Rick Cluchey

Rick Cluchey startled me with his answer to my question about the setting of “Krapp’s Last Tape”. I ask why the play was set in the future, and his response was deflating. He explained that home recording was highly unused at the time and this sort of home recording device would only have been possible in the future. I think that would probably been Beckett’s answer as well. So often we think our philosophical reasons for the placement of words in texts must be absolute. Then, someone gives an obvious down-to-earth explanation. Although I think Beckett would have given the same answer I doubt that it would be the only answer. Whether he had a greater philosophical reason to place those directions (seemingly pointless directions at that) in the play, or he simply saw it as the only way to render home recording, he must have known the implications of their placement. I doubt that he knew completely why he placed the play in the future, if he did know he probably would have told us, just as he would have told us who Godot was.

Herb Blau

Herbert Blau moved to the side of the podium leaving one hand rested on top for support his eyes turning deep and serious as if his next statement came from some well within him. “We remember most what we’d rather forget,” he said. This statement was the answer to a question I had asked him about Beckett’s reference to throughout his work. Why had Beckett constantly brought up memory in so much of his work, especially in “Krapp’s Last Tape”? Blau who is now working on his autobiography is confronted with his own memories, as Krapp was confronted, as we are all confronted. We cannot rid our minds of memory, and especially those memories which, for one reason or another, we want to forget. Our perception of the world around us is shaped by those inescapable memories. No matter how hard one may try to simply experience his existence he is inevitably forced to juxtapose present experience with past memories. We must live through those memories, we cannot simply experience.

Krapp's Last Tape

Beckett has set his play “Krapp’s Last Tape” in “A late evening in the future.” Also, the play is a reliving of old memories. The result is a depiction which takes place entirely out of the present. The lighting is also important in differentiating between the present and the future during the play because only the “table and immediately adjacent area” are in the light, while everything else is “in darkness”. The result of the lighting is that only memory is replayed and recorded in the light, only memory can be seen or perceived. The present occurs in the dark and cannot be seen. For example, Krapp get’s up to go have a drink or three offstage and in the dark. But the lines of the play which are only recollections of recollection are all in the light. The implications are that only in memory can one perceive. We cannot think or experience the present, we simply remember an experience. What we experience in “the present” must be first conceptualized in the mind and it is a memory of this conceptualization which we actually experience. Also, one must take present experience and judge its relationship to previous memories in order to conceptualize meaning from present experiences. Therefore, the play entirely about memory is placed in the future, because one may remember the past or ponder the future, but it is highly unlikely that he can experience the present.

Texs for Nothing

Beckett questions the relativity of time in “Texts for Nothing” by juxtaposing the words “here” and “there”. He writes, “there never much varied, only the here would sometimes seem to vary.” Here is the present which changes constantly. There is the past which does not change, because the past has no place to change. One line which displays the relation of time to the speaker’s self is when he says, “I had only been here, now I’m here still, soon I won’t be here yet.” Again the word here is the present and the narrator is trapped in the present. Until the final clause when he says, “soon I won’t be here yet.” Is there some lag in memory which pulls the narrator from the present?

The voices of “Texts for Nothing” are not merely two, but several. It is certain the entity of the narrator has multiple voices. This is seen when he says, “Ah yes, we seem to be more than one.” However, the use of “they” to refer to the other voices, by the “I” shows that this is not just a conversation including only the self and the body, but rather multiple selves trapped inside a body.

Eh Joe

The camera moves in “Eh Joe” creeps the viewer closer to the face of Joe. This magnifies every move, twitch, and blink of the character. The camera seems to try to get inside Joe’s head probing his thoughts his rebuttals to the condescending voice. However, the only achievement of these movements is the magnification of expression. Joe makes no reply to the voice, he has no defense. He shows only his intentness upon the voice. Joe’s thoughts and memory have become a plague to him at the present, and it is his own thought, his own memory of that voice, of his past life with which he cannot converse and from which he cannot escape. The voice magnifies the self just as the camera magnifies the exterior expression. Both create a terrifying look at the person of Joe, for the viewer as well as for Joes himself.

Film

Esse est percipi
The expression of the couple, the flower woman, and O shows the “agony of perceivedness.” The film depicts this agony throughout by the mere thought of O trying to escape his own perception of himself. This is obviously impossible because “the self” (E) is the same entity as O. Self perception is a prerequisite to being an existential being. Humans separate themselves from the world around them by noting the change in perception as the world moves around them, which places them in space and time, and it is because of this realization of separateness that O can have a concept of E. Why would O want to escape E in the first place? The realization that one exists also leads to the fear of one not existing anymore. However, because O realizes that he exists E therefore exists and if O can get rid of E (self perception) he can also get rid of the realization that he has the potential to cease existing.