Sean Walsh

I’ll go on…

Some years ago when my eldest daughter, Siobhan, was in her second year at Dublin’s Trinity College (Theatre Studies) she came home one evening and presented me with a framed photo/card:

in the far distance, an old man, stooped and wearing a bowler hat on bowed head, struggles with baggage; while near at hand a man with protruding ears sits with his back to us, darkly, framing the inscription:

NO MATTER – TRY AGAIN – FAIL AGAIN – FAIL BETTER…

Beckett. Ah, yes. The Master. Words of wisdom, encouragement, inspiration…

My daughter knew I was creatively under the weather – fumbling, stumbling, not knowing where I was going, never mind how I was going to get there..!

As it had happened to me on several occasions in the past, I did find my way in the end – and took it… The script went on to cause considerable ripples when produced, broadcast.

And Beckett’s framed dictat? To this day it stands on my desk, to the left of my desktop P C, at the edge of the arc of light from my reading lamp. I look at it now and again… whenever I get bogged down, dispirited, tempted to give in to the myriad distractions my computer will readily yield up at a click…

… and keep going.

– Sean Walsh. April 07.