I gave it a rest, took a step back to get a better vantage
point. It didn’t help. I know this much. Writing is therapeutic. I suffer without the illusion of putting the world in order.
We saw a one-man performance of three Samuel Beckett works.
Barry McGovern was superb; words poured out of him at the speed of our mind’s
gibberish, stinging and tickling, at once.
I can’t go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on. Nobody I know captures the
absurdity of existence as well as Beckett. Mortality hangs overhead yet we go
on with a torrent of words let loose as
if from a broken spigot, hunting, grasping for some measure of meaning or control
of it all, as though….
If I were the last one standing to greet the visiting aliens
they might wonder why they went to all that trouble. I haven’t the vaguest idea how anything works
in this clutter of things. Not this computer I’m typing on or the bulb in my
lamp or the TV, telephone, car, even how my clothes came to be. The only technology
I might explain is an ice cube tray……but then again I don’t know what makes a
refrigerator refrigerate.
It gets worse. We don’t know what we’re doing here except to
multiply the species and enjoy our allotted time. Maybe register our wonderment
and leave our mark.
So I witness the passing parade as if some clues might
appear to my inner Sherlock in this era of connectivity. Two T.V. shows, House of Cards and Downton Abbey, have found their audience and I find myself looking
for a common denominator. In a word it is, Control.
One mirrors the slime of Washington D.C. ratcheted up a notch perhaps…or maybe
not. The other transports us to those years when the last gasp can be heard of
the British manor house, with its order and civility in which everyone knew his
place.
Machiavellian ambition, however treacherous, seemed easier
to take with a British accent. Peggy enjoyed Ian Richardson’s nefarious climb
up the ladder but has trouble watching it Americanized in the hands of Kevin
Spacey. Like it or not we find ourselves identifying with Francis Urquardt, now
Underwood, in his calculated rise to the top of the heap. Adrift as we are in
this sea of flotsam I suspect we can’t resist clinging on to anyone who pulls
the puppet strings. He navigates deftly through the maze. Never mind his
deceit, disregard for human life or indifference to values. He is the ultimate
pragmatist. Obama, he's not. He leverages like LBJ, charms like FDR, plots like
Dick Cheney. Politics is chess and he’s four moves ahead on the board. If he
has sinned (and he has) and dies (as he must) trying to grab the reins, he has
died for us, the congregation of the lost. A sacrificial offering who gave us a
few dozen hours of a fabled climb up the beanstalk.
As opposed to this downtown alley we can always escape into
Downton Abbey where the rituals and traditions, however anachronistic, are
rigidly maintained. After all, one can’t expect the lord of the manor to put on
his own pajamas. The place reeks of order and we love this tidy world. Of
course melodrama is made of sterner stuff and there is no shortage of scandal
and misdeeds to put to rights. The nobility of upstairs is matched by the
hierarchy of downstairs. The butlers know when to become invisible. The titled
class observes what is bred in the bone except for minor transgressions which
can be remedied. The operative word is still, Control. We can’t get enough
of that wonderful stuff.
Beckett’s characters are closer to the authentic self. But
who wants to think about that? Better to live through our small screen plotters
and players of a bygone time with a few hours of imagined control over this
fractured and mysterious life.
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