Chapter Thirteen
Lex
I hold my breath as I unlock the two padlocks that keep my studio doors closed.
Not that your average thief would even consider trying to break into this dilapidated space, one of many old factory warehouses in the NDSM Werf of Amsterdam North, an area that is only slowly being touched by the magic capitalist wand of gentrification.
However, a criminal with an eye for modern art would have a field day behind these doors, which I now slide open with most of my muscle power.
Because Lex Williams’ originals go for tens of thousands these days, and this high-ceilinged space is full of them.
It's been a long time since I was here last. Months. That in itself is not unusual. When I’m travelling or working on a group collaboration or simply busy with another project I started spontaneously in another space, I can go for months without stepping inside this studio I used to share with other artists but now can afford to keep just for myself.
But these last few months have been different.
Because while I have been travelling, I haven’t exactly been busy with other projects.
Five months and three days. That’s how long it’s been since I made any kind of art, and that’s never happened before.
Literally. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been making something.
As a kid, it was the endless paintings and drawings my mum put up on our fridge.
As a teen, it was filling sketchbooks with half-finished illustrations of monsters and ghosts and ghouls, and endless, endless doodles – anything that would keep my hand and brain busy.
And in my adult years, I’ve been creating with more intent and purpose.
I’ve been creating with different materials – fibre and fabric often being my favourite – and I’ve always had more ideas than I’ve had time to execute them.
But five months and three days ago, that stopped.
It was like my mind went blank, which in itself is not abnormal – I often have days after a busy period of work where I can’t even think fully formed thoughts, let alone summon creativity – but it didn’t resolve itself like it normally does.
The ideas didn’t return. If anything, they drifted further and further away, like a bunch of helium balloons I let go of and couldn’t reach to snatch back.
They were still there in my peripheral vision, but too far away to do anything with.
My artist friends tell me it’s normal. They say it’s “part of the process” and “don’t force it,” but it’s not that simple.
Art is the one thing that has never let me down.
Art gives me as much as it takes from me, often more.
Art is how I make sense of the world. I don’t know who I am without my art.
Art feeds me, and right now, I’m starving.
And that’s the real reason I came back to Amsterdam. And back to Roos.
I’ve never been more productive, more focused, more creative than when Roos and I started seeing each other.
Actually, that’s a lie. It was the same when I was with Mari.
And in both cases, it was even more true in the immediate aftermath of breaking up.
All the pain I felt at walking away from them both, I poured into…making. It was the only way I knew how to heal the gaping hole in my heart at leaving them. By filling it with art.
But that energy and focus died off quickly after Roos.
I was barely able to squeeze three weeks of creating before my well ran dry.
I told myself it didn’t matter as I had a month’s residency in Lisbon I’d already agreed to, plus the install in Seattle and a bunch of media requests that were long overdue a response.
Yet it still bothered me that I was bereft of a new idea for my next collection, and it’s positively plaguing me now.
Maybe this will help, I think as I stare at my studio. It’s where the vast majority of my work has been created, and it’s home to the many, many pieces that didn’t make the cut.
Nostalgia floods me as I breathe in the instantly recognisable scents of acrylic, charcoal, plaster, and glue.
The ground feels as dusty as ever as I walk over to the large bank of canvases leaning against one wall, next to what looks like a graveyard of sculptures, metalworks, and models.
I bend down and look through a few of them, and then I get immediately overwhelmed with memories good and bad, so I stand up and turn my back.
On the opposite side of the large space is a raised platform I fashioned out of MDF, and atop it is a double mattress, an upside-down crate I used as a bedside table, and a lamp that only ever worked when it chose to.
I’m surprised I had the foresight to strip my sheets and wash them before I left, but as soon as I step up onto the platform, I know that wasn’t me.
Roos. I can smell her all over the folded pile of bedclothes.
I forgot I gave her keys.
Smiling as I finger the washed sheets, I wonder why she didn’t give me the keys back earlier when I was there. It’s desperation, perhaps, but I take the fact that she didn’t as a good sign.
It was surely a good sign that she didn’t kick me out earlier either. Even with Mari.
Mari. Mari. Mari.
I can’t believe they were there. I can’t believe they’re here, in Amsterdam.
For the hundredth time that day, I wonder what are the chances, and then I shut that line of thought down immediately because I know where it will end up, with me thinking like Mari themself. With me thinking this was all some kind of sign. That it’s fate.
It’s not fate. It’s a coincidence and not a great one, as it didn’t exactly help me make amends with Roos.
It’s clear she’s quite taken by Mari, and who am I to get in the way of that?
Roos and I have never stopped each other from falling for someone else.
If anything, we’ve encouraged it because that’s a philosophy we discovered we shared very early on.
No one person can be your everything. It’s wrong to expect that from someone.
It’s wrong to expect just one person to fulfil you.
But I doubt Roos imagined falling for the first person I ever loved. Not that I told her that’s who Mari is to me. Not that I ever will.
Besides, Roos told me Mari isn’t here to stay. They’re just visiting, and she and they are just hooking up.
Which is fine. I’m fine with that. Yes, I’m jealous, in a way that prompts a physical reaction, but that’s normal, and again, that’s something Roos and I talk about.
Or rather, we used to. I could hardly tell her how thinking about Roos and Mari together leaves me feeling like I’m being stabbed through flesh and muscle and bone.
And yet I have found myself thinking about them together a lot. All day, in fact.
I make my bed with the sheets, only lifting them to my nose to inhale the spring blossom scent of Roos’ detergent twice. Okay, fine, three times. And then, suddenly exhausted and weak, I lie down on the bed.
And I think about Mari and Roos some more.
I’ve not eaten much today, and no doubt the jetlag and sleepless night at QISS is catching up with me, but still, I don’t normally let my thoughts get the better of me.
I don’t allow myself to dwell on people I fuck, not unless I have a paintbrush or pencil in my hand, and I certainly don’t let Mari occupy so many of my thoughts.
I trained myself out of doing that a long time ago.
It’s thinking about Mari that reminds me I have all my old sketchbooks here somewhere.
My mum shipped them to me along with most of my other belongings when I told her I wasn’t going to be coming back from Amsterdam, and I dumped them in an old wooden chest that came with the studio.
The chest has been buried under boxes and boxes of clothes I rescued from a fabric tip before I worked on Migration and the collection currently on display in the Spiegelsplek gallery, and I make quick work of removing them.
A musty smell hits me when I open the chest, but the sketchbooks themselves are immediately recognisable and instantly drag me back to my childhood bedroom.
My refuge. The place I hid and drew and created and got lost in paper and black biro.
The one part of my house I felt safe in, not least because of the lock I’d installed on the door the day after my sixteenth birthday.
Gathering sketchbooks in my arms, I lift as many as I can and carry them back over to the bed. I dump the pile down and then join them a second later, kicking off my shoes so I can tuck my legs under my body.
And then I take a sketchbook and open the front page.
Time warps from that moment on. I flit among the years between then and now.
When I look at certain drawings, even certain doodles, I’m not in Amsterdam anymore; I’m back in my hometown, avoiding doing my homework while the TV plays too loudly in the lounge downstairs.
I’m doodling while waiting for Mari to come over.
Or I’m sketching while they lie asleep next to me, and I’m a ball of insomniac energy.
I’m drawing monsters and ogres and ugly things that I can control.
I’m imagining worlds where there are fairies and pixies and magic that is used for good.
I’m drawing myself living another life, one where I am free and can fly and am whole.
I share all the pictures with Mari when they ask.
I design tattoos for them, and sometimes, when they’re not looking, I draw them.
It's these sketches that affect me the most. Their upturned nose, their full cheeks, their long lashes, and their endless array of hairstyles. There are three pages of their lips alone, plump and perfectly symmetrical, apart from when they smile.
Fuck, how I loved them.
I loved them so much it hurt.
I toss the sketchpads away when it gets too much. When I go too far back in time, or maybe too deep into buried memories and locked-away feelings, but I am not angry.
I’m strangely hopeful.
I know this pain well, and this pain, I can work with.
I sit up straighter and look around, this time searching for very specific things.
A blank enough canvas, some paints, brushes, and something I can use as a palette.
Feeling like I’ve drunk a huge glass of water and eaten a filling meal – although I have done neither since getting off the plane – I rush around and grab all these things.
I lean the canvas against the chest, as if to draw out more memories of Mari, more nostalgia that both settles and disturbs me. More pain.
And then I finally, finally, thank fuck, finally, start to paint.