I’ve almost finished watching Endgame by Samuel Beckett.  The play is my sole exposure to Beckett.  I knew of his reputation as a playwright.  I was asked why I chose this play.  I wanted to take a “deep dive” into waters which required that I swim or else fail.  “Drown” is the term, isn’t it?  Endgame is life striped of pretense; just contemplation of the human condition, and black humor.

I am reminded of these words by Nietzsche.  I think the only salvation from abject bitterness is, to be able, someday to say an unequivocal “yes” to the spinning wheel of life.

“I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.”

― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

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The song that is appropriate to our mission is:

S.O.B.

by Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats

I’m gonna need someone to help me
I’m gonna need somebody’s hand
I’m gonna need someone to hold me down
I’m gonna need someone to care
I’m gonna writhe and shake my body
I’ll start pulling out my hair
I’m gonna cover myself with the ashes of you
And nobody’s gonna give a damn!!!

Son of a bitch, give me a drink
One more night
This can’t be me
Son of a bitch
If I can’t get clean I’m gonna drink my life away

Now for seventeen years I’ve been throwing them back
Seventeen more will bury me
And somebody please just tie me down
Or somebody get me a goddamn drink

Son of a bitch, give me a drink!
One more night
This can’t be me
Son of a bitch!
If I can’t get clean I’m gonna drink my life away
Hey! Hey!

My heart is breaking, hands are shaking
Bugs are crawling all over me!
My heart is breaking, hands are shaking
Bugs are crawling all over me
My heart was aching, hands are shaking
Bugs are crawling all over me
My heart was aching, hands are shaking
Bugs are crawling all over me

Son of a bitch, give me a drink
One more night
This can’t be me
Son of a bitch
If I can’t get clean I’m gonna drink my life away
Son of a bitch, give me a drink
Son of a bitch
This can’t be me
Son of a bitch
If I can’t get clean I’m gonna drink my life away
Yeah ah

Lyrics by Nathaniel Rateliff

THE BACKSTORY TO THE SONG:

Rateliff has said the song is, at heart, a troubled song about drinking one’s life away after a break-up, and explained that the lyrics are based on his personal experience with delirium tremens during alcohol withdrawal. He also described it as a “joke song” and said that originally his band didn’t plan to record it, but due to positive reception, did so and released it as a single.  The video depicts Nathaniel Rateliff and his band performing the song in front of an audience of prisoners and is an homage to the end credits scene of the 1980 film The Blues Brothers.