\n<\/p>\n
O<\/span>n the day his life changed, Eric Lampaert woke up and saw his hands. What amazed him was that they were moving in front of him, and he appeared to be the person in control of them. We\u2019re drinking coffee in the Groucho Club in London, and at this point he lets go of his cup and wriggles his fingers. Lampaert is an actor and standup whose work has a strong clowning dimension. His hands always seemed to have minds of their own \u2013 and, sometimes, strong differences of opinion. But as he got out of bed that fateful morning, marvelling at the magical things on the ends of his arms, he felt only wonder. What he didn\u2019t yet know was that he had lost his memory, and his life would no longer feel like his own.<\/p>\n That was seven years ago, on 17 March 2019, Lampaert says, a date not so much stamped in his memory as retrieved from his journal and recommitted. It was a knock on the door that told him \u201cthere were other things out there\u201d beyond his bedroom: the Miracle Mile district of Los Angeles, housemates in the home he\u2019d once shared with his estranged wife, and the downstairs neighbour who\u2019d knocked to collect a bottle of bleach. Lampaert had borrowed it to clean coffee stains from the sink, but now he didn\u2019t know the person at the door or the housemate wandering by. \u201cEric?\u201d his neighbour said. \u201cAnd I went: \u2018I don\u2019t know, I don\u2019t know, I don\u2019t know \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n The story of how Lampaert, 40, lost his memory \u2013 what he calls \u201cthe event\u201d \u2013 and regained it 18 months later is the subject of his new show, Zero Minus One, which opens at the Edinburgh festival next month. Set in a padded cell, it\u2019s a two-hander between patient and doctor, both played by Lampaert, with bit parts for other voices in his head: Lampaert as himself, lover, child, monster and even as Hugh Grant, all pitching in to make sense of the seven years since that morning when his neighbour drove him to hospital, where he was diagnosed with \u201cconfusion delirium\u201d and symptoms of amnesia.<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018I\u2019m always aware that I\u2019m wearing Eric\u2019s skin\u2019 \u2026 Eric Lampaert.<\/span> Photograph: David Levene\/The Guardian<\/p>\n The severance that amnesia brought was so complete that Lampaert didn\u2019t recognise his parents. \u201cI get that you\u2019re this guy\u2019s mum,\u201d he told his mother. \u201cBut as far as I\u2019m concerned, Eric died.\u201d Regaining his memory has often felt like bringing himself back to life. \u201cI\u2019m not afraid of dying any more,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019ve already done it.\u201d<\/p>\n It sounds a bit Frankensteinian \u2013 and writhing around as though some inner monster were searching for the exit is a recurring feature of his routines. But when his memories began to return, he says, they felt like souvenirs from someone else\u2019s life, and he was remaking himself, a sort of visitor in his own body.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m always aware that I\u2019m wearing Eric\u2019s skin,\u201d he says. Speaking of himself in the third person isn\u2019t an affectation so much as a result of his dissociative experience; you feel there could be fourth and fifth and sixth persons and he still wouldn\u2019t have enough perspectives.<\/p>\n Professionally, he had always been known as Eric Lampaert. But when the amnesia struck, he deleted his website and stopped posting to his 100,000 Facebook followers. He adopted new social media identities \u2013 \u201cartist formerly known as Eric\u201d, \u201csurfing chaos\u201d \u2013 and made ends meet with occasional TV work and one-off gigs heavy on improv. The new show is an attempt to heal, to reunite himself with his name. \u201cI want to shed this story. I need it out of me,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n double quotation markI learned the tools of going within myself \u2013 but there was no one there to keep an eye on me<\/p>\n As much as anything, Zero Minus One is his professional rebirth. \u201cI\u2019m starting again. I want to show people that I am back.\u201d<\/p>\n Lampaert\u2019s amnesia happened in an instant, but it was a lifetime in the making. Raised all over the world before settling in the UK, in 2016 Lampaert arrived in Los Angeles while \u201criding a wave of success\u201d, as he puts it. In the previous three years, he had got married (to content creator and model Jordan Dwayne), won a Royal Television Society award and an international comedy award at ComediHa in Quebec, and supported Eddie Izzard. He appeared in Luc Besson\u2019s Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017) and \u201cthought it would translate to work [in LA]\u201d, he says. \u201cAnd it just did not. At all<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n Before his amnesia, Lampaert wanted to change his life. He\u2019d often had anxiety. \u201cConstant thoughts, classic anxiety. You know, the narrator that just won\u2019t stop talking,\u201d he says. His marriage broke down, and in late 2018 he filed for divorce. \u201cIt was a very lonely time. It was clear that I was repeating behaviours I\u2019d had in previous relationships.\u201d<\/p>\n What sort of behaviours?<\/p>\n \u201cI cheated because whenever there was an argument, I would feel abandoned, and I would take control of that. It was from abandonment issues when I was a kid.\u201d When his marriage failed, he felt \u201cdeep sadness, rejection, shame \u2026 But also an acknowledgment that if I am to fall in love again one day, I can\u2019t repeat those habits.\u201d<\/p>\n When hypnotherapy ads popped up on his computer screen, they \u201cfelt like a lifeline\u201d. After a few sessions of an online course, he was \u201cvisibly different\u201d. Friends thought he\u2019d got taller, and he realised he\u2019d stopped hunching.<\/p>\n \u201cLike maybe everyone else, I didn\u2019t necessarily like so much about me,\u201d he says. But during hypnotherapy, \u201cI\u2019d wake up happy. I\u2019d go to bed grateful.\u201d It was almost frightening, he says, \u201cto feel happy every day\u201d \u2013 like Icarus flying too close to the sun.<\/p>\n Alongside anxiety, Lampaert has also intermittently experienced depression. In 2016, he blogged about how cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) helped him to manage suicidal thoughts. Hypnotherapy went deeper than CBT, and offered a new way to understand his mental health.<\/p>\n He \u201clearned the tools of going within\u201d. But, he says: \u201cThere was no one there to keep an eye on me.\u201d Just him and his laptop, borderless, careening around his past \u201cin this giddy, perceptive state\u201d.<\/p>\n T<\/span>hree specific memories \u201caltered\u201d him when he resurfaced. As a child, Lampaert was \u201calways the outsider\u201d. His father was a British jockey. By the age of 12, Lampaert had lived in France (where his mother came from, and where Lampaert was born), Belgium, Germany, Italy, South Africa and Dubai before the family settled in the English horse-racing town of Newmarket, Suffolk.<\/p>\n At school in England, \u201cI used to get beaten up,\u201d Lampaert says. \u201cFor being French.\u201d He switches to an immaculate accent. \u201cI used to speak like zis, I \u2019ad a very strong accent.\u201d He perfected a southern English voice for protection. \u201cOne could argue, is that why I became an actor?\u201d<\/p>\n One day, he was beaten so badly his dental braces cut his lips, but he refuses to make a fuss about that or seem like a victim. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t that brutal,\u201d he says. And besides, this wasn\u2019t one of the memories that re-routed him during his hypnotherapy. Instead, he met his 16-year-old self on a Newmarket street, surrounded by a gang of teenagers wielding snooker cues.<\/p>\n \u201cThey made me count down from 10 in French,\u201d Lampaert says. On zero, he knew he was for it. What was signficant in hypnotherapy was not the snooker cues, the boys or the countdown, but the \u201cadults walking past \u2013 none of them doing anything\u201d. At the last second, someone stepped in, but for Lampaert, the memory encapsulates \u201cthe complete abandonment of the adult world\u201d during his youth.<\/p>\n When he was 15 \u2013 his second key memory \u2013 his parents separated. By then, he\u2019d finally made friends and didn\u2019t want to return to France with his mum. His dad was working away. \u201cSo I decided to stay, thinking [my parents] would help. But they didn\u2019t. It was like: \u2018Oh, bye then.\u2019 I ended up living out of a bag. I stayed with friends\u2019 families.\u201d<\/p>\n It was only when he got to university in London, to study theatre arts, that other students asked him where he lived, and suggested a word for his situation. \u201cI was like: \u2018Oh, was that homelessness?\u2019 That was a huge shock. Because for me, it was a constant, to be living from one place to another.\u201d<\/p>\n double quotation markI thought I wrote the pandemic. That changes a person. I thought I was to blame for millions of deaths<\/p>\n At university, he tried standup. He wanted to be an actor, and this route had led Robin Williams, Jim Carrey and Eddie Murphy to Hollywood. But even Lampaert\u2019s work made him feel like an outsider, picked upon.<\/p>\n And this was the third memory: in 2009, when he was 21, he made a TV commercial for the Viva TV channel, which was launching in the UK. From the ad\u2019s slogan, he immediately became known as \u201cthe Up Your Viva guy\u201d. There were lots of closeups of Lampaert leering into the camera. Granted, he says, it was \u201ca very annoying advert\u201d but he was unprepared for the vitriol that followed, including death threats and \u201cFacebook groups dedicated to how ugly I was\u201d, with comments like: \u201cHes SOOOO UGLY!!!:eek:\u201d, \u201cThat guy looks like a dog\u201d and \u201cParalysed horse going through an electric fence\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cI never felt attractive,\u201d Lampaert says. \u201cWhen I smile, I\u2019ve got big old gums. I was, you know, a little gangly.\u201d Being a comedian, of course, he joked about it. He took Two Tickets to the Gum Show to Edinburgh fringe in 2013. \u201cI used it as comedy, not realising that I was pushing all that pain down.\u201d<\/p>\n When he met Dwayne, \u201cI didn\u2019t believe she found me attractive. There were a lot of insecurities.\u201d He cried heavily after one particular hypnotherapy session. \u201cI went: \u2018When\u2019s the last time I actually looked in the mirror?\u2019 And I realised I brushed my teeth looking down.\u201d<\/p>\n In this state of hypersensitivity to himself, his past and his pain, he became a sort of memory \u201cgremlin\u201d, he says. \u201cI don\u2019t need this memory, I don\u2019t need that memory.\u201d He mimes plucking them out of his hand and discarding them. Lampaert was already having a memory clear-out before the amnesia kicked in.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I am about to share will sound psychotic \u2013 because it was,\u201d he says. He started to see \u201csynchronicities\u201d between his internal and external worlds.<\/p>\n Out for a walk the week before his amnesia happened, he was overtaken by a migration of butterflies, which he took personally. \u201cThey were everywhere, on the floor, in the sky, all around. If this was a movie,\u201d he says, \u201cthis would be the scene where the character is going through a metamorphosis. Allegories of chaos theory. I mean, for me [the connection] was undeniable.\u201d Or, as he puts it in an email later: \u201cI went crazy.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n He\u2019d thought hypnotherapy was healing him. Instead, he believes now, it triggered amnesia. \u201cThe brain was like: \u2018Oh I\u2019m done with this stress. Tsssshhhh. Reset.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018Life is much better, but I feel very alien\u2019 \u2026 Eric Lampaert.<\/span> Photograph: David Levene\/The Guardian<\/p>\n After his neighbour took him to hospital, he escaped. When the authorities found him, he was \u201c5150\u2019d\u201d, or sectioned \u2013 \u201cstrapped to a stretcher and taken to a more secure location\u201d. He\u2019s not sure how long he spent there, but he remembers raising his hand during a circle discussion to say: \u201cPeople forget that we can grieve the death of ourselves.\u201d A fellow patient was suitably reassured, he says. \u201cI was in this hospital as the crazy guy, and I helped a fellow crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n Lampaert\u2019s experience of psychosis intensified with Covid-19. In 2018, before the amnesia, he\u2019d written a script he hoped to sell, about <\/strong>a global outbreak of disease. \u201cWhen the pandemic happened, I thought I wrote the pandemic. I mean, I really lost it,\u201d he says. \u201cThat changes a person. Because I thought I was to blame for millions of deaths.\u201d<\/p>\n People are \u201cconfused, scared, amazed\u201d when Lampaert tells them what he\u2019s been through. He tried Jungian therapy, an NHS course for people with PTSD, \u201cantidepressants and mood stabilisers\u201d. He read widely, and quotes from Shakespeare\u2019s Coriolanus and the philosopher Cornel West.<\/p>\n He kept auditioning for roles and, in 2023, landed the part of Crow (the body, not the voice) alongside Benedict Cumberbatch in The Thing With Feathers. \u201cAnd that paycheck finally got me a place by myself. I paid it upfront. A year in an apartment in Wembley,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n So how is he feeling now?<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a part of me that wants to forget and move on and be back to, you know, normal. Whatever that means. And then there\u2019s a part of me that\u2019s like: \u2018No. Don\u2019t you dare forget.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Insight into his own traumatic memories has given him a better understanding of himself \u2013 and of others. He\u2019s lived with his dad in Newmarket for the past 18 months, the first time since childhood. \u201cWe talk a lot more comfortably,\u201d he says. \u201cI understand us in a different way.\u201d He told his dad he felt abandoned. \u201cHe said: \u2018Well, yeah, you know, Nan left the house when I was seven.\u2019 And I didn\u2019t know that.\u201d He says he is on \u201cgreat terms\u201d with his mum.<\/p>\n As for the voices in his head: \u201cNow,\u201d Lampaert says, there is only, \u2018Shhh.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n White noise?<\/p>\n \u201cSilence. It\u2019s really quite nice.\u201d<\/p>\n I can\u2019t help wondering if life for Lampaert is better now, with his new, rearranged \u201crelationship with the universe\u201d, or whether it was better before the amnesia.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m lonely, and at the same time I feel connected to something much larger than myself. Technically, life is much better, but I feel very alien.\u201d<\/p>\n Relationships might be easier if he hadn\u2019t been through what he\u2019s been through, he says. \u201cI look at people in pubs laughing, and I\u2019m like: \u2018Oh, I don\u2019t have that.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n When he finally came back to himself, 18 months after the amnesia, he did it by making himself laugh. Reflecting on the pandemic, his perceived role in it and \u201cthe burden I was carrying\u201d, he whispered to himself:\u201cA death is sad. A dozen is a tragedy. But millions? Well, that\u2019s pretty impressive.\u201d<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t a joke for anyone else in the world. \u201cA ridiculous thing to say. And honestly, I hadn\u2019t laughed in such a long time.\u201d He laughed so hard, tears streamed down his face. \u201cAnd I held on to myself and I went: \u2018Oh, there you are.\u2019\u201d He puts his hand on his heart. \u201cWhat I am \u2013 the essence, maybe \u2013 is just laughter, good humour. When the pain becomes a joke,\u201d he says, \u201cit\u2019s soothing.\u201d<\/p>\n Eric Lampaert: Zero Minus One is at Just The Tonic at the Edinburgh festival fringe, 6-30 August. For tickets visit www.edfringe.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On the day his life changed, Eric Lampaert woke up and saw his hands. What amazed him was that they were moving in front of him, and he appeared to be the person in control of them. We\u2019re drinking coffee in the Groucho Club in London, and at this point he lets go of his<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51076,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[7511,24977,10812,141,4055,2004,37,24976,1235,5954,1031],"class_list":{"0":"post-51075","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-afraid","9":"tag-amnesia","10":"tag-comedian","11":"tag-dying","12":"tag-eric","13":"tag-happy","14":"tag-health","15":"tag-lampaert","16":"tag-lose","17":"tag-memories","18":"tag-mental"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51075\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/51076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}