Krapp's Last Tape

Krapp's Last Tape by Samuel Beckett is a very good, very short play about a very old man who has been making tape recorded-diary entries of his life for quite some time. As the play starts he records a new entry on his birthday. He recalls himself as a younger man and describes how unwise he was. Then he finds a diary entry from a previous birthday on the tape; in that entry, he is recalling how stupid he had been at some previous birthday.

Although I am not so absurd as the old man, this is often how I feel about my own life. When I recall my high school self I think back on how I lacked confidence, how naïve I was, and the stupid decisions I made. When I was in high school, I often looked back on my junior high self in the same way. I suspect in the future I shall look back on my current self as a young twenty-something and recall the idiotic decisions I made and the jerky things I have done.

This lament is brought on by a dream I had on Saturday where an ex-boyfriend, O., made an appearance. It occurred to me in the dream and in waking that O. hardly knew me at all - or at least, he dated a "me" that was not finished yet. (Does this sound like Eva episodes 22 to 24 or what?) That is to say, we dated my freshman year of college. At that point I had not yet come to terms with being a dork. I hadn't started serious film study yet, I hadn't written anything more than a handful of short stories, and the most anime I had watched was Sailor Moon. Almost everything I define myself by now had not happened before I dated him.

Our break-up affected me deeply. I was so heart-broken it changed me as a person forever. I hurt in ways that I didn't know it was possible to hurt (sort of like now, I'm losing weight in places I didn't know were able to be fat). Dating me before the break-up O. must have known some other person, some person who is no longer me.

Once on "My So-Called Life" Angela remarked that her parents knew her in a way no one else could, because they had seen her change. This is a pretty good measurement of how well you know someone, I have found. I have seen a lot of my friends change over time.

Comments Individual Archive Index

April 14, 2003 07:11 PM, John said:

Friends changing is perhaps the saddest thing of all. To still be friends after can be a very difficult proposition, particularly if the person changes their core being. Or if you do, obviously.

April 15, 2003 04:16 PM, Erin said:

...but I think if you see your friends change, if you're there to witness it, it certainly can make you closer to them. I kind of feel this way about New York now. Whenever something in the city changes I feel that I've lived here longer.

Tourist seem to be visiting a city in a bubble. Were they to come back the next day, or the next year, the New York they remember could be totally gone. Resturants and shops disappear and re-appear at an alarming pace. Neighborhoods change....

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