On 6/6/2018 9:25 PM, Andre Jute wrote:
On Wednesday, June 6, 2018 at 11:41:09 PM UTC+1, jbeattie wrote:

Waiting for Wippermann

Act I

(two men stand on a bare dirt mound with only a dead tree, a tattered bicycle and a crock pot, its cord stretching off to infinity)

Vladamir: Wax must be put on every week, I'm tired telling you that. Why don't you listen to me?

Estragon: What do you say? Hot wax? I am too old and tired.

[intermission]


-- Jay Beckett.

Now I can ride off into the sunset, knowing that my heritage is safe in your hands, dear Jay.

Best Godot I ever saw was in Adelaide, the one in Australia, where an Aboriginal actor was cast as Lucky. The next day I was walking with this actor on North Terrace, inspecting Aboriginal art that was part of the biennial Festival of Arts, and we ran into the Governor of South Australia (we were literally in front of Government House), a clergyman who was also an Aboriginal but, unlike the usual Governor, not a politician, instead a scholar. Between the two of them they told me enough about the art on display that I wrote a double page spread for Nation Review about the Dreamtime, the cultural impetus of the Aboriginals, which much to my surprise I've several times seen quoted in scholarly texts; surprise because literally everything I knew -- then or since! -- I got from an actor and a clergyman in the space of an afternoon.

I always meant to tell Beckett this story next time I was in Paris, but just never got around to it; a few years later, when we lived in the Forest of Devres, I drove through Paris several times on my way to Italy but was always in too much of a hurry. Beckett would have appreciated the absurdity of the tale, especially the detail about Richard Condon (The Manchurian Candidate, those Prizzi tales, lots of other clever novels) marching up to us in the killer Australian heat all done up in a black suit with a waistcoat and an Englishman's black umbrella above his head (we, even the Governor, were in shirtsleeves) to thank me for putting him straight about a researcher for his book on Queen Caroline who incredibly missed Captain Gronow's Diaries...

Andre Jute
Not that shaggy, sir!


Thank you, Zelig.

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971