On Tell-Tale Signs

I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s (of the ‘Young Onset’ variety) back in the heady days of 2008. Back then I wrote an article for the Independent called ‘The Longest Wait’, so titled because Parkinson’s was, to me, then a disease of potential – I knew many of the things it might lead to, but there was no clear timeline. The general consensus was something along the lines of ‘another five decent years, then a few more of decline, then a final few years of utter shite.’ Happily, this has not turned out to be the case. While the progression of YOPD is still relentless, it is in no way as was thought. On a good day, you still wouldn’t know. In many ways (and this is primarily due to the delights of leva-dopa), I’m better than I was a decade ago. But I’m not here to talk about all that. I’m here to talk about stranger things.

My diagnosis came about because, sometime around my 38th birthday (2005), I decided it was time to pick up my electric guitar once more. I had started at age 15, and was a pro by the time I was 21. In 1988 or 89, I started teaching at the Musician’s Academy in Wapping, later to morph into MI London. My first students were all older guys (they outnumbered women by about 20 to 1) who had played in their youth, done the family thing and now had some extra time and money. Good god, the gear! Anyhow. I spent the next decade as a jobbing guitarist/teacher. I never got the gigs, but I did have a tuition column in Guitar and Bass magazine, so I wasn’t too bad … I quit in 2000, primarily because the anxiety and depression and other shit (which I hid mighty well, and which I now realise were most likely early symptoms) became overwhelming to the point where I couldn’t perform. I spent the next seven years at university, eventually gaining a PhD. For the first five of these I literally didn’t pick up a guitar.

Then, one day, I did. And it felt … wrong. At about the same time, I started getting hit while sparring (at karate) by people who had no business laying a finger on me. That and my form while doing my kata was off, usually in the left hand. I sought medical help. This got me nowhere until, at a family gathering, I was doing my usual ‘this is why I no longer play guitar’ (which involved wiggling the fingers on my right-hand and then my left – see video) when my late uncle (an eminent professor of medicine) ushered me over and said ‘you need to see a neurologist, old boy.’ Within a year, my life changed. And continued to do so as symptoms linked arms with therapies, frog-marched me to the top of various hills to show me the view and then pushed me off.

Cut to 2024. Over the past decade and a half I’ve written a lot of words (quite a few of them published), played a lot of cricket (quite badly), and had a lot of experiences of other sorts. I even played a gig on my 50th birthday (with mixed results). As my writing habit ground to a halt (following in the shuffling footslides of my short academic career), the feeling that I had left something undone in music grew. And so, last week, I decided I needed a new electric guitar to play during my regular visits to Leiden (where my partner lives). Having misread the time zone of a dental appointment, I visited a guitar shop and found an instrument that I rather liked. I took Nadine to see it the next day but miscalculated – by the time we got there I was so off I looked more like a penguin than a human, a problem exacerbated by the crowds perusing the market. We tried again the next day, with more success, but the instrument didn’t balance quite right (and I have enough trouble playing without having to wrangle the guitar), so back to the drawing board. We visited an Amsterdam shop recommended by an ex-student (thank you, Petja – you’ll be able to hear Petja on P. Rex from Dancing with Architects when it’s finally released). There I played something like 15 guitars before finally settling on the one in the video. It wasn’t what I expected to end up with, but always have an open mind, right?

Yes, it’s pink.

My attitude to guitars (and this is only the fifth electric I’ve owned since I started playing in 1982 – I still have the second one I bought, in 1984) is that I don’t much care what they look like, whether they’re ‘mint’, ‘all-original’ or whatever. A guitar is an instrument – it’s there to negotiate the moment the music inside you caresses (or otherwise) the air molecules that surround you, that take it to the (hopefully consenting) ears of others. A guitar must ‘speak’ to you when you pick it up. It must almost force you to play it. It should be an irresistible temptation.

But it’s been so long I don’t trust my instinct any more. How the hell can I, a parky whose fingers fumble with forks and have catastrophic interactions with coffee cups, expect to be able to feel the instrument as I used to? So I asked Nadine:

‘Which one do you think?’ I said.

‘I know nothing whatsoever about guitars, but that one.’ She replied.

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘Because when you picked it up, you smiled.’

Reader, I bought it. This is me playing it. What comes next? Who knows, but also, who cares, so long as I’m smiling, right?’

Pete guitar 1

(excuse the filthiness of the playing, but, well …)

Am I the 5%?

‘Who’s there?’
So begins the single greatest investigation into the human condition, Hamlet. Shakespeare lets the audience know what both Hamlet the man and Hamlet the play are about in its very first line, and its reputation is such that in the modern age, Hamlet’s discovery of himself is now mirrored by the actor’s finding of his or her Hamlet. It is the ultimate test of an actor’s craft, to inhabit a character no ones agrees upon: to convince the audience that it is they who show him as he really is, that Hamlet shows them the actor they really are. No other character in fiction has quite this hold on the imagination, because no other fictional character is quite so true. Continue reading

Branding the alien

That’s right, it’s time, once again, for World Parkinson’s Day. I’ve often wondered about the wild proliferation of ‘days’ such as this. I presume the trend stems from the 1919 adoption of 11.11 as Commonwealth Remembrance Day following the ‘war to end all wars’. This day has, of course, not only turned into remembrance minute, but has been joined in the calendar by more ‘days’ than I care to count Continue reading

The Agonists and the Ecstasy

At this moment, my body and brain are shutting down. It’s 2.45pm. I need a nap. This is partially because I suffer from chronic insomnia (and have done for well over a decade), and partially because I am simply exhausted. I’ve had breakfast, indulged in some domestic drudgery, been shopping, had some lunch and had a short twitter with a friend on the demon drugs that are called dopamine agonists. Continue reading

14 Pieces of Parkinson’s

In celebration/commemoration of the fourteenth anniversary of my diagnosis with Parkinson’s Disease, I re-published 14 articles of mine, one a day for two weeks. Here’s the countdown!

1. Ten Years a Slave – I wrote this on the tenth anniversary of my diagnosis, and it includes extracts from Slender Threads. As such it’s an interesting snapshot of strange times.

2. The Longest Wait – A piece I wrote for The Independent in May 2008, a few months after my diagnosis. It’s all about the future, of course, it’s just that the future is now. I wrote no. 2 of my 14 pieces of Parkinson’s for the Independent in May 2008, a couple of months after diagnosis. It’s about the future as it appeared at the time. Also here. Continue reading

The Story of Gladiators, Ready?

Just a little expansion on the story behind Gladiators, Ready? the first release from the upcoming Dancing with Architects.

All proceeds to Spotlight YOPD, a charity dedicated to helping those diagnosed with Parkinson’s at an unseasonably young age. You can stream it on …

SPOTIFYAPPLE MUSICTIDAL

In short, the tune is a 1995 recording resurrected and re-produced with the help of some fabulous guest artists, namely Bryan McClellan on drums, Mel Gabbitas on bass, Phil Hilborne – Guitar solos 2 & 4 (2.37-2.52: 4.13-4.28), Steve Forward – Guitar solo 3 (4.00-4.13), and Bora Uslusoy – Guitar solo 5 (5.30-5.45). All other guitars by Pete in 1995. Original recording 1995 by Pete Langman and Gregory Humair, re-recording and re-production in 2021 by Bora Uslusoy.

Continue reading

What Parkinson’s has taught me about C-19

Twelve year ago, I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. I was forty years old. It was something of a shock to the system. Over the years I have become increasingly aware of what such a diagnosis does to you. Not what the disease itself does (though I have also become increasingly, and uncomfortably, aware of this. That’s what the words progressive, degenerative and incurable mean), but what the act of diagnosis actually means to the diagnosed. I don’t for a minute think that what I am about to describe is unique to Parkinson’s, though I suspect it may, in many ways, be something that is largely confined to chronic ailments such as Parkinson’s. Continue reading

writing with parkinson’s

This morning I responded to a twweet from a fellow paarky about aainnvolutary amovemnet. I wrote ‘it’s a buggea. Goodaaa job I’m naoat a writaer.oah.’ asa a response. He tweeted eme bacaaaak saaying it’as like ahhaaving aa suattera in tetx. I repalied thata i sometims want to publish aaa fiaart darafat atao gie pewople ann iadaea of whata it’s like.
Soa I have,. 63 words nd a4aaminutea.
Parakinson’a i aaahaarad.

Yet another Covid Chronicle

The grebe paddles serenely, ripples shining in its wake, crest puffed out as if to remind me that my own hair is not only thinner than once it was but currently arranged like a middle-aged, pepper-and-salt Tintin. As I focus, it barks at me. It’s not a warning. It sounds more like it’s calling its mate: ‘Hey, fluff up and get over here, some guy’s taking my picture.’ Continue reading

Who Breathes, Wins

C-19. It sounds like a far-right paramilitary group dedicated to expelling foreigners and purifying the race. The kind of people for whom the leap from deporting illegal aliens to euthanazing the disabled is more of a Sunday afternoon stroll. But Covid-19 is already forcing members of the medical profession in Italy to choose who lives and who dies – or, at least, who is given the greater chance of living. Continue reading