What international traveling has made me realize again, is that the performative aspect of communication is an inescapable part of humanity.
Rome, like New York or Hong Kong, is an international city, bustling with nationals from every corner of the globe. I could pick out 10 different languages per day based on my limited ears.
But it doesn’t matter if one is interacting with the lost Korean tourist or trying to order form the German butcher, you know how to do the dance of communication, regardless of the language barrier. It’s been one of the most palpable and salient reminders of the ties that bind all of us together on this rock floating in infinite nothing.
All of this is not meant to justify my linguistic ineptitude, I’m resolved to learn to speak other languages besides KJ’s Englais as soon as possible, but it is a sobering reminder that whether it’s German, Russian, Japanese, Cantonese, French or Spanish, it’s all the same old dance.
I was reminded of all of this rather saliently when I sat down to an Italian version of a Samuel Beckett play. It wasn't the one most know him for, Waiting For Godot, but an even more dense piece: End Game.
Now, I'm not going to try claim an intense understanding of End Game in either Italian or English. However, it does contain some easily relatable themes. There are two men, possibly in a bunker, one is elderly, blind and in a wheelchair, the other “cannot sit” and is the former’s begrudging caretaker.
There are also two characters confined to trash bins. We watch a snippet of what must be these poor souls endless cycle of life trapped in a post-society world. There is a death, but it reads as matter of fact and just par for the course of the situation. The remaining just...continue.
No progress is made. No light emerges. A grueling march towards the inevitable, disguised as a whirligig of bitterness amongst a shrinking community. Once the human age collapses, what is there to do but make the lives of your fellow survivors miserable? A view that certainly contains the color of the nihilistic, but ultimately worth exploring.
Hamm is our old man in the chair, and Clov is his tender. Their relationship is one of constant, often hilarious, banter.
It is not the banter born of coy admiration, but the kind one would expect from two people who have lost touch with all positive emotion; two people who are trapped in the same room with each other where the endless waiting has lost any tinge of hope.
What can one take away from this once they have finished reveling in the spectacle of nihilistic absurdism? Well, the easy answer is the one that always comes with absurdism: Whatever one wants to take away! That sentiment always rings too hollow.
I take away just how worth preserving the life without that sort of hopelessness is. It does not take much to tip the scale against human flourishing, and it’s worth remembering what a nightmarish abyss lies below the civilizational cliff.
Maybe see if it gets through to that sap in your circle who likes to call themselves an anarchist. Or just put a bin over their head.
