February 24, 2019

I'm just trying to understand why David Crosby liked it.

I'm only seeing this because I follow David Crosby and he liked this:

I can't not look at a tweet involving David Crosby, Dan Rather, and Samuel Beckett. But let me get back to my reading....

Emptiness, silence, heat, whiteness, wait, the light goes down, all grows dark together, ground, wall, vault, bodies, say twenty seconds, all the greys, the light goes out, all vanishes. At the same time the temperature goes down, to reach its minimum, say freezing-point, at the same instant that the black is reached, which may seem strange. Wait, more or less long, light and heat come back, all grows white and hot together, ground, wall, vault, bodies, say twenty seconds, all the greys, till the initial level is reached whence the fall began. More or less long, for there may intervene, experience shows, between end of fall and beginning of rise, pauses of varying length, from the fraction of the second to what would have seemed, in other times, other places, an eternity. Same remark for the other pause, between end of rise and beginning of fall. The extremes, as long as they last, are perfectly stable, which in the case of the temperature may seem strange, in the beginning. It is possible too, experience shows, for rise and fall to stop short at any point and mark a pause, more or less long, before resuming, or reversing, the rise now fall, the fall rise, these in their turn to be completed, or to stop short and mark a pause, more or less long, before resuming, or again reversing, and so on, till finally one or the other extreme is reached. Such variations of rise and fall, combining in countless rhythms, commonly attend the passage from white and heat to black and cold, and vice versa.
That's from "Imagination Dead Imagine," which you can read along with me in "I Can't Go On, I'll Go On: A Samuel Beckett Reader" (pp. 551-552). I remember seeing that in the theater in NY in 1984. From the NYT review:
On tape, we hear the resonant voice of Ruth Nelson offering a precise and lyrical reading of the text, with its futuristic tale of a man and woman confined in a white rotunda. In the background, we hear a delicate overlay of John Lennon's ''Imagine.'' At the same time, a beam of light falls on a catafalque and the intricate design on the exterior changes color and texture as we watch it - from gold to bright white, from sandstone to marble. Faces and objects seem to appear on the surface. Atop the catafalque floats a holographic image of a prone ''woman-child,'' played by Clove Galilee. She rotates and swims as if she were a mermaid in a miniature fishtank. Light, voice, hologram and music play against one another in undulating patterns.....

70 comments:

Achilles said...

There are a lot of “smart” people trying to figure out how they could be so wrong.

dbp said...

What a strange thing to be Dan Rather. He must know that most people think of him as a laughing stock. He has his followers, who take him seriously and of course he takes himself seriously.

What a weird guy.

campy said...

What frequency should we monitor while we're waiting, Dan?

alanc709 said...

You'd have to ask Kenneth, he knows the frequency

Wince said...

"I'm just trying to understand why David Crosby liked it.""

He's a Tom Petty fan?

Oh, don't let it kill you baby, don't let it get to you
Don't let 'em kill you baby, don't let 'em get to you
I'll be your breathin' heart, I'll be your cryin' fool
Don't let this go to far, don't let it get to you

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
The waiting is the hardest part
Every day you see one more card
You take it on faith, you take it to the heart
The waiting is the hardest part
Yeah, the waiting is the hardest part

RNB said...

"We wait for the Mueller report." We wait for Lucy Ramirez to send you some more red-hot evidence against Geo. W. Bush. We wait for OJ to find the real killers...

Anonymous said...

I wish we could have had the chance to see Dan Rather humiliate himself on Celebrity Jeopardy the way the pig-ignorant Wolf Blitzer did. These TV types are chosen for their serious mannerisms, stentorian voices, and slavish devotion to the left wing political cause, not their mental acuity or knowledge. Sadly, the public seems to have some trouble making that distinction. It is always amusing when the moron behind the mask is exposed.

Jay Vogt said...

Do yourself a favor and follow Roger McGuinn instead. Although he’s not as good of a harmony singer, he’s a smarter guy and he’s gentler on the soul

Jupiter said...

'That's from "Imagination Dead Imagine," '

Oh, thank God. I was trying to conceive of a context in which Tom Wolfe might have found that deadening brickwork of uncomptetent prose to be necessary.

Unknown said...

Crosby is so addled he retweets anything with the word Mueller, assuming Rather is on his team

jaydub said...

Dan, you might not like the other "process." Be careful what you wish for.

Fernandinande said...

Two men converse on various topics and reveal that they are waiting for a man named Godot.

Shortly after, a boy tells them that Godot will not be coming.

The End.

Larry J said...

While waiting for things to happen, Dan Rather and the other “journalists” like him will do what they always do - make up shit to fill the airtime.

Not Sure said...

Consider the very real possibility that Crosby didn't get the Beckett reference.

Drago said...

And so we wait. We wait. We wait......

'Twas the time before Mueller-mas, when all through the lefty media and LLR house
Every creature was stirring, 'cuz why not H8tr?
The stories were all written and placed in the "publish" outbox with care,
In hopes that a leak could trigger printing them there;

The lefties and commies and LLR's were were nestled all snug in their lies;
While visions of frog-marches danced in their heads;....


.....you can see where this is going.

Just know that at the end, Trump will have come and gone, leaving MAGA gear for everyone, eating a leftover cheeseburger taken from AOC's stocking, drinking Adam Schiff-ty's milkshake ("I drink your milkshake!") and proclaim as he soared out of sight,

"The entire obama cabal couldn't do it, why would you think Mueller could finish this lie-filled fight?"

Drago said...

My favorite "CNN is full of hacks" moment is when, not that long after the election, the hack-lefty-fake-"journalist" was hosted the CNN "Reliable Sources" show...(...yes, I can hear you snickering already!)...and the show's theme was on ethics and reliable reporting.

Take one guess who Li'l Tater Stelter had on as the "wizened" old hand?

Yep, Dan Rather.

Because, of course he did.

And I don't care if making fun of Dan Rather and Li'l Tater Stelter and CNN and all the rest of the lefty hacks makes LLR Chuck upset beyond all reason.

Tough luck Chuck. Trump has completely exposed your lefty media allies every bit as much as he as exposed your fake con heroes.

donald said...

Drago is an ACE enthusiast!

Earnest Prole said...

It’s a pretty straightforward “Waiting for Godot” joke.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

For the love of God, can there be one thread without Drago mentioning some LLR?

Of course we wait, but it will be over one day and hopefully we’ll all know what the findings are. We know it’s not over despite what Trump tweets and Drago propagandizes.

LYNNDH said...

Rather is a senile old fool. Enough said.

William said...

On the plus side, Dan Rather has not yet been accused of any sexual transgressions. By news business standards, he's practically a saint. They should always identify him as the non rapist newsman to differentiate him from the others......For Rather, Godot has already arrived, but Godot did not deliver a moment of redemption or meaning. Godot informed Rather of the utter futility and fraudulence of his own life........Smollett and Rather should do a remake of Waiting for Godot. They can sit besides the barren tree and discuss their hopes for the future. The play would have a lot of resonance.

mezzrow said...

At night, Jim Acosta likely watches old YouTube clips of Dan Rather hectoring Nixon and Nixon's minions. He has a goal. He has a plan. Trump is his opportunity.

In high school, I got to play Pozzo in our callow rendition of Waiting for Godot. Typecasting, I suppose.

I can see the appeal of Rather and Beckett in some detached way, but David Crosby has always just left me cold.

dgstock said...

Dear Dan:

You bloat, you whore,
You crashing bore
You think the pundits love you

(With apologies to J. Joyce)

tcrosse said...

The Kinks said it best in 1965

Drago said...

Inga: "Of course we wait, but it will be over one day and hopefully we’ll all know what the findings are. We know it’s not over despite what Trump tweets and Drago propagandizes."

LOL

Yes, that was posted by Inga, who years ago had already pronounced Trump guilty of being the most corrupt president ever, Trump voters are Nazi's, and Trump guilty of Treason, that Trump was indeed a golden showers sort of guy based on Hillary's paid-for pack of lies hoax dossier, etc.

So now, after all that, Inga would like to lecture others on waiting for actual evidence before drawing any conclusions.

Let's all be sure to give her opinion on that the proper respect it deserves........

Drago said...

And for the love of God, can there be one thread without every lefty in sight pretending that LLR Chuck isn't one of them but giving the game away by rushing to his defense?

LOL

On the other hand, it's good that everyone's cards are on the table.

Darrell said...

What? Is this freak seeing Kenneth?

Homo homophones. . .

Drago said...

Other things Inga considers "propaganda":

1) The Clinton admin FBI Background files scandal
2) The commies killed over 100M in the 20th century
3) All under oath testimony by key players in the obama/hillary/Deepstate Coup attempt

This list, is of course, endless...and of a particular theme. See if you can identify what that theme is.....

rhhardin said...

Silence, sole luxury after rhymes, an orchestra only marking with its gold, its brushes with thought and dusk, the detail of its signification on a par with a stilled ode and which it is up to the poet, roused by a dare, to translate! the silence of an afternoon of music; I find it, with contentment, also, before the ever original reappearance of Pierrot or of the poignant and elegant mime Paul Margueritte.
Such is this PIERROT MURDERER OF HIS WIFE composed and set down by himself, a mute soliloquy that the phantom, white as a yet unwritten page, holds in both face and gesture at full length to his soul ... Surprise, accompanying the artifice of a notation of sentiments by unproffered sentences - that, in the sole case, perhaps, with authenticity, between the sheets and the eye there reigns a silence still, the condition and delight of reading.

Mallarme, Mimique

chickelit said...

@tcrosse: Notice Dave Davies' signature Gibson Flying V guitar. There's some backstory here

Yancey Ward said...

I guess one might wonder why Crosby liked it if one doubt's that Crosby would get the literary allusion. I would doubt that myself.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Dan Rather and Mary Mapes forged a document on "Word" - laughably insisting their ""Word" document was a long lost type-written memo. How lucky to have found it in time to attempt to smear GWB in an election. Democrat media doing their job!

This gets Dan an Award in leftwing circles.

Dan Rather is the Hillary clinton of journalism. A liar, a cheat and a fraud.

exhelodrvr1 said...

All their bases are belong to Trump.

Ann Althouse said...

I do follow McGuinn. Never found him bloggable though.

Sebastian said...

"Emptiness, silence, heat, whiteness, wait, the light goes down, all grows dark together, ground, wall, vault, bodies, say twenty seconds, all the greys, the light goes out, all vanishes. At the same time the temperature goes down . . .
On tape, we hear the resonant voice of Ruth Nelson offering a precise and lyrical reading of the text, with its futuristic tale of a man and woman confined in a white rotunda. In the background, we hear a delicate overlay of John Lennon's ''Imagine.'' At the same time, a beam of light falls on a catafalque and the intricate design on the exterior changes color and texture as we watch it - from gold to bright white, from sandstone to marble. Faces and objects seem to appear on the surface. Atop the catafalque floats a holographic image of a prone ''woman-child,'' played by Clove Galilee."

See, this is one of the reasons I always had difficulty with one notion of eternal life: even the slight risk of being with such people, in whatever form, forever, seemed hellish in itself.

rhhardin said...

On the credenza, in the empty room, no ptyx
Abolished curio of resonant emptiness

- Mallarme

he rhymes it with styx.

Sur des consoles, au noir salon: nul ptyx,
Insolite vaisseau d'inanite sonore,
Car le Maitre est alle puiser l'eau du Styx
Avec tous ses objets dont la reve s'honore.

Jay Vogt said...

Ann Althouse said...I do follow McGuinn. Never found him bloggable though.

Feature not a bug.

rhhardin said...

Whitespace supremacy.

Jim at said...

You'd think a professional liar - who was fired in disgrace for attempting to swing a Presidential election by airing forged documents - would simply shut up and go away.

Molly said...

(eaglebeak)

Didi and Gogo are a lot wittier than Dan Rather.

Beckett did have a sense of humor. Dan Rather doesn't.

AustinRoth said...

Mueller porn.

Clyde said...

Jim at said...
You'd think a professional liar - who was fired in disgrace for attempting to swing a Presidential election by airing forged documents - would simply shut up and go away.


Love has no pride, and Rather has no shame.

daskol said...

We wait, and wait, humming a nice tune, maybe a tune like this:

Wordlessly watching, he waits by the window and wonders
At the empty place inside
Heartlessly helping himself to her bad dreams, he worries
Did he hear a goodbye?
Or even hello?
They are one person
They are two alone
They are three together
They are for each other

daskol said...

They're all so similarly demented at this point. Sad!

MountainMan said...

“I wish we could have had the chance to see Dan Rather humiliate himself on Celebrity Jeopardy the way the pig-ignorant Wolf Blitzer did.”

Yep, had the be embarrassing to both him and CNN, losing to Andy Richtrer and Dana Delany, and by a huge margin. And I think a lot of his associates would do even worse.

Drago said...

“I wish we could have had the chance to see Dan Rather humiliate himself on Celebrity Jeopardy the way the pig-ignorant Wolf Blitzer did.”

The ONE time someone at CNN didn't feed the lefty the questions ahead of time....

Gk1 said...

Has it ever been divulged who on the CNN side gave Donna Brazille the debate questions before the debates? We know Donna handed it off to the Clinton campaign but I don't think we know who at CNN colluded with Donna. Anyone know? THey say this only happened once with a debate of Hillary vs. Bernie but I don't believe them.

gilbar said...

....humiliate himself on Celebrity Jeopardy the way the pig-ignorant Wolf Blitzer did.
These TV types are chosen for their serious mannerisms, stentorian voices, and slavish devotion to the left wing political cause, not their mental acuity or knowledge. Sadly, the public seems to have some trouble making that distinction.


when the double Jeopardy round was done, Wolfie was at about -4,300 points; and Alec brushed that aside, saying: "Andy was So Much Quicker on the Button than you"

So, the reason WHY he was in NEGATIVE Points was because someone else kept ringing in before him?
Even In Failure, the media brush aside the failures... Not to be wondered that the public has trouble distinguishing?

Drago said...

Gk1: "Has it ever been divulged who on the CNN side gave Donna Brazille the debate questions before the debates?"

It's irrelevant.

The entire network is dedicated to supporting democrats and, in this case, as with the DNC "hacking" it's own procedures and processes to support her, Hillary over Bernie.

chickelit said...

Ann Althouse said: I do follow McGuinn. Never found him bloggable though.

And your Byrd can tweet.

Gk1 said...

Drago, true, but wouldn't it be better if CNN was held to the same standards it holds the trump administration or any other republican administration or congressional candidate? Name and shame, isn't that their technique? Couldn't we find other CNN run debates where this has happened as well? I am fully aware why this hasn't happened but I think since the press loves navel gazing maybe they could take a look at this navel too.

Drago said...

Gk1: "Drago, true, but wouldn't it be better if CNN was held to the same standards it holds the trump administration or any other republican administration or congressional candidate?"

It would be better if I looked like Dolph Lundgren in his prime. But I'm forced to deal with reality.

Gk1: " Name and shame, isn't that their technique? Couldn't we find other CNN run debates where this has happened as well?"

It's every one of them, and it happened in every previous debate. And it will happen in every future debate.

That is the appropriate operating assumption.

Will Cate said...

Crosby is a bit of conspiracy theorist, ya? SO he probably thinks there are fireworks to come in the Mueller report. He might be disappointed.

Robert Cook said...

"Dan Rather and Mary Mapes forged a document on 'Word' - laughably insisting their
'Word' document was a long lost type-written memo. How lucky to have found it in time to attempt to smear GWB in an election. Democrat media doing their job!"


Well...no. Fake news.

There's never been any suggestion those documents were fabricated by Mapes or Rather.

Gk1 said...

"There's never been any suggestion those documents were fabricated by Mapes or Rather." Gosh, so we should excuse them because they fell for obvious forgeries? How is that supposed to work exactly? I don't think the people who fell for the Hitler "Diary" scam got off so easy.

Ralph L said...

What Wolf whiffed.

He was actually 2nd in 1997 behind Oliver Stone and ahead of Arianna Huffington!
Richter really was quickter ($39,000), but Wolf missed a political clue and a Jewish one, and must have gotten few right.

Michael McNeil said...

Richard Fernandez (a.k.a. Wretchard the Cat) put it this way the other day (quoting…):

There was once a quaint concept called decency wherein if you betrayed a person, institution or country you had the good manners to never darken their doorway again. Today they sue to sit among those they vowed to kill. That this is not immediately repulsive is telling.

(/unQuote)

eddie willers said...

Here's a link to youtube of a rendition of Helpless Hoping that floored me.

Foxes and Fossils cover Helplessly Hoping

It is a father, his daughter and another extremely talented girl who was a schoolmate. The father named the band Foxes & Fossils because he and his old bandmates are, well, old Fossils, and the two girls are, indeed, "Foxes".

Brilliant harmony. Since this was filmed at a gig at a local club on the patio, I am so pleased that with inexpensive HD cameras and audio, moments like these can be captured.

Do not be afraid to click because it is NOT amateurish in the least. You WILL be surprised.

PS. The girls are now grown and in Nashville.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Cook - Wrong
not fake news.
The documents WERE forged. The memo did not time travel from an era before "Microsoft word" even existed. Right? Someone named Charles Johnson, a lefty btw, did an overlay. The typeface lined up perfectly. not just a little - the whole thing. A perfect match.
There is no way the typeface on a typewriter from that era would match perfectly with a modern "word" document. Impossible. and a dead giveaway for a Hoax. Also - if you go back and read all about it, the documents were never authenticated anyway. It was a hoax.


That's why Dan was disgraced and why he was forced out.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

The lies leftists will swallow whole in order to feed their own biased narrative in their own head is incredible.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Here's the Throbbing Killian memo.


The typewriter that time traveled thru space an time to smack the hated GWB in the ass. Because lying in pursuit of The Party(D) is totally cool and everyone should drink the lies.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

CBS fired Dan over it. Pro-democrat hack MSM CBS - fired Dan. Why? because even they knew Dan was full of shit.

Ralph L said...

Dickin', Cook's point was that Rather and Mapes weren't responsible for the forging. They wanted to believe too much to notice the forgery. That's the charitable assessment.

Ralph L said...

Sort of like McCabe & co. wanted to believe Trump is a Russian plant.

Ken B said...

It’s easy. Becket wrote Waiting for Godot. Godot never arrives, the characters never stop waiting. The tweet likens Dan Rather waiting for evidence of collusion to waiting for Godot. The evidence will never arrive, Rather will never stop waiting. It's a decent shot at Rather, which is a thing worth liking.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Ralph L - Indeed.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

/of course we all learn all the time leftists never use The Hoax to march their crap agenda down the field.

Steve M. Galbraith said...

"Nothing happens. Nobody comes, nobody goes. It's awful.....

"This is CNN...."

Lurker21 said...

But where are the telltale Ratherisms?

Is it shakier than cafeteria Jello or is it Spandex tight?