I was asked this question at 18. I answered ‘NOOOOOooooooooooo’ with all my might. I answered it in the form of a 1st year Philosophy essay to be handed in and marked. I remember the mark. 67. I think the PhD student marking it was just pleased to see something other than a screaming ‘YEEEEEeeeeeeees’ in the pile. My ‘NOOOOOOOOOoooooooo’ might have been entirely inarticulate, but as a ‘No’ it stood out.
I remember the only guy I liked in the ‘Yes’ pile was Camus. Because Camus, even though a firm believer in the banality and absurdity of life, was an advocator of raging against this meaninglessness with fury. Even though I was still in the ‘No’ pile, I liked his rebellion. It was very teenage-like and passionate, and Lord knows I respected intensity back then.
I quoted not just philosophers, but musicians, artists… and the whole theme of absurdity being reaffirmed in popular culture although still fumed in disagreement. ‘We sit here stranded though we’re all doing our best to deny it’- I quoted Dylan.
Now, life seems reasonably absurd. Arbitrary. Ridiculous. Silly. Laughable. Although maybe this is not as terrifying a prospect as I once thought, and to think that was what made me cling so fiercely to my unusual ‘No’.
I haven’t been in work/study since February 2009. I’ve had 7 interviews in the past few months (none since July) and in every one I wanted to get up and do a bit of a jig, and say ‘Why the farce? I’ll do whatever you want… I’ll sing, I’ll go get you a coffee, I’ll shear your pet goat… just don’t let me go through the farce of this bloody interview!’… because you’re asked questions that seem to require some sort of prodigious power to answer them… and then you happen to talk to someone who got the post or who works at the same place in a similar role, and their answers they gave are blindingly obvious and not very dissimilar to the ones you gave.
Life does seem pretty vacant without some sort of definite structure. I’m not asking for any God-like totality or crystal-clear profundity, just some sort of vague job that will be as absurd as the next but with some sort of activity to make it allusively appropriate to my somewhat creative persona.
Although my answer now belongs begrudgingly to the ‘Yes’ bloc, I’m sort of glad I was once adolescently entrenched in the ‘No’ camp. Camp Nou.
1 comment:
'even though a firm believer in the banality and absurdity of life, was an advocator of raging against this meaninglessness with fury'
I'm with Camus.
Seriously, job interviews are designed to be absurd, and the most absurd thing is it's the least absurd people that get the jobs. The least interesting and the least daring. I'm proper not with it today but I reckon you'll come across something, maybe with a bit of luck, like you mentioned before. Luck is one of the least absurd absurd things we tend to believe in.
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