L'Absurde

Lyrics

The fundamental question presents itself in the quiet.
Not with a bang, but at a deserted café terrace.
The coffee cools.
The year is 1942.
The primary philosophical problem is, of course, suicide.
Judging whether or not to see it through.

You call out for a reason. A logic. A grand design.
You send your questions into the cosmos like distress flares.
The line is dead. The circuit is closed.
What comes back is the echo of your own blood in your ears.
The stage is beautiful, the lighting is superb.
But you have forgotten your lines, and the author has left the building.
This divorce between the man and his life... this is the presenting symptom.

The diagnosis is simple.
The condition is chronic.
It is born of the confrontation between the human need...
...and the unreasonable silence of the world.
We call this... l'absurde.
This is your rock.
This is your hill.

Observe the patient.
His face grimacing, pressed against the stone.
The cheek, the shoulder, the foot wedged for purchase.
The hundredth time he has felt this specific grain against his palm.
He knows the exact moment gravity will reclaim its property.
He is a functionary of futility.
And the sky does not care. The gods are otherwise occupied.

The diagnosis is confirmed.
The condition is terminal, in a manner of speaking.
It is born of the confrontation between the human need...
...and the unreasonable silence of the world.
We call this... l'absurde.
This is your rock.
This is your hill.

But wait.
The rock is at the bottom again.
Watch him descend. During that pause, he is conscious.
He is superior to his fate. He is stronger than his rock.
He sees the full extent of his own misery, and this lucidity is his victory.
There is no sun on the other side.
There is no hope. Hope is a fallacy of the next minute.
There is only the truth of the stone.
And the quiet decision to turn, and walk back towards it.

The prescription, then, is threefold.
Revolt. Freedom. Passion.
To live without appeal.
To exhaust the field of the possible.
The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart.
One must imagine Sisyphus happy.