``The confusion is not my invention. We cannot listen to a conversation for five minutes without being acutely aware of the confusion. It is all around us and our only chance now is to let it in. The only chance of renovation is to open our eyes and see the mess. It is not a mess you can make sense of.''

I suggested that one must let it in because it is the truth, but Beckett did not take to the word truth.

``What is more true than anything else? To swim is true, and to sink is true. One is not more true than the other. One cannot speak anymore of being, one must speak only of the mess. When Heidegger and Sartre speak of a contrast between being and existence, they may be right, I don't know, but their language is too philosophical for me. I am not a philosopher. One can only speak of what is in front of him, and that now is simply the mess.''

Then he began to speak about the tension in art between the mess and form. Until recently, art has withstood the pressure of chaotic things. It has held them at bay. It realized that to admit them was to jeopardize form. ``How could the mess be admitted, because it appears to be the very opposite of form and therefore destructive of the very thing that art holds itself to be?'' But now we can keep it out no longer, because we have come into a time when ``it invades our experience at every moment. It is there and it must be allowed in.''