The days stack up ahead like slow stale pancakes
Until the diner is shut and no more refills;
And the days before, fools pay their tab, leave a tip
Hit the door and die.
Life’s a carney, you buy your ticket, take your chances
Then pull up stakes and it’s just divots and stamped earth
And the carneys never coming back. It’s a story told
By a confindence man, full of missing queens and sherrifs daughters,
But does mean a damn thing.
I remember bits and pieces of plays, a lot of Shakespeare, because I did a lot of acting right up until the moment I stopped. I always liked that one soliloquy from the Scottish play. That’s what that is above. Funny I couldn’t rephrase it any more modern. I tried. I’m not feeling too modern. In case it’s unrecognizable this is the one I meant;
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing. — Wild Bill Shakespeare
We don’t really do stuff like that anymore, I mean not for stage or camera. We like realism or special effects, and philosophy is saved for the cop in his last week of retirement catching a double homicide. Even then he paraphrases Shit Happens, no fretting his hour on the stage.
It’s not like life has become less fragile or anything, perhaps lifespans have increased, though I was reading somewhere that the metric has changed in America and that number has dropped a bit. Baby boomers and drugs probably. I don’t know, the generation before had a great depression and a world war against an iconic enemy. We had a protest against that was unwinnable against a war that was unwinnable followed by a recession. Now we are the old guys.
I have no idea why I went back a generation. Are there still Carnivals that go from town to town? Diners? I suppose I could bring it up a generation but I think Ginsberg did that, sort of, but not for the stage. Yet he wasn’t really a baby boomer, just writing in the present. I can’t seem to do that.
It seems like it’d be easy to use the fleeting trend of viral media, social media, or other ways we waste timer between the cradle and the grave. That’s another worm that’s turned , we try hard to think that what we do bears relevance and not futility. Granted, the Scottish play is a drama and the King is having a hard fucking time with his actions and his conscious, but still, so do you.
In that respect, Shakespeare gets rewritten all the time. House of Cards, the Netflix political drama, is a lot like the Scottish play. Shakespeare used up most of the handful of plots there are, so comparisons are easy, but the poetry gets taken out. To our modern sensibilities it doesn’t work. Kevin Spacey does talk to the audience a lot in, at least the first season, of house of cards, but you know, that’s just my comparison and it’s loose. West Side Story, for instance, has very little Romeo and Juliette to it except the plot. I’m not really that big of a fan of Shakespeare’s poetry, even that short soliloquy mixes up some metaphors, sort of. I mean there are other poets I prefer and other playwrights that may or may not subjectively be better or more interesting, when Bill hit he hit well. Ginsberg too; once.
It’s early and snowy and I’m tired of thinking of death.
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