Yes? We’re somewhere in the Sonora Desert—that much is certain. The canyon is doused in a navy blue tint, enshrining the tumbleweeds and both of the canyon’s walls in shadow. Bats screech into the night, as they swoop through the bushes. I dawdle back, pausing, then pulling back instantly each time I test the sharpness of different cacti. My father isn’t following any pre-existing trail, but simply letting his little Maglite guide the way. He trailblazes, as he pulls back several scrawny, thorn-ridden bushes. Sometimes he holds the way for me, and sometimes he merely shines the narrow beam of light my way to make a constellation of thorns and brambles. We traverse vertically into the depths of the canyon, there’s one last dip, and then we snake upwards for a while. The outing probably totals a good four or five miles altogether. He calls for me to hurry up as I stumble into an extra stubborn mesh of thorns. When I emerge, I see by squinting at my skin that my forearms and legs are completely covered in coarse scratches. He’s led me to an open area where we can see a large portion of the canyon and now he says, we’ve arrived. Three converging trunks at the bottom open up to a large canopied tree. We’ve strayed considerably from the small riverbed. Hands on my hips, I lean out of this opening in the trees, and I see now the cliff is tapered only slightly by some bushes growing out of the side of it. From here we can just make out the top of our vacation house—seemingly unlit—peeking over a small hill at the far end of the canyon. Khloe and your mom are still sound asleep, he says. If only they knew what they’re missin’. He chuckles sleepily as his eyes catch the moon for a second. Isn’t that a Juniper tree? He can barely contain himself, his eyes lively and intense. I always called it an alligator tree, he murmurs, absently stroking the bark, which is green with sharp edges. Read it on a plaque somewhere by the trailhead. Which begs the question, what trailhead? But I keep it to myself.
Boy, I could tell you a lot about this tree, my dad says, rubbing an eye while he tries to make out the top of it. Me and my friends, we’d chill out here all the time when I was young, while the grown-ups were all busy playing gin rummy. Get up to all types of crazy shit, being young and stupid, as one does. It would be Jax, me, Skyler, Blake, and sometimes his girlfriend Lucia if she wasn’t catching snakes in the depths of the canyon. We’d pass around a bottle of red, from California usually. I recall one time we shared something called “Cloud Break.” We always got them from the vault back at the house. The tree was almost as big as it is now, ‘cept we cleared all the branches out of the middle part here in ‘71.
What I’ll say is it’s pretty much intact since last time I saw it, far as I can tell. That’s, uh, musta been 1983, he exclaims, heightening his tone, again looking for the top of the tree blended into the sky. He clears his throat.
He tells the story about the underground city called Krimora while we lean back on adjacent tree trunks. I crane my neck to the east for the first surreptitious signs of sun.
So, I’m in the middle of the Australian Outback, in a desert, not really like this one, but possibly similar in terrain, he says, and there’s this huge stretch of white sand dunes. A dune juts outward to form a corner, and with some dusting off, traces of a weathered wooden door are revealed, locked shut by a buildup of sand. If you want to believe that nothing of importance lies inside—I mean, how could it, after all—then you would go back to your journey across the blank, homogenous white landscape, and you’d continue on to your intended destination, so to speak. But if you find yourself on this particular journey already, then let’s just say there could never be any sort of intended destination; the entire desert is just a waiting place, a directionless threshold, if you will. But if you’re the curious type, then you want to know what’s behind that door. So you heave the door just a fraction of the way open, after multiple tries, and you squeeze through. You end up at the foot of a kind of tunnel, with sconces lining each side.
Dad, I snap at him. C’mon, the sun’s out now. Tell me what this is all about, now.
Ah, yes, the sunrise. Not an image easily erased from the memory. You kids and your movies, can’t hardly wait for the end without a big man with foreign features and an Uzi shooting up the place. Just hold your horses. Anyway, you’re in the tunnel, but only about a tenth of the sconces seem to be working. Like that’s going to scare you off. Oh, you find your way all right. The tunnel don’t stay straight for very long; it twists and turns and dips down at times. Then you climb down a ladder and watch the scenery change and there’s a rather sudden drop in temperature. Gradually you hear the faint commotion of people moving about, and then the relief washes over you. Boy, will it be nice to be around people after so much time in the desert. Plus, you're still getting head rushes from looking at all that white sand. Now, when you complete the last turn in the passageway the end comes into view as a swirl of different shades of brown and orange. People pass back and forth with a rapidness that seems choreographed, like a performance. The people are mostly white men, faces caked in dust and aged past their years by hard labor, all yelling violently over their shoulders at one another, boasting various accents you can’t make out, spit flying from their mouths as they jerk along chained up hyenas. They could’ve been dingos, but they looked to me like hyenas, my dad assures me. As one passes, it bears its teeth at you then moves along. They pull along donkeys, too, that carry their food and valuables in precarious piles on their backs. The sweat oozes down the animals’ foreheads and torsos.
One man with ashy, soiled over hands turns to you and shows off a crooked, detached grin and a handful of gold, opal, silver, and diamonds. He follows your eyes to the merchandise, then flips them back into a knapsack under his many layers of clothing. He’s gone as quickly as he appeared. You become aware of the noise around you, through which you gather the depth and sheer magnitude of the place you’ve stumbled upon. There is dust everywhere, so you can’t make out any clear sign of a ceiling. What you hear, however, is a plethora of various different sounds. There must be a hundred different kinds of birds in this place, or so it seems. Try to comprehend for a second.
I know it’s hard, because it’s early and your head’s still reeling from last night, but bear with me. Close your eyes now, and listen.
Out of the corner of your eye you see a falcon perched stock-still on a man’s shoulder. He has a fedora pulled low over his eyes and he’s slumped on a stool at a storefront selling silk, with plastic covers to keep the dust off. He looks as a man passes by. It’s early in the day still, but he hopes to get many customers. What can we say about this picture now? Why are those talons clamped in so tight? They look like they’re digging into his collar bone and shoulders—six deep lines shooting out from certain points on his denim jacket.
My dad shows me the spot on his right shoulder and chest area.
It’s really a part of his body, you understand. You ever see one of those trees that has grown around a chain link fence? His falcon’s kind of like that. You blink and see that the man has now slipped off his stool and tipped his fedora up on his forehead. Three guys stand next to the man with the fedora, all of whom are staring at you.
Four hands land on your shoulders, slamming you to the rock solid ground, face first, and everything clouds over in dust. Voices bark at one another towering above you, debating what to do with this blatant foreigner. They pull you onto your feet, a man with bloated jaws and aviators on looks you straight up and down, frowning just inches away from your face and pressing his stomach into your right arm. Then the team marches you forward, wedging a path through the crowd with surprising efficiency, and all the people stare at you with jaded yet zealous eyes. You’ve rounded a corner and they push you through a door, then down some well lit steps. A mouse scurries past you up the steps. In the midst of the commotion, you realize the whole container of the city has got to be fairly high, at least for a falcon to inhabit the place, because you know how they have to dive a long distance to seize their prey. One of the big… whatever you want to call—the lugs, shoves you into the room, barks at you, and points to a chair at a table. A single drop light hangs loosely from the ceiling above the table.
Half a minute goes by, static audible from a radio across the room, while some guy sits on a counter pounding on the remote, muttering curses. Then he chucks it away and goes to fiddle with the antenna, having partial success. Someone’s piercing laugh is heard through one of the walls, a melodic arc of a laugh. There are two doorways in this room, besides the one through which you entered—one in the wall past the table, next to a tall, wide mirror; the other on the wall to your left. Each seem to go straight back into the building with dimly lit corridors and no visible connecting doors. You catch brief snippets of gold and silver quotes from the radio. Reception not so good down here? The question hangs in the air innocuously, lost, like a homeless person out in the big city. Lug Number One grins like a kid, then hums some obscure tune in lieu of a response. The second lug makes his way across the room in strides, looking down and stopping briefly to listen to the radio and to fish out a packet of cigarettes. He sits down in the chair opposite you, first sitting sideways while he lights a cigarette, then turning to face you. This one’s an enormous fucker. He’s wearing a big white button-down shirt tucked into his waist with a black tie and a motorcycle jacket. A tempest of curly blond hair casts a shadow over half his face, really negating any need for the shades he’s got on.
What is your name, my friend? he says, after opening a large binder of files and flipping through various folders. I assume you have a name, don’t you? We try to keep a log of any new faces, to our little village down here, down under. ‘S okay. He licks a finger, finds the right page and scribbles something down, then shuts the binder. Sometimes they slip through the cracks—yes, unfortunate but inevitable, he continues, the cigarette bobbing up and down to his somewhat slurred speech. But we try to keep a census. Good thing to have, wouldn’t you say? Just try to keep your head. You seem dazed, yeah? You must be thirsty, I’m sure. Could you bring us some water? he calls out to Lug Number One.
So, let me start by saying that this is a completely self-contained municipality. And who knows what your story might be, or how you found us. Frankly, it’s none of my business. That said, if you’re willing to earn your keep, then we might let you stay. If you turn on us—well, perhaps it’s better to just avoid that part for now, what do you think? It’s about a twelve hour shift, and judging from those rags you’ve basically got your uniform already, so cheers to that. And if you don’t like it, well you can fuck off, frankly speaking. That’s right. But let me be clear. You’re not leaving outta here the way you came in. Think about that. He involuntarily lands a fist on the table for extra emphasis.
The glass of water comes and you down it in four gulps. That’s right, drink up, he says. Hey, can he get a refill on the water?
The man looks down in his lap, silently mouthing words to himself, then peers over his shades and says to you, I know what it is. ‘S the money, isn’t it? Sure, you’ll get your fair share down here. But you’ll have to pay your dues just like everyone else. You come here unannounced—well, yeah. You gotta meet us halfway. ‘S just like that. He clicks and unclicks his pen five times and lets a cumulus cloud of tobacco smoke drift over your shoulder. There’s an intense pain in your head and in your ribcage from getting slammed to the ground in the street moments earlier. Your mind goes to some giant metropolis where you used to live at some point. But the nearest one of those is thousands of miles away, and even that’s just an arbitrary figure…
As he stands up he nudges the chair backward with his knees, then turns to face the mirror. He begins to mutter things under his breath, and you can see him gesturing with his hands. He turns on his heels so you can see his profile. He removes his glasses and squeezes the bridge of his nose, his mouth slightly open. He scales the room in two steps, then begins to brew a pot of coffee. He quietly exchanges some words with his associate, and every once in a while lets out an excited laugh. The chatter grows louder and the words bubble out spastically: well, yeah, the time constraints. We know about that, don’t we.
The associate nods vigorously.
The fat man squints at the associate, then swings his head toward you and scurries over to rest his elbow on the back of your chair.
He scrutinizes you from behind with widened, yellowish eyes. You have to be decisive, because we have rigid time constraints we adhere to. Things that extend way, way past the walls of this room.
He glances around the room warily. Is it the blossoming asbestos in the corners of the ceiling rubbing him the wrong way, or is it the stuffy air and implausibly low lighting? He searches your eyes for a second or two longer. His keep flickering brown to yellow, and back again. Then, once satisfied, he straightens his back (as much as it will allow) and turns, almost taking a slurp of coffee, but then you decide to open your mouth. When you do, you find that your words are rushed and hoarse, hardly recognizable as your own voice.
You know, I, I’m really not cut out for this type of work, sir. I actually just st-stumbled in here by accident. The last thing I ate was some, uh, ostrich jerky that I—(you swallow involuntarily)—I haven’t slept in a long time. Ahh. You mumble something incoherent.
And, you try to add, momentarily grasping a pseudo-useful thought, I thought there might be some—I didn’t realize!
Now well into mid-morning, patches of light pierce through the leaves and shower our hands and clothing. I look at my father. His face is at ease. He has stopped telling me about the dusty underground city and now focuses his eyes on something behind me. I whirl around in search for the object of interest. He must be looking at the tree trunk I’m sitting on, but I don’t see anything special about it. I look back at him. He gives me a look of irritation, holding an open palm out at me, and again peers around my body at that same spot on the tree trunk. I follow his gaze, half-expecting to find a person behind me. At that moment an owl swivels its head to look right at me, with two discus-sized eyes that seem to want to split open my skull with their sheer contact. Then the bird spreads its wings and sails off in silent, slow-moving flaps, which I feel as they reverberate through the air. It seems to have doubled in size since taking flight. It diminishes into the distance, through the folds of the bushes and trees.
I walk up and down the aisle, involuntarily kicking a soccer ball that rolled down from the next section. The train makes a curve and the landscape opens up to some marshes with tall reeds sticking out. The train attendant motions curtly for me to sit back down. Khloe tells me her book is too one-dimensional and sets it down emphatically. I notice there is a break in the clouds that looks oddly like an eye, which I try to point out to Khloe, thinking that it might soon dissipate. She raises her eyebrows impatiently and nods.
The Origin and Trajectory of Luis Buñuel’s Authorship
Click here to watch my video essay on Spanish director/auteur Luis Buñuel. Enjoy!
German Expressionism

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Video essay "The Enigma of Pier Paolo Pasolini"
The Breakdown of Language and its Consequences in Literature
Above: the original production of Waiting For Godot - Paris 1953
Language enables humans to have agency and to make sense of their surroundings. Certain texts have disrupted this structure in different ways, which has resulted in a new perception of the human condition. In my selection of texts, this breakdown of language brings up themes of stunted agency, the idea of existentialism, and a sense of perpetually oppressive unfamiliar surroundings.
In the medium of theater, language and the act of listening are both major sources of power for the characters while onstage. When these themes are especially prominent, the play’s script starts by acknowledging an adherence to language. It then addresses the problems language presents when the characters obsess over it. In these texts, the effects of language are heightened when the scenes are set in an oppressive environment. Because the characters are in some way unable to escape their environment and the company they keep, their situation becomes self-perpetuating and at times torturous.
In Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, the main characters experience ongoing restlessness in their act of waiting, which affects their attempts at verbal and nonverbal communication. Their inability to remember important details of their recent interactions also prevents them from breaching any new ground in their act of waiting. Because their senses are at a disadvantage, they are unable to use language to serve any consistent intentions of theirs. Their sense of belonging is displaced and they feel they have no agency. Consequently, they cannot escape no matter how hard they try, though there are no physical chains holding them back—only mental ones.
Complex language is humankind’s most underappreciated blessing, and its fundamental purpose is to elevate one’s will beyond basic survival needs. Through their attempts at fully functioning language, Vladimir and Estragon find that language not only sabotages itself, but has no purpose to serve, even if it had the capacity to do so, which it doesn’t, for them at least. This paradox gives them an unlikely self-awareness of their status as quasi-beings in a purgatorial no-man’s land.
Their problematic existence is addressed in the following passage: “ESTRAGON: We always find something, eh Didi, to give us the impression we exist? VLADIMIR: [impatiently] Yes yes, we’re magicians. But let us persevere in what we have resolved, before we forget.” (Beckett, 59) This passage conveys their continual realization that they have made very little progress, at most, in even moving toward some semblance of a purpose. Still, Vladimir reminds his companion to keep searching, while granted, there are very real setbacks to their existence.
It must be said that they do acknowledge the necessity of existing, while they are unable to attain it. Vladimir does this by referencing universality in the following passage:
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! What do you say? [Estragon says nothing.] 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 this immense confusion one thing is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come— (Beckett, 70)
In this rant, Vladimir expresses the full range of his affectation, which is not to say his full range of emotion. His ability to affect a certain passion is combined with his madness. Rather, this is the result of Vladimir being out of touch with his existence long after his sensory skills were impaired. The most he can do in his state of waiting is reach this kind of epiphany about helping one’s congener, as one of another species might, to find a source of purpose. Because he knows he cannot change the status of his own existence, maybe he can add something to his species’ collective existence.
The query to find some type of purpose is at least genuine for fleeting moments during this monologue from Vladimir, but it is ultimately undone by the play’s complications in language and sensory ability. This state of madness and unsteady self-awareness is the default state in Beckett’s play. Part of the reason people appreciate works of fiction or theater is the ability to authentically show the human tendency for residual signs of madness, and this is what causes conflict in a story. However, by making madness the base point, or, paradoxically, the norm, for Beckett’s world, there is no recourse to reach a point of conflict. Rather than as in a traditional narrative, considering the question, “What makes these characters snap?”, two questions now emerge: “How expansive or amorphous is this place of waiting?”, and, “How real or consuming is their struggle with madness?”
In The Tempest, there is no single reason that the characters are trapped on Prospero’s island. Prospero’s magic and power over the storm is the foremost oppressor of the characters, but it affects the characters mainly in the way they feel trapped. The real test of survival becomes tolerating one another’s company for an extended period of time. While Ariel has a higher status than Caliban, being protected by Prospero, his is intensely affected by Prospero’s power. Their competitive need to find have agency in the confined space of the island, framed by Prospero’s obsessiveness, is shown in the following piece of dialogue:
PROSPERO: My brave spirit! / Who was so firm, so constant, that this coil / Would not infect his reason?
ARIEL: Not a soul / But felt a fever of the mad and played / Some tricks of desperation. All but mariners / Plunged in the foaming brine and quit the vessel, / Then all afire with me; the King’s son Ferdinand, / With hair upstaring (then like reeds, not hair), / Was the first man that leapt, cried “Hell is empty, / And all the devils are here!” (Shakespeare
The conflict here in The Tempest parallels Vladimir’s and Estragon’s shapeless but oppressive space of waiting. Those affected by Prospero’s relentless will, including himself, realize the weaknesses the storm gives them. However, unlike Vladimir and Estragon, Prospero and Ariel are almost able to control reality, which actually helps them reach a more whole understanding of their surroundings. This seems to help them fit in with their surroundings as well. The phrase “Hell is empty / And all the devils are here!” shows Ariel being candid about Prospero’s domineering nature, and the storm he has created.
A parallel can be drawn between Caliban, Prospero’s abject slave, and Pozzo’s slave, named Lucky, in Waiting for Godot. Both attempt to prove their worth separate from their master’s will, through their use of language. The proof of their worth is not necessarily granted by supporting characters. Instead, Caliban and Lucky wish to escape from their environment and have a new experience of reality—anything to contrast their inferior status as slaves. Both in part due to the oppressiveness of their environments, Lucky fails, while Caliban is successful, showing well versed eloquence at times.
At one point during Waiting for Godot, Pozzo commands Lucky to think, as a form of entertainment. Lucky’s performance disturbs Vladimir and Estragon, as it appears Lucky is genuinely trying to prove something in his character, something that goes against his nature as a subservient being. Pozzo’s makes his command partly by removing Lucky’s hat from his head, which incites a lengthy outpouring of words. This action of removing the hat symbolizes some switch to activate Lucky and give him agency. The test is whether or not the hat will activate something the audience deems as real agency, or, at least some jester-like source of entertainment. Their reaction can be read in the following passage in the stage directions: “[Vladimir and Estragon protest violently. Pozzo jumps up, pulls on the rope. General outcry. Lucky pulls on the rope, staggers, shouts his text. All three throw themselves on Lucky who struggles and shouts his text.]” (Beckett, 35) The monologue is all garbled nonsense, but Lucky has the strong intention to defy their commands for him to stop. Any singular intention behind one's words is enough to set these characters off. While they are all oppressed in some way just by being confined in this place together, Pozzo is a personification of an oppressive external force. This scene serves to remind Vladimir and Estragon that their existence is, unfortunately, in vain just like Lucky’s is, although they are more self-aware than he is, at least superficially.
Caliban’s role in The Tempest is far more self-aware and commanding of the audience’s engagement than we see of Lucky during his monologue, although he is still an abhorred and physically deformed slave under Prospero’s control. In the following monologue from Caliban he addresses the savagery that he perceives as his oppressor’s daily operation:
CALIBAN: All the infections that the sun sucks up / From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall and make him / By inchmeal a disease! / [A noise of thunder heard] His spirits hear me / And yet I needs must curse. But they’ll nor pinch, / Fright me with urchin-shows, pitch me i' th' mire, / Nor lead me like a firebrand in the dark / Out of my way, unless he bid 'em. But / For every trifle are they set upon me, / Sometime like apes that mow and chatter at me, / And after bite me, then like hedgehogs which / Lie tumbling in my barefoot way and mount / Their pricks at my footfall. Sometime am I / All wound with adders who with cloven tongues / Do hiss me into madness.
While Caliban’s physical appearance and his fixed status as a slave precede his influence as a character in the play, he is able to achieve this elusive place of self-awareness by following a clear intention with language. Whereas Lucky powers through his monologue in search of something intangible, tragically ignorant of how oppressed he is, Caliban articulates how he is being oppressed psychologically and physically through manual labor. In both cases the oppressed characters inevitably spiral into madness, but the settings for both affect the characters’ trajectories. In Waiting for Godot, Lucky’s state is clearly a result of his environment, while Pozzo is essentially a prop to ensure that Lucky has no agency. Lucky is essentially just a less socially adjusted version of Vladimir, Estragon, or his master Pozzo: he has a sense of serious displacement in his environment, and any semblance of a purpose or personal distinction is nonexistent, as far as we can tell.
The Tempest has a much more ambiguous portrait of an oppressed character than that of Waiting for Godot. For all of his acknowledgment of his constant state of maltreatment, his words never evoke self-pity, but rather, an intense hatred for his master. With this resolute attitude, the audience might expect an action later on to support this extreme level of hate which seemingly cannot be expressed fully through words alone. Caliban understands how the obstacles set in front of him by his world play off each other, and the hierarchy he has to climb to have some influence on people that are not at all like him. There is the ever-present pressure from Prospero’s magic to begin with, which he can snap on at a moment’s notice. There is also the need for correct use of the English language, which is far from his native language, and only recently taught to him by Prospero and Miranda.
The struggle to achieve intentional and effective communication is also very present in Olaudah Equiano’s memoir Interesting Narrative. Equiano is shipped from his native land in Africa and enslaved in the American South, with no knowledge of the English language. This disadvantage, coupled with societal displacement and total loss of his native culture, cripples Equiano’s agency and sense of belonging in a foreign land. Like Caliban, Equiano is stripped of his native language, any familiar community, and completely without a sense of belonging, as a result. Before he successfully learns the English language, we see that there are serious consequences for not speaking or understanding English, which can affect a person’s survival in a very real way. The first evidence of this is the white slave master’s punishment of whipping African slaves for minor things, such as their refusal to eat. This happens to Equiano at one point during his journey across the Atlantic by boat. (Equiano 56) If he had some handle on the English language, he could communicate some rational explanation that might improve his well-being on the ship.
Later on in the narrative, Equiano considers the purpose of books, and he explains that his first thought was that they themselves are used for communication. Because he has acquired a close rapport with Jacob, he can ask him what the book are for. But had he not acquired an affinity with white people, and in turn learned their language, not only would he be completely oppressed by his environment no matter whose company he ended up in, but he would be set back severely by the most ordinary aspects of modern life.
Similar to Equiano’s initial response to books, in Waiting for Godot, Vladimir and Estragon have a strange connection to everyday objects that surround them while they wait. The hat is a recurring motif in connection with their search for agency. Considering the effect the hat has on Lucky, when Vladimir and Estragon swap hats repeatedly, in a sense this is their half-hearted attempt to trigger some form of agency in themselves. (Beckett 62) Perhaps, like jumpstarting a car, if they devote enough time to this act of swapping hats, either they will feed off one another’s energy to find some agency for themselves, or simply the momentum gained from swapping hats enough will pay off in the end. At least this may be their intention. Oddly enough, they are almost robotic in their affect during this scene, saying nothing but carrying out Beckett’s staging faithfully, waiting for something to have an effect on their sloth.
There is also at least one instance in Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative memoir of a misguided response to objects in one’s surroundings. The most raw and transparent example of this is when Equiano is slowly trying to adjust to life under the rule of an American slave owner, with no knowledge whatsoever of the English language.
Soon after I had a fan put into my hand, to fan the gentleman while he slept; and so I did indeed with great fear. While he was fast asleep I indulged myself a great deal in looking about the room, which to me appeared very fine and curious. The first object that engaged my attention was a watch which hung on the chimney, and was going. I was quite surprised at the noise it made, and was afraid it would tell the gentleman any thing I might do amiss: and when I immediately after observes a picture hanging in the room, which appeared constantly to look at me, I was still more affrighted, having never seen such things as these before. At one time I thought it might be some way the whites had to keep their great men when they died, and offer them libations as we used to do our friendly spirits. In this state of anxiety I remained till my master awoke, when I was dismissed out of the room, to my no small satisfaction and relief, for I thought that these people were all made of wonders. (Equiano 62)
In the above passage, Equiano’s naïve state in his master’s room shows him acutely disadvantaged. While his master is the active oppressor in this setting, Equiano is at a point where all the odds are against him and even the foreignness of his room is a source of shock and awe. This is the result of being transplanted from one culture, which is technologically unsophisticated, yet culturally rich, into one that is technologically superior. This state of fear and paralysis could affect many in Equiano’s position extremely badly. If the transition could not go so smoothly, white men affected by racism would see the result and would interpret the fear as inherent to an African person’s character.
Nearly all of these texts can be placed linearly in relation to how language is a complication to the narrative. This is to say that for each of these texts, the story takes place before, during or after, some form of breakdown of language.
Equiano’s Interesting Narrative starts when language is already deeply problematic for the protagonist. Although in the beginning, during the exposition of the story of his youth in Africa, he has complete freedom and agency in his community, all of this is under the pretence that he will promptly lose everything, and he is furthest from his objective of surviving when he is initially placed under the wing of his first master in the state of Virginia. In The Tempest, Caliban has finally adjusted to the problem of language, and feels tremendous pressure to exercise his agency through speech, so he can offset the reality of being a slave to Prospero’s will.
In Waiting for Godot, the entire narrative takes place during a suspended breakdown of language. The result is an overarching madness for all the characters: we have no aspect of accepted normalcy for us to compare the five cast members to. In Lois Gordon’s essay “Reading Godot,” Gordon writes, of the concept of madness:
It is not a qualitatively different state from sanity, but rather the condition in which the ubiquitous forces of unreason break the fragile veneer of realism and burst into consciousness and bizarre, dereistic behavior. In sanity, these forces warp the façade, but reason manages to hold, except in dreams, slips of the tongue, and socially acceptable, overtly coherent, and often transparently rationalized forms of instinctual expression, like war and neurosis. (Gordon 3)
In Beckett’s play, waiting, or the act of anxiety, is explored as a place, rather than a state of being. The spare, indistinct setting marked only by a country road and a tree, is Beckett’s physical manifestation of the state of madness. While many writers effectively explore madness on the fringes with realism shown at least as some kind of reference point, Beckett creates an entire world separate from the familiar laws of civilization.
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