Holloway: Chapters 1–5

It hadn’t been a little thing, the emptying of the apartment, even one as relatively spartan as ours.

Things my classmates seemed to find perfectly acceptable—the interminable flicker of florescent lights; sounds like a popped balloon or the painful whine of an audio system malfunctioning; anything sticky or slimy, like the bright green stuff the other kids liked to play with; clothing that was too tight, or too loose; the metallic taste of cutlery—for me, each was a private torture.

Until Gillian bought me my first set of paints—a flat turquoise metal box of forty-eight watercolor squares, four rows of twelve squares each, Chinese White in the top left corner, Deepest Black in the bottom right, three brushes set into divots just their size—then, all I wanted to do was paint, or study paintings.

When I painted something original, I almost always ended up slicing together elements of realism and impressionism and surrealism and abstract expressionism, too.

When I painted something original, I almost always ended up slicing together elements of realism and impressionism and surrealism and abstract expressionism, too.

In the early weeks of the pandemic, all I wanted to do was paint.

Art is a language, and for a language to function, the words must have corollaries in reality.

A screaming child in the Richelieu wing makes the room where Vermeer’s The Lacemaker is displayed uninhabitable; a layer of perfume as viscous and dense as skunk spray clouds the Renaissance collection.

Everywhere I go in Paris, the same dichotomy: those who are still taking every precaution, wearing a mask even when they’re in a park, completely separated from anyone by an expanse of open lawn, and those who seem committed to acting as if the pandemic is well and truly behind us now, ancient history—going into shops and markets barefaced and belligerent, ignoring the hand sanitizer stations outside of restaurants—grabbing their freedom with both hands.

Everywhere I go in Paris, the same dichotomy: those who are still taking every precaution, wearing a mask even when they’re in a park, completely separated from anyone by an expanse of open lawn, and those who seem committed to acting as if the pandemic is well and truly behind us now, ancient history—going into shops and markets barefaced and belligerent, ignoring the hand sanitizer stations outside of restaurants—grabbing their freedom with both hands.

When I’m in the Monet exhibit at the Musée de l’Orangerie, blissfully quiet because of its well-enforced “silent observation”—Monet himself stipulated that this was how his Water Lilies should be experienced—I’m so immersed that for one beautiful afternoon I forget that there was ever a pandemic or a shutdown at all.

When I’m in the Monet exhibit at the Musée de l’Orangerie, blissfully quiet because of its well-enforced “silent observation”—Monet himself stipulated that this was how his Water Lilies should be experienced—I’m so immersed that for one beautiful afternoon I forget that there was ever a pandemic or a shutdown at all.

Each display pairs a real item and its counterfeit. Some are what you’d expect—high.end purses and expensive sneakers and marble statuettes—but others surprise in their banality. Ballpoint pens, the type you get fifty in a pack. Boxes of cigarettes.

Each display pairs a real item and its counterfeit. Some are what you’d expect—high.end purses and expensive sneakers and marble statuettes—but others surprise in their banality. Ballpoint pens, the type you get fifty in a pack. Boxes of cigarettes.

“The cave paintings—south of here? Are you familiar with them? They’re incredible. Ancient paintings, some of the earliest that have ever been found, discovered about eighty years ago. But after just a few years of people traipsing through, they had to shut the caves to the public. It was people’s breath, you know, toxic. It was ruining the art.”