In the Company of Horses – Where Nothing Happens, Twice

 



Where nothing happens, twice – this phrase was coined by Vivian Mercier in the Irish Times, 18 February 1956, when he reviewed Samuel Beckett's play, Waiting for Godot. The characters Estragon, Vladimir, Pozzo and Lucky have been reenacting these two moments of nothing in countless repetitions since Beckett finished writing them in January 1949.

The truly astonishing power of the play led San Francisco Actors' Workshop director Herbert Blau to take it to the San Quentin prison in November 1957. The idea that the play (in which nothing happens twice) could be transformative had now crossed the Atlantic. Rick Cluchey, an inmate at the prison, was serving a life sentence when he heard it being performed over the loudspeaker system. The experience had such an effect on him that he went on to form a drama group with other inmates to stage the play. He eventually won a chance for parole and met Beckett. He continued this friendship and pursued a life anew in the arts. The story is well told in James Knowlson's biography, Damned to Fame, The Life of Samuel Beckett (Bloomsbury, 1996).

In making nothing happen twice on stage, Beckett lets the audience glimpse the symptomatic nature of the human condition. Lacan sums up the universal point: "To be a piece of trash is what every speaking being aspires to be without knowing."* When this kind of nothing is put to work in a civilising structure such as theatre, other people can in turn find their own way to make use of it without necessarily knowing how – it can touch something real in us about which we have no clear knowledge: it can have an unconscious effect.

Can something similar be done in the company of horses? I am working on a much more modest idea with equestrian Fiona Tothill which takes inspiration from both Beckett and Lacan. We propose to take horses to local institutions but not to put on a play. We will have horses in head-collars with long lead reins held in an apparently invisible structure that is nothing other than the psychoanalytic discourse.** It will look like nothing is happening, but in an era where truth and relationships seem to be on the decline, we will be bringing something real where trust, consent and cohesion form the basis of experience.




...  Our life is changed; their coming our beginning (Edwin Muir, The Horses)

Video clip courtesy of Kingsmead Equestrian Centre 14 April 2025
text written: 29 June 2025

For an example of "nothing in action," please see earlier posts: Klaus part 1 and Klaus, part 2



"In the company of horses" is a Community Interest Company created by Fiona Tothill
* Footnote: Jacques Lacan's lecture "The Lacanian Phenomenon" delivered 30 November 1974. When Jacques-Alain Miller was invited to the same lecture space (Centre universitaire méditerranéen (CUM) in Nice, 31 March 2012, he drew attention to this phrase. Miller's talk, "The Life of Lacan," is available on YouTube as "Jacques Lacan: Le noeud, dernier amour."
** Jacques Lacan, Seminar Book XVII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. Russell Grigg (New York and London, Norton, 2007); Jacques Lacan, "There Are Four Discourses," trans. A.R. Price and R. Grigg, Culture/Clinic 1, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller and Maire Jaanus (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013).

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