Krap! I'm Old.

I saw the play, and then read the play. I understood it much better, I was able to picture the words while reading and to sense the emotions that are meant to written in italics. It is a short play, almost just one scene, and in that one scene, a whole life is portrayed.

The first line of a play, of a book, of a movie, is, obviously, very important. Krapp’s Last Tape has an interesting first line:

“A late evening in the future”

In italics, which means that it is a description of the scenery or the plot where and when the scene is taking place. Notice that there a three words that imply the end, “late” is not on time, is after a certain time. When you are late for an appointment you are some minutes or hours after the desired time. When you are late in age is that you no longer are young, or is past the desired age. Late in a day, is near the end of the day, usually at night when the day is over and a new day is coming. Evening is the time of the day closer to the end. It is the time before the night that is the closure. The evening happens after the sun has gone down, it is dark, like the stage where Krapp is. And since it is a “late evening” it is darker. There is a second part to this late evening, it is in the future. This is the interesting part. How can you do a play and expect to perform it in the future? It might mean that some things have not happened yet because the future is a skip of time to move forward in history. Or it is a projection of what the day of his sixty-ninth birthday will be like. Based on the tapes and experiences and evolution he has had in his life, that are manifested on the tapes. This first sentence is ironic, it is the beginning of a play, but it entails an after, an end.

And with this pre disposition I keep on reading. I encounter that, as I had said in my previous blog, this Krapp is disturbed, and more so reading it because it talks more of some of his obsessive behaviors, there are three bananas instead of one, and the keys and obviously the expressions that the actor should be acting that might not be so accurate since it is hard to act an emotion, its subjective. He goes to the past, listening to his tapes and in the future realizes his mistakes and curses that he has now, or will, figure that out and not then. #$”!!”#$? Krap! #$% and throws the metal boxes where this record of pathetic years are stored.

It is recurrent in almost, if not all, novels, plays, movies, or poems that I read, the pursuit of happiness, I’ve blogged several times about it, I referred to the movie with this title talking about The Road by Cormac McCarthy. “'Flagging pursuit of happiness. Unattainable laxation. Sneers at what he calls his youth and thanks to God that it's over.'” He was, or is, or stopped being, in that pursuit of happiness and in this future he gives up and finds out that it is indeed an “unattainable laxation” and he is turning sixty nine and did not obtain it. I don’t think he thanks god that his youth is over, he laments it, otherwise he would not find himself in the state he finds himself and less so listening to his past. That is why he adds after a (Pause) “False ring there.” He wishes to go back and is infinitely unhappy with his present, therefore with his future.