In life, she fairy. What does she do? A bit of this, a bit of that, lots of yellow and always the audacity to create a link between neighbours, balconies, asphalt and passers-by. Some will dig holes, shave the walls, hold up signs, spread hatred on social networks, others will go back to bed; her, she hangs words everywhere in her neighborhood, on a voluntary basis. Everyone has their own way of getting through the day.
Patsy Van Roost, the urban fairy, found in audacity the way to break the fragile screen of our indifference. The Belgian-born fairy defies social conventions with kindness and lightheartedness. Softness is a weapon of mass conversion.
Last week, she “banderolized” a park fence on Alma Street, in Petite-Patrie. Word We is yellow, the others are green; some words need help.
Patsy brought us two tartlets, “patsysseries” (as she calls it) strawberry and rhubarb, which we eat on a park bench in the Plateau, enjoying the first warm rays and the proximity of the forsythia bushes (yellow).
Wearing a cap (yellow), wearing boots (yellow), she could do an advertisement for a mutual insurance company or “no name” products, but she rather plays on the side of light and free. She picks cut words wherever she sees them, resown for everyone’s pleasure. His first book (yellow), launched last night at the bookstore N’tait not summer, is called I love your beating heart, and it brings together a host of “Likes” who have already had a life of (yellow) balcony banners during the pandemic, a Valentine’s Day project where neighbors had to offer a “Like” to the fairy. “I wanted to make the balconies speak when the city was so sad. It was also a message to passers-by. A wink in the greyness, yellow like honey, like mimosa, like a canary out of a cage.
The great human loneliness
His book of “Likes” – a pretty rosary on each page – touches because it targets small intimate, sensory joys, the rain in the summer, the whipped cream, the grass under the feet after the morning dew , touching the hot paper coming out of the printer, the purring of a cat, doing the dishes (!), the smell of fire in the fireplace and the smell of children’s necks.
In the spring the dead come out timidly
They form small garlands
Which wrap themselves around the stakes
Some words need help
They are so fragile that they must be encouraged
The word is the most difficult for us to cultivate
But who hides behind this sown and scattered joy, this fairy with a Belgian-Anglo-Quebecois accent who rolls the r and its bump, patches the urban fabric in a large patchwork cheerful ?
This 52-year-old woman who remains an elf falls asleep while reading children’s books and hugs anyone who wants to. “It is by taking care of others that I take care of myself. I wanted a bright book for difficult times. I was not well when I made this book. I was in the dark. Everyone thinks that Patsy is the light girl who sows happiness everywhere. The truth is that I feel holed up. I would have thought to be repaired after ten years of darning others. Oh no. Back to square one. »
In his eyes, I detect sadness; we are mirror fairies. She describes herself as an anxious person who broods as much as she illuminates. And the fairy, who cannot walk two blocks without stopping to talk to seven people, also suffers from the discomfort of loneliness, which is necessary to create. “We are all alone. My standard is five days without a human. I never thought I would be so alone in my life. »
She raised her son, Brel, alone; she had roommates for 25 years. Since she was evicted from her Mile-End neighborhood, the fairy has lived in La Petite-Patrie, working with children or bringing back the memories of people aged 50 and over in neighborhood projects. We bring her in when there’s a suicide in a school. She re-enchants souls because she knows all the mortal crevasses.
“We are all at risk, more and more. It’s difficult. That’s why you have to sow. I will never go to Barcelona again, because I saw there words of hatred on the walls, towards tourists, like punches. “Tourist go home.” “Tourist we piss in your beer.” So many unhappy people. They are alone. And they sow gray.
Be together
When she is sad, Patsy moves into her studio and makes clothes, banners, bags, fabric projects and various materials. It’s her karate. It is not casable and makes a little velvet of it. “Being a fairy is more exciting than being an artist. Even an artist, you have to live your life a certain way. I want to be found where I am not expected. My ass is on fire, I’m on the move. And she likes the beginnings, the springs, everything that emerges, blossoms and comes out of the ground, like a budding hope. “I like beginnings. I get bored quickly. I love being in love, but it takes me ten years to digest. So, I do urban caresses. »
There is already courage, boldness, in leaving one’s private shelter and showing who one is, in revealing oneself and exposing oneself.
She slips that friendship is worth gold and that love has an end. I don’t remember who said that chocolate is an emotion. Strawberry rhubarb too, I confirm. “I wish I was 26 again…I’m as lost as I was at that age. I have 5,000 Facebook friends and I’m alone on my couch. »
Before going to Senegal in 2019, she took a Wolof course at UQAM. “There, you greet everyone. You’re going crazy here. “Perhaps she is Senegalese, basically, made for meeting others and African fabrics. It is thanks to Amélie Poulain that she chose her life, even if freedom has a price, that of precariousness:
“I wouldn’t have the life I have today if I hadn’t ‘met’ Amélie Poulain. It was by watching her act that I understood that it is possible to choose to live an entirely poetic life. »
And that’s how you become a fairy, looking at life from the other side of things, perceiving magic, revealing it to the blind. “I spread love. I’m not going to ask permission from the City! They are the ones who should be thanking me…”
When is a magic medal? Yellow, of course.