Textual analysis

It has struck me how ultimately Beckett-esque this piece is. To explicitly say that nothing is happening destroys the audience's expectations of something happening, and yet this paradoxically adds to the tension when something does happen, or it still doesn't destroy their expectation of something happening. From the outset, though, I think the 'nothing' I am talking about is more the little events inbetween life. Like when you strike up a conversation with someone and say "So what have you been up to?" and they say, "Oh, nothing really." When in fact something must have happened, unless they stepped into a void between time and space!


I also use "hmmm" as a non expressive and completely neutral word. It makes the audience pause to think, and it's ambiguity can mean "I see your point but I'm not sure I agree with you" or "you've given me something to think about on this issue". It will draw the audience to the conclusion they were thinking of anyway, and it's so open to interpretation that they can take it how they want.

Returning to the example of "going out" where "nothing happened", I then say something happened. But the information divulged is the thought that it was the thought of going home. I think I incorporated that "homing instinct" that you have when you're out and suddenly you think "I need to go home". But I then go on to say, "I'm stepping into the future", meaning that I am trying to take step towards my inevitable "destiny" or advance the process of the future. When my friend says, "But you are in the future", I wanted to convey a sense of the future happening all the time, just as the present is instantly transferred to the past, time is ever-flowing and doesn't stop.

I put in a piece about waking up with someone to sexualise the piece and, ergo, make the audience feel a little bit uncomfortable. I also sing a line to vary the pace and break the tension (quite Brechtian in a way). The line is also quite romanticised ("You and I are two bodies that move as one"). This is followed by the "freefall". For some reason I really liked this word as a description of the way we fall towards the future with no sense of what will happen next.

The concluding piece tries to share the sense of 'nothing happening' and draw the argument to a close. The panic of death or the end leads us to want to speed up to a place in the future where we are happy, or to go towards that imagined future. Of course, when I say "and skip all the points inbetween where absolutely nothing happens", I refer again to people's flippant remarking that nothing ever happens in their lives. All anyone really wants to know is are things getting better, or are they getting worse? If we knew things were going to get worse, would we continue living? Referring back to Camus, he argues that life is worth living, but on a personal note, can we forever freefall towards this unknowing future? Will it forever be out of our grasp? Can we take control of it? Are we victims of fate?