Orbit is extremely honoured to be in the newspaper. And this is the first author I have drawn that I have actually met. So I guess I owe you another obscure anecdote about myself. I could easily carry the log for a week, stories keep popping up in my head. But now for Adriaan van Dis. I think it was 1990, our Queen Beatrix was celebrating her first ten years in office. We were invited because Michiel had won a royal award as a promising young painter a few years earlier. And lots of other artists, politicians and important people were invited too, it was quite the party. But all good things must come to an end, so at some point we wanted to leave the palace. A lackey stood at the door. He opened it. A massive crowd started cheering. The lackey closed the door again, and asked us whether we were sure. We were sure. We took a deep breath and stepped onto the plateau at the top of the stairs. (bordes, isn't there an English word for bordes??) The cheering was deafening. I decided the only thing I could do was wave. What do you do with a cheering crowd, you wave. Period. And the cheering got louder, so I waved more, and louder. Until I started to feel suspicious and I looked over my shoulder. And there was Adriaan van Dis. No wonder the crowd had been cheering like that, Adriaan was a famous TV host back then. So I felt slightly embarrassed. But Adriaan wasn't so comfortable with the cheering crowd either, so he grabbed my arm, and we strode along the crush barriers together. Some fifty meters until the military police let us out and we could disappear into that same crowd ourselves.
Leave a comment