Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Waiting for Joe

This week we heard that Joe Clark, Canada’s prime minister in 1979 and 1980 and author of How We Lead: Canada In A Century of Change, was coming to speak to Creative Communications students.

We waited.

But he didn’t come.

As Samuel Beckett almost wrote in Waiting for  Godot (tragicomedy in 2 acts):


POZZO:
(peremptory). Who is Joe?
ESTRAGON:
Joe?
POZZO:
You took me for Joe.
VLADIMIR:
Oh no, Sir, not for an instant, Sir.
POZZO:
Who is he?
VLADIMIR:
Oh he's a . . . he's a kind of acquaintance.
ESTRAGON:
Nothing of the kind, we hardly know him.
VLADIMIR:
True . . . we don't know him very well . . . but all the same . . .
ESTRAGON:
Personally, I wouldn't even know him if I saw him.
POZZO:
You took me for him.
ESTRAGON:
(recoiling before Pozzo). That's to say . . . you understand . . . the dusk . . . the strain . . . waiting . . . I confess . . . I imagined . . . for a second . . .
POZZO:
Waiting? So you were waiting for him?
VLADIMIR:
Well you see—
POZZO:
Here? On my land?
VLADIMIR:
We didn't intend any harm.
ESTRAGON:
We meant well.
POZZO:
The road is free to all.
VLADIMIR:
That's how we looked at it.
POZZO:
It's a disgrace. But there you are.
ESTRAGON:
Nothing we can do about it.
POZZO:
(with magnanimous gesture). Let's say no more about it.


But at least Joe showed up on Strombo’s show.

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