It started with a desire for fabric to fall, and for it to give me yellow silhouettes. It was sparked by ideas of creation and procreation. This set piece had to contain the time I thought maybe I met Vincent, that maybe he was with me. That moment of perfect union of course changed everything – in my play, a new character was created. She was born, she was my imagination, and she parted with known facts and I knew that. But she allowed me to imagine his smile.

Now staging this (pro)creation is tricky. In my head it necessitated a yellow tent that would allow me to cast silhouettes, that would then transform into a canopy that revealed the true action – that I was not kissing Vincent at all, it was my imaginary him.

I wanted silhouettes from inside a tent-like structure, then the fabric was to be raised into a canopy position. Inside the tent had to be enough room to dance. That my original plans looked at all like a flower truly did not dawn on me. All I knew was that I wanted the space itself to blossom into impressionism and color as Vincent did about half-way through his career. From colorless to colorful.

I also wanted christmas lights as stars towards the end of the play. What ended up occurring (design and construction developed by myself as well as Shannon O’Neil, Timothy Caldwell & Amy Buckler) was something truly marvelous that is now a piece of art in my apartment.

The center circle of midnight blue speckled with christmas lights is six feet in diameter, with four long yellow chiffon petals at about ten feet. For most of the play, the lights were not on, and a yellow sunflower layer with smaller petals covered the night stars from view.

For months my boyfriend and I have been plotting how we can pack it up, but we’ve never desired to pack it up, and now when we finally move out of the space in three weeks, we are going to bring the sunflower to hang it up in our new apartment. It is simply too beautiful and awesome to put in storage.

Photography by Timothy Caldwell

I never dreamt that I would be left with such an incredible art piece to live with forever, that I might always be able to see stars in my apartment, no matter the weather. In my apartment we often shout — let’s turn on the stars! It’s awfully fun to say.

I realize now that it is the gift that Vincent gave back to me. I gave him a play, my heart, and my life for a few years… and he gave me stars forever.

Photography by Timothy Caldwell

August 25th, 2009
Hotel, first night in Arles
9:45am

I had a dream where I time traveled. However, this was no run of the mill time travel. I used no power other than my own force, my will power. I sat in a room and said to myself, I will go back thirty years to before I was born – 1979 – and I had some things to tell my parents. It was my first attempt, a first test. The room began to swirl, my heart pounded, I fell to the ground. I felt myself continuing to fall and fall, down through a series of spirals, then climbing up to a plateau. All this time I never physically left the room, my oldest friend sat there and watched me. It was as though the room had turned into a falling elevator – but she felt nothing.

Once I had recovered, was on said “plateau,” I began to write. I said nothing to my friend, but scribbled notes nonstop. She asked me if I was okay, I nodded gruffly. My head was somewhere between the past and present, what I wrote could affect the past. I took notes on truths I discovered, about what my parents did or thought. My words created the past, changed the past, knew the past like I never could…

Perhaps someone else out there knows what I mean when I say that writing is time travel – particularly nonfiction. I feel that I have always tried to bring my reader into my skin with my work, but with the subject of Vincent van Gogh, well… If his paintings transport me, then my writing must transport you too, Reader. If his licks of paint touch me through the threshold of his paintings, I must bring your cheek within his reach. The more I write about him, the more I have come to understand his spirit. It is not the details of his life so much that interest me, nor the details of his paintings, nor of his fame. I gather all those pieces, and bend them into mirrors. I use them to reflect his light from around the sphere.

For look: people used to think that the earth is flat. That was true, and still is today, of, say Paris to Asnieres.
But that does not alter the fact that science demonstrates that the earth as a whole is round, something nobody nowadays disputes.
For all that, people still persist in thinking that life is flat and runs from birth to death.
But life too, is probably round, and much greater in scope and possibilities than the hemisphere we now know.
- Vincent van Gogh, June 1888

The sentence I usually use to describe Vincent’s Yellow is that it’s about Vincent van Gogh, and the relationship I feel I have with him. I was recently asked if I feel that relationship existed when he was alive too.

Here’s the funny thing about coincidences: as they increase in quantity, they transform. A few years ago, I would have been wildly skeptical of most of the things I now say with ease, but Vincent, and Yellow, have stretched me. I have not seen his ghost, but I have felt his heat. I have had coincidences build up beyond reason. I don’t have a name for what’s going on, but I assure you, it exists. In reaching towards Vincent, I reached towards Nature, towards the Sun and the stars, towards the past, towards something greater and higher. Something has reached back and holds on to me, and has made my path very clear. I have continued and will continue with this project, because I don’t see any other choice for me.

So my answer as to whether this relationship existed while Vincent was alive is simple. Knowing this connection exists, means I know it existed before me. If it existed before me, it certainly existed before him. Honestly, I think it is beyond time. I’m not sure where he is exactly, except that I feel him near.

But to look at the stars always make me dream, as simple as I dream over the black dots of a map representing towns and villages. Why, I ask myself, should the shining dots of the sky not be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France? If we take the train to get to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to reach a star.
-Vincent, July 1888

But I must continue on the path I have taken now; if I do nothing, if I don’t study, if I stop searching, then I am lost, in misery. That is how I see things, persevere, persevere, that is what I must do. But what is you final goal, you may ask. That goal is becoming more clear, it will take shape slowly but surely, as the scribble becomes a sketch becomes a painting. As one works more seriously, and embroiders on the initially vague idea, the thought at first volatile and transient – until it takes on a concrete form.

Vincent van Gogh, July 1880

I opened a book this morning at the beautiful Deering Library at Northwestern University, and these were the first words I read. I thought it was quite fitting, given that today, as another playwright put it, the great work begins! By that, I mean I have begun a focused writing regimen of going to the library every morning (since I work in the afternoons), which includes voluntarily getting up at 7am. Not something I generally embrace.

Why do this to myself? Well, I have a self-imposed deadline to finish the first draft of the play, Vincent’s Yellow, by the end of the month. It’s necessary given the decision that the play will happen this summer. I spent all last weekend typing up all the various scenes I had tucked away in different journals, and all the ideas that I have been conjouring up for almost four years now. Yes, I remember it was April 2006 when I first stood in the Musee d’Orsay and my heart began to pound wildly. It still strikes me that that day I wrote in my journal that I had fallen in love with Van Gogh… Though really it was Vincent.

You see, for quite some time, as I read Vincent’s letters, it seemed there were two people existing: this idea of the man “Van Gogh”, and then the man who wrote these exquisite letters. Then I read his letter from 25 March 1888:

But — although this time it makes no difference at all — in the future my name must be put in the catalogue the way I sign it on the canvases, i.e. Vincent and not Vangogh, for the excellent reason that people here wouldn’t be able to pronounce that name.

A perfect metaphor for the misunderstanding of his character. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that he signed all his paintings Vincent, signs his letters Vincent, and yet we keep calling the guy Van Go — not even pronouncing it correctly (as was his very fear). Since then, I started calling him Vincent exclusively — except when people might not understand who I was talking about.

So, it was Vincent who took the blinders off my eyes, showing me color and Beauty. If it weren’t for him I never could have taken this video, of the sun emerging from behind the clouds on my last day in Amsterdam, and revealing one tree’s true colors.

The difference between dark and light often reminds me of the difference between a lot of art, and Vincent’s…

So one last thing before I go, Reader, I wanted to ask you: what would you like me to write about? My travels throughout Europe have, since I started this website, dominated the discussion. I’d really like a bit more dialogue between us, ideally, and fewer monologues.

Do you have any questions? Do you want to hear more about my writing? My research? I can easily continue on, giving you fun and (hopefully) meaningful tidbits as I go, but I would love to hear from you.

Please, let me know. It gets a little lonesome on this side of the screen sometimes… :)