James Ensor

On the very day I first saw this photo at an exhibition in Brussels, I very much felt like this. As we passed a building near Aachen's main train station on our way back, I did not realise that at the very moment people were held hostage in it. The same strange sensation again when a helicopter was passing pretty low just about our heads during a family celebration on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. Later on, on the radio we learned that a prisoner had escaped from a nearby prison, his accomplices hijacking a helicopter and its pilot. One can be so close and yet worlds apart.