Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.
Samuel Beckett
I once tried to adapt Samuel Beckett's play
Krapp's Last Tape as a film script. It's an interesting work, an absurd, one-act, one-man show that Beckett wrote in the 1950s. In the show, Krapp, the central-and-only character, is a desperately isolated individual who, nearing the end of his life, observes that it has been nothing more than a lengthy montage of failures, which he has collected as a kind of autobiography on a vast collection of audio tapes.
I wanted to update the concept a bit, expand the recorded vignettes we only hear in the play into something a bit more substantial, while bringing it into the then-20th century using video. I was intrigued by the idea that, as a film, we could see as well as hear Krapp and his companions at the various points in his life Beckett has him recall in the play. I know it's not what Beckett had in mind. But I had this idea that it could be really cool.
At the time I was single, living alone. Broken-hearted, even. A lot like Krapp. So I got
way into it. Wrote madly for months. Thought I had something special in the works. Even had a lot of fun reading and learning about film-script format and style, which was new to me. But, as the thing I was writing became more-real day-by-day, it occurred to me that I ought to formally seek approval from Beckett's estate for my adaptation. So, after doing a little research, I contacted the agency-people who managed the rights to Beckett's works. And, I was told in no uncertain terms, "No. You may not adapt
Krapp's Last Tape for film. None of Mr. Beckett's works are available for film adaptation." Nevertheless, the executor was kind enough to suggest that I was free to use Beckett's work as
inspiration, and even to treat my script as a kind of homage to his play. He was, in fact, quite cordial with me. But he was unwilling to compromise: as far as adapting it and using Beckett's title and content in my work, that was out of the question.
That rejection, sadly, took the wind out of my sails. I never really went back to the script. I moved on to something else. And so,
Krapp's Last Tape: The Movie resides in a box under my bed. A work unfinished.
A failure.
I was at a teacher
conference in Scottsdale most of this week. Teacher conferences are not my usual fare. Over the years, I've been to several, but I would never describe myself as a conference-type. Most of the time, I'd much rather be in my classroom, working with my kids, than somewhere else with a lot of adults talking about teacher-stuff.
Nevertheless, I was actually kind of flattered to be asked to attend
this conference. It was an important one, and it was expected that many important people would attend, and likewise that many important people would speak.
On the last day of the conference, one of the speakers, a British researcher named
Dylan Wiliam, in his keynote speech on
teacher learning communities, used the aforementioned Beckett quote on one of the slides in his presentation.
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.
His point was: teacher
improvement usually occurs along with
failure. And it is only through the recognition of that failure, and the ability to make corrections in response to that failure, that improvement begins. An interesting idea: with training, time to practice, proper support, and the opportunity to reflect and move forward again, teaching
can become more efficient. Organically: fail; reflect; improve. And teachers
will become better at teaching. That's what the man said.
But the quote, because it directly addressed the idea of failure, also got me to thinking about other things...
First: it reminded me about my failures as an adapter of the works of Samuel Beckett.
And, in the same moment, it got me thinking about another bit of research I'd read recently. Not ed-research, but rather an interesting investigation that a few scientists from Cornell and elsewhere recently undertook to determine what makes a bicycle balance when you're riding it. It may seem a ridiculous thing to study. But it turns out, it's actually been a bit of a mystery for a very long time. Truth is, until this research, no one
really knew what it was that was making a moving bike stable. Hard to believe, isn't it. There were lot's of assumptions: spinning wheels chief among them. But there was very little data to support any of them. Until now. Here's a bit from their
abstract:
[Bicycle] self-stability cannot be explained in any simple words. Bicycles are not stable because of gyros, because you can make a self stable bicycle without gyros. We did that. And they are not stable because of trail, you can take that away too. And we did that...
Why can a bicycle balance itself? One necessary condition for bicycle self stability is... a bicycle turns into a fall.
This seven-minute video also explains their research. I think it is fascinating and well worth watching.
In a nutshell: by removing the effects of the spinning wheels (gyros), and the angle and contact point of front wheel and fork assembly (trail), they were able to conclude one thing about bikes: a bike in motion balances because it is constantly falling over, and when it does the front of the bike is constantly being steered into the fall by the rear of the bike, thereby overcoming the potentially tragic effects of the fall. Basically, bikes are always
almost falling down. But most of the time they don't. Why? Because the bike (and/or the rider) leans and steers to re-balance the bike, fixing and refixing the failure-to-balance, again and again and again.
As I write this, another in a series of
broken ribs (four in the last 20 years) is nagging me, a reminder that I have not
yet thoroughly perfected my riding technique; it would seem I am still able to override, through gross-motor error, my bike's natural tendency to want to right itself and
not fall over. Riding a bike is indeed a series of failures to which we adjust in order to avoid catastrophe. I am living proof.
Sometimes successfully even...
Teaching is likewise a series of failures to which we adjust in order to improve. We know this.
Writing would seem the same. Or so I might hope.
Ongoing failure may be inevitable. But, cyclists, educators, and writers alike succeed when we turn
towards the fall, not when we move away from it. It stands to reason that it is
Experience, in any pursuit, which makes us capable of making adjustments-to-avoid-failure by turning toward it in an ever-more intuitive manner.
Nevertheless, I think, there's got to be room to stand-back and contemplate, to visualize the process, and to make deliberate plans. We can make this happen ourselves. Or our leaders can recognize our need to do this and protect the time in which we need to do it.
But time is the key, I think. No matter what sort of growth we're after, I think
Time might hold the secret.
Time to do. Time to reflect. Time to improve.
Wash, rinse, and repeat.
