I always dreamed of meeting those kind of artists, artists like Jan Fabre, who choose Art over life. And before I met any of these artists, I tried imagining how it would be: what would we discuss first? In what setting would this be?

My inner imaginations became daydreams, in which he would play the lead and I would be the spectator or the passer-by. It was like watching a silent movie. Quietly your eyes follow moving images in a jolting way. You notice something resembling people. An expressive glance. Body language needing no subtitles. And then, the tragic realisation that everything that appeared on your retina is no longer there. The setting,  the people, time. Lost…

This is how I met Jan Fabre, in one of my lucid dreams. Was he alive? Was he dead? I looked at him as you would look at a statue of him, with the same curiosity (what is he saying?). He doesn’t speak. He thinks. Everything happens inside. Soundless. Quietly…

Spontaneously the dream transforms into a delusion. I suddenly find myself in a swirling brain mass. Little Fabres walk along the mental substance, digging, analysing, remodelling until nothing is left. The brain, as Fabre puts it, as the mirror of the soul. The waking brain, never asleep.

Luckily I wake up… is this real?

Kathy de Nève