"How lovely yellow is!"

Last night i watched a docudrama about Vincent Van Gogh. Van Gogh is not pronounced "van goe" like i had been told, or had been assuming, all of this time. It is pronounced "van gogh", and if you do not know how to pronunciate the gh's, then it is maybe a very quick choking sound.

When i was young, i liked to draw, and sometimes i was good at it. In the sixth grade, we had a contest for drawing Warren Towne, who was the oldest man in our community. He also used to be a well-regarded local school system superintendent, and our elementary school had been named after him. My portrait was weird, because i was not too hot at drawing people and faces, but i guess it was intriguingly weird enough to win the contest, and the art teacher said it reminded her a little of van goe, whoever the fuck that was.

And in the web of interconnected coincidences, the prize of the contest was a large boombox, and within a few months i had mowed enough lawns and pulled enough weeds and fed enough ducks to own The Joshua Tree, The White Album, The Beatles '62 to '66 and The Beatles '67 to '70. All on cassette. There would be a lot more to come.

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Eleven years later (everything in elevens!) i would buy a print of "Wheat Field with Crows", not because i was a connoisseur, but just because i liked how it looked, and it seemed gloomy, and i was drawn to gloomy things. Last night i found out that it was Vincent's third-to-last painting before shooting himself in the chest, and that it was meant to be gloomy, and foreboding, and to make you want to shoot yourself in the chest.

Here is Wheat Field with Crows. Mine is still packed in a box. I framed mine in "Oxford Black", which was the classiest black frame we had at Prints Plus, in my opinion. I used to frame pictures for hours and hours, when i worked there. It was a job which allowed me to meditate on my chakra while keeping busy, which was great. I should write about it sometime, the angled circular saw, the frame joining machine, the glue sprayer, the cutting of plexiglass and foamboard, and the pneumatic stapler. I would write about it all now, but that would be off topic, and i am trying to be better at avoiding that unless it feels right.



I am still not a connoisseur, but i really like Van Gogh, because by default i am attracted to completely overlooked artists who self-destruct, or intensely looked-after artists who self-destruct (KCobain), or artists with a respectable amount of recognition who self-destruct (Ian Curtis), and i guess that covers all levels of exposure when paired with self-destruction.

Also, i really like when he paints things in the sky, especially stars, which have Huge, Blurry Halos.



Van Gogh does the best stars. Even if he did not do them that often.

I guess that some people think that Van Gogh had very swollen retinas, because he drank absinthe a lot and had plenty of lead (from paint) surging through his bloodstreams. And his swollen retinas made everything nice and blurry, especially at night. This effect is to vision, what Loveless by My Bloody Valentine is to the aural spectrum.

And, probably due to the xanthopsia, which was maybe brought on by the epilepsy medication, yellow was the most intense colour. All other hues bowed to yellow. And so maybe it was that blue was a pleasant yellow, green was also a good yellow, red was the least good yellow, brown was a very respectable yellow, orange was a gorgeous yellow, and yellow was just fucking brilliant.

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Anyway, the docudrama was really well done. It was just a lot of footage of Euro-country, as may have been seen through Vincent's eyes, and then zooms onto the finished and unfinished works. And it was John Hurt reciting Vincent's letters to Theo, and there was no dialogue but what was written to Theo, and John Hurt can read like he is channeling spirits, like he is the official Vincent Van Gogh séance medium, and it is very affecting. And it is up to the viewer to read between the lines in the aftermath of the angry left ear removal, and in the prelude to the gunshot. I like when films make you read between the lines.

Another one of Van Gogh's specialties are sunflowers, which are very yellow. There used to be acres filled with sunflowers on the south side of Maple Ridge Road when i was young, and they seemed gargantuan because i was only three feet tall, but then they did not grow them anymore, and they built stores that no one patronizes, and now i do not remember the last time i saw a sunflower.


"You may know that the peony is Jeannin's, the hollyhock belongs to Quost, but the sunflower is mine, in a way." - Vincent van Gogh (to Theo), Letter 573, 22 or 23 January 1889.