A few years ago, my mother
died.
I went to see *Je vais voir Votre maman* by Wally Bajeux, a
play about the relationship between a mother and her daughter. In the
final scene, something clicks into place.
I knew my mother had died. I’d never
allowed myself to fully experience this
loss. Then, without warning, everything gives way.
Art brings back, for a fleeting moment, a
relationship that is lost forever. The floodgates
open, a crack appears, the ground vanishes
from beneath my feet.
I feel an immense pain, long
suppressed, coursing through my whole body. I weep,
I weep until I can weep no more, I weep a torrent of
tears. I weep for my mother, this mother who never
managed to understand me, this mother who
wanted, convinced she was right, to make me
adopt her way of thinking. This mother who
often fought against me more than she ever really
engaged with me, capable of great material
generosity and immense
intellectual violence.
For the first time, I’m letting go of what’s going through my mind.
I, who have always lived a controlled life, no longer control anything.
I now believe that this evening was the first turning point.
I am beginning to come to terms with my mother’s death. But
something else is beginning to unravel
along with her.
As long as she was there, I could still try
to be the daughter she would have wanted me to be.
Trying to fit into a mould that wasn’t
my own. Waiting for her to see me in
a different light.
With her death, something becomes impossible
and something becomes possible. I no longer have to
prove to her that I can be that daughter.
It’s as if, by disappearing, she’d left me a
place I’d never quite taken up.
I don’t understand it yet.
My body, however, is starting to hold me back.
The signs are piling up. Stomach aches.
Pain that sometimes prevents me from moving,
from doing things, from carrying on as if nothing were happening.
I don’t yet know what I need to stop doing. I
just feel that my body is setting a limit
on the life I continue to lead.
At the same time, the call of drawing is becoming
stronger.
I’ve never stopped drawing. It’s always been
there. What’s becoming impossible is to keep it
confined to the margins of my life.
The more my body holds me back, the more the
act of drawing calls to me.
I need to draw. To reflect. To have time.
So I’m giving it up.
I’m leaving a well-paid job, a sense of security,
a familiar routine. I don’t know what’s going to
come next. I only know that I can no longer
carry on living at odds with myself.
I’m taking the risk of becoming myself.
And I lose myself.
The structure that organised my life no longer holds. What is meant to
take its place has not yet taken shape.
Something has died within me and something else is
beginning to be reborn.
I’m starting afresh from this collapse.
I’m isolating myself. But I walk a lot.
I walk in nature without knowing why I
am walking. I have nowhere to go. I walk to
feel alive.
Little by little, my focus shifts.
I become attuned to what I’m feeling. To my
body. To my sensations. To what passes through me. To the way in which certain things affect me. I
begin to observe what, until then, I had simply experienced
without trying to understand it.
I draw. I walk. I reflect. I write.
These actions begin to come together.
Drawing lies at the heart of this exploration. I
observe what my hand is doing, what my gaze
focuses on, what it overlooks, what it returns to. I
am beginning to realise that drawing does not simply
show me something of the world.
Drawing also makes my way of looking at it
perceptible.
I am not yet seeking to construct a
theory. I am trying to understand.
Why do I perceive things this way? Why do
certain sensations take on such a great degree of
intensity? Why does drawing occupy such a
prominent place? What does my way of drawing reveal about my
way of paying attention?
My research into Asperger’s, high-functioning autism (HPI) and
synesthesia began during this period. I
was searching for words to describe what, until then, I had
mainly just experienced.
This is also when my first book took shape.
I did not yet realise that drawing, perception,
the body and attention would gradually
form a single field of research.
I only knew that I could no longer push back into the shadows what had emerged from it.
I thought I had lost my way. I had begun to search.
