Here are some places that I would most like to be right now:

- Watching Fuck Buttons at All Tomorrow's Parties. It was nice and dark, with the breeze from the harbor, and it was just me and my great buddy Andrew hanging out after seeing Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds put on a wicked show.

Failing that, on the swings. For as long as I can remember I have closed my eyes on the swing and pretended that I was in the dead of space, swinging from the bottom of a spaceship. Sometimes there are nebulae, sometimes stars, mostly it's pitch black and dead quiet (save for the ringing I have accumulated in my ears, but while we're pretending, that's gone too).
Seeing as how I will probably never actually do this, I'll just describe my new artwork: A big machine with lots of specialized appendages that makes a delicious dinner to the Meshuggah album Catch 33. The music is so industrial, and so calculated, and the timing and rhythms are so complex, that this would be a beautiful thing to watch. The meat mallet would pound the steak (here my opposition to the meat industry battles with my intent to make this machine menacingly brutal) like clockwork, and the row of knives would thunk through the carrot and capsicum and mushrooms and onions etc. into the wooden chopping boards, and the sauce would spray out with the vocals into a big clear mixing bowl. I'm not sure how it would end.
 

I actually didn't enjoy The Dumb Waiter,and said so, loudly.
That was a number of years ago. At the time I had my reasons: His use of rhythm was neither as engaging or as effective as Mamet or Beckett, to which his slightly absurd but at the same time unsettlingly qoutidian content also fell short. Since then I have adjusted my opinion after reading The Caretaker, which particularly stuck with me (especially the old man, who reminds me upon reflection of Beckett's) and The Birthday Party (again, the central character's uncomprehending martyrdom, Beckett). He retains the relentless unease and the threatening ignorance, chosen or violently niave, of both of those authors, but in a disturbingly familiar setting.
Perhaps I would not have delved so deeply back into my experiences with Harold Pinter had it not been for a piece by Ariel Dorfman in the December 27-28 Sydney Morning Herald:

"He spoke to me on that inaugural occassion and, ever since, with unmistakable clarity, became the contemporary author who knew how to dispel the terror of my own loneliness, merely by fearlessly naming it."

Bingo.
Not just concerning Pinter. Concerning Beckett, oh yes, and Nietzsche, of course (though the latter is clearly for another discussion). It's why for me Shakespeare is so loved, for through all the crowd-pleasing rollicking there shine copious gems, for which Hamlet is my favourite. Qouting from the top of my head and with apologies to the Bard, who maybe would've scorned such laziness (just look it up! The play's not even one of my longest!):

"Your pain strikes each of you alone, each in the confines of himself, no other."
(Other than the spacing, I'm actually pretty sure that's it.)

BAM. You, Mr. Shakespeare, just bought yourself some immortality. Maybe that's how Pinter did it, and Beckett did it, and anyone who ever summed up other people's deep intangible feelings did it. But remember: no-one likes didacticism. NO-ONE LIKES DIDACTICISM, MR. PALAHNIUK. (I'm just kidding. Kind of. Choke was ok.)

"Are you afraid we might touch? Henry?"
"Yes."
"You should see a doctor about your talking. It is worse."

Just in time for christmas, I've figured out what makes Beckett so great... well, I have a theory as to a single aspect of his appeal. It's about isolation, intense private space, tiny tiny world around you being only what you see and think. As little exists as is necessary. The voice only, or the man and the music box, or the man and the ghostly voices of his wife and daughter on a patch of beach in the dark. A man in a box in a delapidated cottage in a field. This is what lures the listener in, the great comfort of isolation. But then it slips so imperceptibly into a terrifying, lost isolation. The promise of being lone has turned into a warning about being alone, utterly and irreperably alone. The appeal of that itself, I 'm not sure of... it's sobering? It's a thrill to be teetering on the brink? It's an unfamiliar height/depth? It's a harmless journey, but seems to have so much power. It's a potent connection with the part of the will that feels miserable and alone.
And confused about the insincerity of shopping in Wollongong mall circa christmas time.

"Do we mean love when we say love? Soul when we say soul?"

Do we mean 'come buy heaps of stuff' when we say 'merry christmas'? 'We want your customer loyalty' when we say 'merry christmas'?

"Theme: Sloth. Sloth is of all the passions the most powerful passion and indeed no passion is more powerful than the passion of sloth. This is the mode in which the mind is most effective an indeed-...
Love. is of all the passions the most powerful passion and indeed no passion is more powerful than the passion of love. This is the mode in which the mind is most effective an indeed..."

Likewise,
'Family. Family is the most important thing about christmas, and everything about christmas is for the family...
Shopping. Shopping is the most important thing about christmas, and everything about christmas is for shopping.'
Not that I dislike christmas. I like christmas. Seeing family, eating delicious food, the excitement of an event, preperations, christmas lights... there are so many good things. Among these is not christmas shopping, during and following which I had a great yearning to listen to Cascando, also Embers, also Words and Music. On my birthday, Krapp's Last Tape and The Old Tune. I have yet to come across a New Years one, unless it's Waiting for Godot, which is, ironically, too long.

"It wasn't enough to bring her into the world, now she must play the piano."