Vincent VanGogh suffered his entire life, because he was too passionate. He had an insatiable fire burning inside and it constantly asked for more, no matter what he did, and he had no choice but to heed to the fire's capricious will. It consumed him throughout all of his life, until he gave in and shot himself in the chest with a revolver. His last words were: "The sadness will last forever."
He was thirteen in this picture
His tortuous way of painting is so consonant with his whole life and him physically, you can see in his face how stubborn, troubled and difficult he must have been, even from the uncomplicated and tender age of thirteen.
I guess it can be seen as depressive and sad, and it sure is, but it's also really beautiful how DEVOTED he was in every sense. And, yeah, his painting was tortuous, but it's also an incredibly colorful and granulated way of seeing the world, where it seems like everything is constantly moving and changing.
I also think it's very respectable and admirable that he could paint like that and he could also make more polished and finished works and the AMOUNT of works he produced, that tells me that he had actual skill and wasn't just dicking around with painting.
Don Mclean's song was banned in Canada when it'd first come out, because they thought it was a song about homosexuals or something related. Now, I don't know shit about poetry, but I feel like the lyrics of this song are incredibly poetic:
Starry starry night
Paint your pallet blue and grey
Look out on a summer's day
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul
Shadows on the hills
Sketch the trees daffodils
Catch the breeze and the winter chills
In colors on the snowy linen land
Now I understand
What you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free
They would not listen, they did not know how
Perhaps they'll listen now
Starry Starry night
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze
Swirling clouds in violet haze
Reflecting Vincent's eyes of China blue
Colors changing you
Morning fields of amber grey
Weathered faces lined in pain
Are soothed beneath the artist's loving hand
Now I understand
What you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free
They would not listen, they did not know how
Perhaps they'll listen now
For they could not love you
But still your love was true
And when no hope was left inside that starry starry night
You took your life as lovers often do
But I could've told you, Vincent
This world was never meant for one as beautiful as you
Starry starry night
Portraits hung in empty holes
Frameless heads on nameless walls
With eyes that watch the world and can't forget
Like the strangers that you've met
The ragged men, in ragged clothes
The silver thorn of bloody rose
Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow
Now I think I know
What you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
And how you tried to set them free
They would not listen
They're not listening still
Perhaps they never will
Maybe I shouldn't have bothered writing anything, before the lyrics, because they say everything. And maybe all of us future people, in comparison to him, are full of shit and are just idealizing him and he was just a prima donna and an asshole; because we tend to do that. Same as the Scandinavians glorify the Vikings, when they were dicks and the Japanese glorify the Samurais, when they were assholes, too. And maybe I'm entirely biased by that song, that makes his suffering and decadence so beautiful, I don't know.
Regardless, I can only wish for a small fraction of that passion and drive that he had and hope that it will consume me until there is nothing but ash.
