I was at an old family friend’s house for dinner the other day. The table was filled with delicious platters of the food that I grew up eating – fried turnip cakes, dumplings, mapo tofu … all sitting on the reputable table of a most beloved Chinese auntie. During dinner, the father of this family (I call him ‘Su-Su,’ which means uncle in Chinese) was recalling an old song that he used to love. As he started to hum the tune, the lyrics started to churn in all of our minds.
“… But I could have told you Vincent, this world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.”
It’s one of my favorite songs. I used to listen to it all the time on long drives through the wooded countryside. It’s a song by Don Mclean, titled Vincent, and a tribute to the brilliant post impressionist painter, Vincent Van Gogh. I don’t know why these lyrics moved me so profoundly this time, but they did.
During his time, Van Gogh was thought of as an erratic and uneducated artist. People thought he painted the way that he did because he was crazy and incapable. Maybe he had a little too much absinthe too. But now, from his paintings and writings, we see him as an artistic genius. His paintings exude a rough beauty and an unutterable honesty. He felt compelled to go on seeing, drawing, and painting the way he did even when no one could see the value of it. Van Gogh saw things differently; he saw beauty and purpose in capturing the world the way he did.
In a letter to his brother Theo, he wrote:
How good is it to walk along an empty beach and look at the gray-green sea with its long, white streaks of waves when you are feeling depressed. But if you have a need for something great, something infinite, something in which you can see God, you don’t have to look far: I think I have been something deeper, more infinite, more eternal than an ocean expressed in the eyes of an infant when it wakes up in the morning and crows with pleasure, or laughs because it can see the sun shine in its cradle. It there is a rayon d’en haut, a “ray from heaven,” perhaps it can be found there.
He had beautiful eyes, beautiful sight, and a beautiful mind.
Sometimes I feel that I see it too. It’s when a certain kind of light shines for which I have no language to describe – the trees and the fields reflect a certain luminous color and it looks as if the lights from heaven are illuminating these grounds below. For that moment, I’m lost in it. I want to get closer to it, I want to peel all the layers off of it and then patch them back together. So I pull out my paints and I paint it and try to remember it as the light quickly changes. I rearticulate that moment over and over again, so that I can really see it. By the time I'm done the moment already is a memory mixed with imagination.
We are all given a different pair of eyes. Many of the things we pay attention to and notice, no one else does. We want to rearticulate, interpret, and collect what we see to feel that connection and reciprocity. I wouldn’t call myself an artistic genius by any means, but I’ve been given a beautiful way of seeing. We all have, really. I want to treasure it and allow myself to see the way I was created to see. I want to honor the way others see, so that perhaps the people like Van Gogh can find a home on this earth.
Starry starry night, paint your palette 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 and the 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
How you suffered for you 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 reflect in Vincent's eyes of china blue
Colors changing hue, morning fields of amber grain
Weathered faces lined in pain are soothed beneath the artist's loving hand
Chorus:
For they could not love you, but still your love was true
And when no hope was left in sight, on that starry starry night
You took your life as lovers often do,
But I could have told you, Vincent,
This world was never meant for one as beautiful as you
Starry, starry night, portraits hung in empty halls
Frameless heads on nameless walls with eyes that watch the world and can't forget.
Like the stranger that you've met, the ragged man 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
How you suffered for you sanity How you tried to set them free
They would not listen they're not listening still
Perhaps they never will.
Vincent by Don Mclean