Chapter Three #2
I re-record it to smooth out the bits where I stumbled, and again when someone jogged past and I felt too self-conscious to keep talking. I just stared at myself on my phone screen like a lunatic, wondering if Mae was right on the fringe front, but admiring my eyeliner flick.
Once I’m happy, I upload it. It feels good, as if I’ve achieved something, or else taken some small crumb of control. That’s what Mae doesn’t understand. The Art of Dying isn’t just about hiding in an online world to avoid the real one. It’s the only part of my life where I feel I still matter.
The walk to the art gallery is short but beautiful.
The pavements of President Wilson Avenue are so wide, there’s a market taking place down the middle of them – stalls selling seafood, flowers, cheese, olives, and so much bread that it assaults every sense.
The sun is shining and there’s a light breeze from the Seine, which should be absolutely perfect, except I’m so nervous, I feel ill.
My hands are shaking; it’s like I’m having an out-of-body experience.
My headphones play Edith Piaf’s Non, Je ne regrette rien, and while I appreciate the authenticity of the moment, it doesn’t exactly help matters.
Unlike Edith, I have many regrets, many.
At first, I don’t realise that I’ve joined the back of a queue.
There’s a hustle of people, all waiting by the entrance to the MAM.
It’s huge, both the building and the queue.
I read about it on the way here. Apparently, the MAM was built in the 1930s and has 15,000 works of modern art.
It’s only when I hear the words ‘Spencer’ more than once that I realise that these people are here for the same reason that I am.
They’re waiting to see the new Earl Josef Spencer.
They’re waiting to see the painting of me.
I’m full of something that feels like pride, for Earl.
I wish he could be here for this; people actually queuing to see his work.
He’d have just laughed and tried to make them all a cup of tea.
He’d have found a way to find out what each of them needed and taken care of them.
Some artists shy away from the real world, preferring instead to operate in some liminal space between life and art.
I’m one of those artists, or I was. But not Earl – he loved people, and people loved him.
Mum always thought it odd, that as kids we wanted to spend so much time with an old man. But it never felt odd, or weird to us. Earl felt like family.
I’m ignoring every one of my rules about crying in public.
Tears are dripping onto my cheeks by the time the doors open and we lunge forward en masse towards the museum entrance.
I’m still crying as I pass my things through the security monitors, thinking of Earl and the fact that he won’t get to see this, and all the people who came to admire his work.
But also for me and everything I lost back then. For Emmett, too, I suppose.
I’m out of practice when it comes to dealing with all this feeling, but like, it’s fine. I suppose if you can’t be an emotional wreck in Paris, where can you be one?
No one looks twice at my puffy eyes when I tap to buy a ticket for Earl’s exhibit.
Outside, the MAM looks like the Pantheon, with smooth pillars carved from stone.
Inside, it’s a bright, white space, most famous for the enormous La Fée électricité by Raoul Dufy.
I promise myself that I’ll stay and see this later.
For now, though, I follow arrows directing us to Earl’s exhibition space.
It’s on the first floor, where there’s an enormous picture of Earl on the wall. He’s younger than I ever knew him, but wearing the same top hat he always wore. Earl Josef Spencer, it says underneath the picture. ‘Une Vie en Couleur’.
My hands are shaking slightly as I take my sunglasses off my head and put them in my bag, as I reach the long bright corridor. It’s jarring, since it’s so different from how Earl lived, all this grandeur and space. It’s overwhelming.
There’s a small crowd of people clustered at the end of the exhibition, looking at a single painting on the wall.
That must be it – the Edge of Always. I make myself walk slowly, recognising the other pieces on the walls, how the colours jump out at you.
I can chart the final years of my childhood through these paintings, and it’s both miraculous and unbearably hard seeing them again.
I had so much hope then. Losing that hope hurts more than almost anything else I’ve lost.
I can’t dwell on that now, though. Not when the paintings are right here, dragging me back to The Time Before. Reminding me, against my will, how colourful the past was. It’s like coming home, seeing them again:
The Weight of Light
Longing for Human Connection
Montmartre in Motion
The Juxtaposition of Life and Death
The Rubicon
If I had more time, I could go there, to the places he painted. They’re all in Paris. But there isn’t enough time. There’s never enough time.
I wait at the back of the small crowd, stepping forward only when someone else moves.
It’s there, and it takes my breath away.
The Edge of Always.
Oh, Earl.
It is, it’s different from his other work.