'Waiting' - closing speech

Closing Speech!

It’s amazing what goes through your head when you can no longer engage with the act of living. Initially I was obsessed and consumed by all the time I had wasted waiting in fear and cowardice and queues and lines. Waiting for things to improve and happiness to find me – waiting for the pain to go away and the old wounds to heal. Waiting for someone who would come and make it all worthwhile. Waiting for my son to be born. (PAUSE – BEEP OF THE HEART MACHINE AND REGULATED BREATHING) Little fragments of memory and isolated incidents replayed like scenes from an old movie in my head and I quickly realised that the value of life did not reside in what I had possessed; or what I thought and believed; or even what I aspired to – life’s worth is defined by the things we do and have done because it is our actions that reflect the integrity of our souls. (THE BEEP OF THE HEART MACHINE & THE SOUND OF REGULATED BREATHING.) Throughout our lives, we are made to believe that this endless, gluttonous consumption and callous destruction are the fuels that fire progress. But the truth is that it is just an advertising ploy, an aggressive marketing strategy – fiscal propaganda that has been designed to satisfy the greed of the profit mongers. In a better life, progress is the victory of peace over war; the sound of carefree laughter instead of angry dissent – consciousness as opposed to dogma. (PAUSE) Call me what you will, but always remember that I am so much more than your most all-encompassing perception – more even than my own most fertile imagination could conjure. (THE BEEP OF THE HEART MACHINE & THE SOUND OF REGULATED BREATHING.) I am not just the homeless child that you scorn, or the alcoholic mother or the raped sister or even the criminal father. I am all of this and more. I am you in the mirror, hiding under the lover’s bed or shying away in the closet; I am the outcast in your prison – in your cell. I am the joy and pain, and the delirium and heartache. I am your son and your daughter and your conscience. I am the object of your scorn, your pity – your most desirous aspirations. I am all of this and I am nothing because that’s what you choose to think! (THE BEEP OF THE HEART MACHINE & THE SOUND OF REGULATED BREATHING.) Everyday we teach our children that they can become anything that they want to be. We tell them that they should dream big and strive purposefully to achieve their dreams, but then we turn around and with a smile on our faces, we place them squarely in a tiny little box with a big label emblazoned across the front. Boy, girl, black, white, Christian, Muslim, Tswana, Xhosa, good, bad, obedient, rebellious, clever, stupid, Masarwa… (RUNS OUT OF BREATH AND INHALES DEEPLY. THE BEEP OF THE HEART MACHINE & THE SOUND OF REGULATED BREATHING.) The list goes on and on and before you know it the children believe that you can no longer be trusted. Or even worse, that they are the sum total of all the bullshit you think. (THE BEEP OF THE HEART MACHINE & THE SOUND OF REGULATED BREATHING.) After spending months living in hope and waiting to awake and be a father to my son and a husband to his mother whom I intended to marry just as soon as I could walk down the isle, the doctors finally admitted that there was nothing they could do; that there was no hope for me and as more and more time passed, it was difficult for me not to believe them. There was nothing I could do and the only thing that was left was for me to wait; to bide my time silently praying that death will come and carry me away – because surely death is better than spending the rest of my days just waiting for a miracle – waiting for the show to begin or to end. (THE BEEP OF THE HEART MACHINE & REGULATED BREATHING) The years have passed by in a moment, leaving just the scars and memories to keep me company; keeping me sane – helping me to cope with the strain. All the time wasted waiting for a better day, a better way, a reason to stay the distance despite this clinically reduced existence. Tick-tik-tock – spilled blood dries while the flesh rots: souls entwined inevitably unravel: the truth, a thread, a solitary trickle – a teardrop that rusts the moon’s sickle. Wasted living waiting for life to begin. Wasted living in someone else’s dream; where love once given cannot be returned – where souls once cherished cannot be spurned. The tender smiles and joyous laughter, the special moments that we share – these are the treasures that linger when you dance alone on the edge of despair. So much living wasted, waiting… (BEEP OF THE HEART MACHINE) Just waiting… (THE SOUND IS REPLACED BY THE CONSTANT BEEP AS HE FLAT-LINES AND THE LIGHTS FADE OUT.)