And honey I was proud of it...

and honey I was proud of you.

I used to livejournal back in the day and there was totally a spot for you to add in what you were listening to as you wrote. Setting it as my title is like playing a game of hide a seek by myself.

Even though the songs actual subject matter is quite different then Caryl Churchill's play "Far Away," I was reminded of this song by Taking Back Sunday (you can judge me now) for its title- Everything Must Go. This play could have been a three act monster, could have run longer than Angels in America (both parts) and then some. But instead Churchill strips down the language, scenes, Freytag's pyramid... and establishes this feel. The feeling of loss.( But can it still be considered loss when the person "loosing" isn't negatively affected?) Its the feeling of giving away.   

It rings loudest for me in scene II when the parade, or line up of convicts, wear the hats to their own incineration. In this life, we are so motivated to hold on to things: houses, relationships, hats- We're so interested in preserving things. We spend our lives making money and attaining new items to keep and worship. We kill each other over possessions. Churchill gives us a glimpse of a society in which things are made and then parted with. Only one hat is allowed to remain.- Give everything away, only then will you be free to be whole.

When thinking of the death row patrons (Patrons? Consider the convicts as patrons on death row.) I at first thought of their parade as purely spectacle. Of course the word "parade" suggests spectacle. Whenever you see executions on television or in movies, most of the people watching are looking for retribution. They're looking to be comforted by seeing the "guilty" dead. However, in class someone saw the parade as a celebration. I thought this was an interesting viewpoint. A celebration of life? A celebration of death? Are the death row patrons the villains or the heroes? But why must they be one or the other. We have an addiction to labeling things. We love categories; statistics. The interviewer asks you if you are the hero or the villain and you are only allowed to answer in their terms, or they can't use you. You become a lost percentage. That portion of gray area that their stylus can't reach. Why do we have to choose sides? We don't really. The death row patrons just are. And by the end of the scene they will cease to be. We don't have enough time to worry about them before they're gone.