New coat of paint on this nothing.
After reading Texts for Nothing, I wrote and recorded a song that borrows some lines from Chapter 13 of the aforementioned work. Here it is:
The lines I borrowed from are
However, it is because this very nature of futility that Beckett's musings in Texts for Nothing becoming so comforting. He never stopped writing. He wrote about futility, about the futility of examining futility, about the idea that nothing is something, and about writing itself. Because there isn't a way to present new ideas, we must always figure out new ways to approach old ideas. Nothing is futile because everything is futile. Everything is futile because nothing is.
Therein lies the beauty of Beckett: failing better is not the same as failing. If we are doomed to constant failure and our only method of combat is to fail better, do we really fail? If we get closer and closer to describing an idea with each attempt, can we still say that we've failed at describing said idea? If we're trapped in nothingness, left alone with our thoughts, we're in hell. But if we analyze those thoughts and draw conclusions from them, we transcend. When we stop failing better, we've failed. Until then, engaging in the artistic process is the most meaningful thing we can do.
As Michael Gira, leader of the brutally transcendent bands Swans, says,
"get out of here and go elsewhere, go where time passes and atoms assemble an instant, where the voice belongs perhaps, where it sometimes says it must have belonged, to be able to speak of such figments."As someone who writes (songs, not literature) and creates constantly, I find Texts for Nothing very comforting. These lines in particular, however, ring exceptionally true. I take them to be the ultimate challenge any artist finds him or herself negotiating: how do I make new what's already been done time and time again? Because there's no way to answer this question, creation of all art, especially writing, ultimately becomes an exercise in futility.
However, it is because this very nature of futility that Beckett's musings in Texts for Nothing becoming so comforting. He never stopped writing. He wrote about futility, about the futility of examining futility, about the idea that nothing is something, and about writing itself. Because there isn't a way to present new ideas, we must always figure out new ways to approach old ideas. Nothing is futile because everything is futile. Everything is futile because nothing is.
Therein lies the beauty of Beckett: failing better is not the same as failing. If we are doomed to constant failure and our only method of combat is to fail better, do we really fail? If we get closer and closer to describing an idea with each attempt, can we still say that we've failed at describing said idea? If we're trapped in nothingness, left alone with our thoughts, we're in hell. But if we analyze those thoughts and draw conclusions from them, we transcend. When we stop failing better, we've failed. Until then, engaging in the artistic process is the most meaningful thing we can do.
As Michael Gira, leader of the brutally transcendent bands Swans, says,
"I learned from experience that you can never really look at a song as being finished. In most cases, it starts out on acoustic guitar even if it's just a rhythm idea with some vocal ideas, or it's a so-called finished song on acoustic guitar and starts out that way. That's one version. Another version is when I start working on it with people in a room and it becomes something and then maybe I go into the studio and record it and then I do all the overdubs and then it reaches this chaotic stage where I have to sort out all the overdubs afterwards and then it's mixed and that's another version. And then, when we go to play it live, I don't at all try to replicate what's on record because to me those are completely different worlds. And then it just transforms from there or it gets discarded, one of the two. I like to be in a position where nothing's ever settled and it's always kind of uncomfortable…like standing on a bridge made of sand. That makes me happiest when things are not sure."Nothing is ever finished. No idea is ever fully explored. Believing in ultimate futility is futile.
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