I suffer from similar tics to Lewis Capaldi – what he went through at Glastonbury is my nightmare
I have a special affinity with Lewis Capaldi. I wish I could say it was because we’re both extremely talented millionaires with huge followings, but it’s really just because we sort of look alike. Seriously, there was a stretch last month where five different people – some of them complete strangers – told me completely independently of one another “here, do you know you look like that Scottish lad from the telly?”
Honestly, I’ll take it – the man is only 26 years old and has perfect skin. Some of us can only dream of being mistaken for Gen Z.
It wasn’t until yesterday, however, that I realised that me and Lewis have a lot more in common than just youthful exuberance. During his set at the Glastonbury Festival, Capaldi began struggling with tics which impacted his ability to continue performing. Though the crowd enthusiastically supported him through his final few songs when it became clear he was having trouble, the singer was ultimately forced to abandon his set after just half an hour (30 minutes short of the time that had been allotted).
Last September Capaldi revealed that he had been diagnosed with Tourette syndrome, a condition which causes the sufferer to experience involuntary musculature and vocal tics. The symptoms of his condition manifested at a performance in Germany earlier this year, which caused Capaldi to experience issues similar to those he exhibited last night as he struggled to get through his set list.
Three weeks before his Glastonbury set, Capaldi announced that he would be taking time off for mental health reasons – a break he put on pause to perform at the festival. After the set, he told those in attendance, “I feel like I’ll be taking another wee break for the next few weeks, you might not see me for the rest of the year. But when I do come back and I do see you I hope you’re up for watching.”
My heart goes out to Capaldi, not just because he’s apparently my doppelganger, but also because I suffer from a similar condition that prevents me from living my life normally. I have OCD. Not television OCD – you know, the kind that makes the like of Monica Gellar and Sheldon Cooper fastidiously tidy or particular about their spot on the couch.
I have genuine, dictionary-definition Obsessive Compulsive Disorder – the type that creeps into ever aspect of your life and makes simple tasks a chore. Like Capaldi, my condition manifests in a few different ways, including strange tics and rituals that interfere with my day-to-day. And when I say strange, I mean strange; I’ve just tried to describe one in detail for this article, and ended up deleting what I wrote because there’s no way to talk about it without making myself sound completely insane.
I have some of the classic, TV-friendly symptoms too, though – I wash my hands about 30 times a day (Covid was a real joy, thanks for asking), I have intrusive thoughts that make it impossible to concentrate on basic tasks for too long (good thing I’m not a writer or anything), and every now and then I’ll do something weird with my head or hands that I don’t even notice until somebody else points it out to me, because at this point I’m so used to all my body’s annoying little idiosyncrasies.
The more severe symptoms are triggered by moments of extreme stress – “extreme” and “stress” being relative terms here, since I also have a pretty nasty anxiety disorder. My brain is like a big delicious cocktail made of poison.
That last one is the main reason I hold so much respect for Capaldi. My idea of a mental health breakdown is having a full-blown OCD attack during a work Zoom call and having to explain my behaviour to my boss. Maybe on a bad day I’ll lose my train of thought during a presentation to a room full of 10 to 15 people; there were even times during my teaching days when I’d have to excuse myself for five minutes during a class to get my head straight.
Capaldi managed to keep his composure on stage in front of tens of thousands of people, while being filmed for live national broadcast. He cut his set short, sure, but he still managed to give a touching and funny performance while dealing with the fact that his brain and body had teamed up to stage a mutiny against him.
I also have a tonne of respect for the crowd, which could easily have made a bad situation a hundred times worse. Instead they sang along with the songs Capaldi did manage to play, they showed their appreciation for his effort, and they helped the singer leave the stage with his head held high. As somebody who regularly has stress dreams about the exact scenario Capaldi went through, that’s pretty much the dream scenario.
From one clone to another, I hope Lewis manages to overcome this bout with his mental health, and get back to doing what he does best – causing people I’ve never met to come up to me in bars and tell me how much they like “Someone You Loved”.
And making music too, I guess.
