GUILDENSTERN (quietly): Where we went wrong was getting on a boat. We can move, of course, change direction, rattle about, but our movement is contained within a larger one that carries us along as inexorably as the wind and current…
~ Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
en route
between one dock and another
yet stationary
a brisk mildness in between two seasons
just a sweater
no jacket
we lose most of our body heat through our heads
so in other words
a hat of some sort does improve the experience
Specks and Fragments 
I went to watch that play when it was new… I must read it again, because I wouldn’t find it on stage these days.
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there is always the movie as a last resort…the script is not as nuanced as that of the play’s, but Roth and Oldman do a pretty good job with their respective roles.
Stoppard packs so many layers and plays with language in such an elaborate way that reading the play can as enjoyable if not more than actually seeing the play.
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Never heard about the film – I must have been too busy with my life. 🙂 Yes, I read more plays than I watched and found it very rewarding. Deep down I’m a reader, not a viewer.
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i hear ya…i would consider myself more on the reader than viewer side of the fence…similar to prefer to read a poem than go to a poetry reading where there is no chance to linger on a line, the poet speeding ahead to the next line, then the next line…
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You’re talking about poetry slams now?
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Not necessarily poetry slams…too often in a traditional poetry reading, the poet recites a line or so, my mind dwells on it and the next thing I know the poet is reading the end of the poem.
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Better buy the CD then.
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We actually saw it last year in Philadelphia at the Wilma Theater. They also did Hamlet with most of the same cast members.
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Well, this is Germany, they wouldn’t show Tom Stoppard as often as in English speaking countries.
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Ahh–no, I guess not. 🙂
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Maybe get Wim Wenders to make a German remake. 😉
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I don’t think that’s precisely the stuff Wim’s dreams are made of. 😉 Suum cuique.
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had to look up “suum cuique” – but quite fitting. Stoppard and Wenders have to very different perspectives on those creatures known as humans, although in a Venn diagram, there would be some overlap.
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Had to look up Venn diagramme… 🙂 I didn’t know it was called that.
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That would be great to see a R&GAD / Hamlet double bill.
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Well, they were separated by a few months. We actually weren’t thrilled by the Hamlet production. It was kind of strange. I enjoyed R&G more.
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Yay–it’s good to see our pal Guildenstern again. 🙂
I like the different types of liminal space in the quote and poem.
(But I really do not like to wear hats.) 🙂
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liminal spaces is a great way to express the landscape
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well, i hear Rosencrantz never met a hat worth writing home about 😉
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In the post I wrote about the show, I compared them to the “red shirts” on Star Trek. 🙂
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Quite an apt and hilarious analogy.
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🙂
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Now that I’ve had time to find it on the intertubes….there was one bit that fits perfectly for an exchange with a couple of guys in red shirts talking to the person who is ready to beam them down with the rest of the landing crew (aka the one’s you know will be there next episode).
ROS: They had it in for us, didn’t they? Right from the beginning. Who’d have thought that we were so
important?
GUIL: But why? Was it all for this? Who are we that so much should converge on our little deaths? (In anguish
to the PLAYER.) Who are we?
PLAYER: You are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. That’s enough.
GUIL: No – it is not enough. To be told so little – to such an end – and still, finally, to be denied an explanation…
PLAYER: In our experience, most things end in death.
I wouldn’t have known it if I hadn’t looked it up, but those lines are actually the ones that follow the line i used for the epitaph.
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Yes, that’s it exactly! 🙂
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Wonderful lines in that photo..hat are the death for one’s hair!
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all things are transitory 😉
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On second thoughts… Wim Wenders might be just the guy for it. I’d still prefer the original English version, though.
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Ha ha–that last two lines made me laugh.
If the journey is never about the destination, always the process, I think a hat is an advisable addition.
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exactly. 🙂 similar to the towel in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in that “is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have.”
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I love Adams so much. How I wish here were still alive.
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