I get off the bus early, near Trafalgar Square. An idea has formed in my mind. At university, I performed pieces where I’d sit on various materials that had long life spans, like plastic, trees, stone, and I gradually glued my skin to them, or else connected myself to the material with clay or plaster and painted the joins to look like the material—the bark of a tree, marble, cement. I wanted it to look like I was a part of whatever material I was using and it was a part of me. I think that those works came from a kind of naive and youthful desire to be seen for what I was. For my body to be seen for what it is: this un-decaying, eternal thing—familiarly human, but also not. Audiences watched me go through the process of gluing and I think probably felt left out of the meaning of the piece, because I couldn’t in any world reveal that I was a vampire in an artist’s bio or wall label. For one, no one would believe me; there’d simply be concern about my mental health. Most people assumed, in the absence of explanation, that the piece must be about race, since I was different-looking. Now, though, the urge I feel is to return to painting, to work in a small and contained space like a piece of canvas, a board of wood or a sheet of expensive paper, or perhaps even silk like what my dad worked on, and to see if I can find the shape of myself in whatever I create, to try to identify what I am somehow, separate from my mum’s definitions of me and her superstitions, and in the preferred medium of my human father. I’m not sure what form the painting will take, or what form I’ll take in it, but I walk across the street, through the traffic and crowds, in the direction of Cass Art to buy materials.

Chapter 5

5

It’s the day before the opening at the Otter, so I’m needed at the gallery again. I’ve woken up early. The factory is completely silent. I stay on the floor of my studio for a bit and put on Chef’s Table on my laptop. It’s the episode about a Korean Buddhist nun. I close my eyes and listen to her talking about temple food; there’s something nice about listening to someone speak in a language I don’t understand. I listen for any words I can make out the meaning of but there are none. Occasionally, the presenter talks about mushrooms; occasionally, there is the sound of vegetables being chopped, water boiling, oil sizzling, bowls hitting a wooden tabletop. Sometimes, I’ve wondered if a simple life like this one might be the life I’d choose to live if I were human.