Sunday 22 November 2020
In Samuel Beckett’s seminal play, Waiting for Godot, the two main characters (Vladimir and Estragon) engage in a seemingly endless and somewhat hypnotic dialogue about the impending arrival of the mysterious Godot. After two absorbing hours, Godot never shows up and his identity is never revealed, leading to much speculation about who he really is. Over the years there have been many interpretations of this strange play, from political to religious to Freudian. Beckett himself never revealed its intended meaning, perhaps because it was deliberately written to be ambiguous.
During this month of November, I’ve been feeling a bit like I’m waiting for Godot.
First there’s the pandemic and the latest lockdown. Despite the optimism of the vaccine announcement recently, we don’t yet know how this is all going to end. We are all waiting for something to happen that will bring the whole episode to a conclusion, but we don’t quite know what. And we talk about it incessantly in the meantime.
Then there’s my work. In recent weeks this has become even more of a struggle than previously: every day it’s is an exhausting challenge to make it through to 6pm which is when I typically down tools and get on the exercise bike. So I’m looking for a way out.
I have a master plan to get involved in charity or research work related to Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s, and have spoken to a number of organisations. I’ve also applied for three jobs for various charities, but so far, have not even got as much as an interview. The plan B is to stick with my current employer, but I feel it is a matter of months rather than years that I can keep doing my current role. Again, I feel like I’m desperately searching for something but I don’t know what it is.
And finally there’s Parkinson’s Disease itself. I had my six-monthly check-up this week. As expected, there was some tweaking of my dosage to keep up with the progression of the condition, which is a little worse now than last time. I now shake quite a lot when not medicated.
I asked again about my genetic analysis, but there was no news. There is almost certainly a misspelling somewhere in the 3 billion letters of my DNA. But it’s very hard to find a needle in a haystack when you don’t know what a needle looks like. Again, it’s a case of searching for something without knowing what you’re looking for. To some extent this applies to a lot of research into neurodegenerative conditions. For millions of people across the world, like the dialogue in Waiting for Godot, the story goes on, but salvation never comes.
So, November has an air of gloom about it. Perhaps December will bring fresh hope. That said, October was a fun month, finished off by a great Halloween. Rosa and I went to town (literally, to a costume shop) and we dressed up as a plague doctor and the grim reaper respectively. A wicked twist on Covid-19 that only a few trick or treaters twigged. We decorated the front of the house with fake cobwebs, spiders, blood stains on the windows, and, to add the icing on the cake, hung a life size skeleton down from the front bedroom window on a length of rope. With a suitably evil pumpkin and bottle of hand sanitiser by the front door we lured in around 40 terrified children.
Luckily, they all went away with sweets and chocolates.
Speaking of luck, there is a character called Lucky in Waiting for Godot who has a trembling voice.
Interestingly, according to Wikipedia:
Jean Martin, who originated the role of Lucky in Paris in 1953, spoke to
a doctor named Marthe Gautier, who was working at the Pitié-Salpêtrière
Hospital. Martin asked if she knew of a physiological reason that would explain
Lucky’s voice as it was written in the text. Gautier suggested Parkinson's
disease, which, she said, "begins with a trembling, which gets more and
more noticeable, until later the patient can no longer speak without the voice
shaking". Martin began incorporating this idea into his rehearsals.
Beckett and the director may not have been completely convinced, but they
expressed no objections. When Martin mentioned to the playwright that he was
"playing Lucky as if he were suffering from Parkinson’s”, Beckett
responded by saying " Yes, of
course", and mentioning that his own mother had Parkinson’s.
When Beckett was asked why Lucky was so named, he replied, "I suppose he is lucky to have no more expectations..."
