The singer suffered no physical damage from the fire, in which fourteen people died. But mentally, yes. It took Al a while before he dared to acknowledge that.
Keizer: “I used to even think it was cool: look how well I can deal with all that suffering.” The Volendammer calls his childhood troubled, mainly due to two events: “The death of my father when I was fifteen, but also the New Year’s fire when I was sixteen.”
Therapeutic book
A few months ago, Keizer sat down and wrote about what he saw during the fire. It turned out to be a therapeutic activity. “Then I thought: oh, if I tell that, I also have to tell this. And if I tell this, I have to elaborate on it.” Once the fence was down, he could no longer be stopped: “And that turned into my life story.”
According to the singer, the audio book ‘What courage it takes’, which will be released on December 30, is also the result of ‘a search for myself, as they say.’ He says it a bit carried away, but also as if he has suddenly taken a bite of soap. “But yet it is so.”
‘Happiest version of myself’
For example, he immediately describes in the prologue how a few years ago he looked at his wife and little daughter, who were playing and laughing at each other. He realizes: ‘I never feel this happy’. A full ziggodome didn’t do much for him either. “I didn’t feel what I should feel in terms of excitement and joy.”
He decides to face his demons in 2023 during ‘an intensive retreat’ in Costa Rica: “There I discovered that those traumas had caused me to close off my feelings.” There, old hidden memories of the New Year’s fire catch up with Keizer.
He reads from his book: “Diagonally in front of me, Alina was sitting cross-legged on the bar meditating, no doubt lost in thought. Little did she know that that was exactly the position in which bartender René, half burned and in shock, kept shouting that as captain he would not leave his ship.”
The singer says he is now doing a lot better, who ‘might now be feeling too much’: “I especially want to emphasize that it has become a positive book.” He advises everyone to ‘face their traumas’. “That is a process that takes years, but it is a beautiful process. You are now looking at the happiest version of me at 41 years old.”