I have felt many things over the past few weeks, and it’s made it difficult to clear my head enough to speak clearly here. I regret if my straying has made your curiosity wane (almost a rhyme there), it was not intentional. The other problem has been that my mother and I were commissioned to write a new project – a musical telling the history of flamenco – and not only was I not ready to start a new project, I never finished digesting the end of this one.

photography by Shannon O'Neil

To do Vincent’s Yellow, to offer up such intimate, deep matters for the eyes of all, one must create a wound. After exposing myself like this over and over, my desire is usually to heal, to curl up and – in brief – not to be on display anymore. For the sake of posting on this website, that side effect of performance was not helpful.

I also was distracted by the attention: negative attention that made me question the quality of my work (and my self-image as artist), positive attention that encouraged an encore – to tour, to restage, to re-do. But after much thought, I see I am not ready for this. In fact, I don’t truly *desire* to perform Vincent’s Yellow in the near future. I have been encouraged by many to do so, I have been offered opportunities that make me feel like a fool for rejecting. But my spirit calls – like a distant siren – for my book. I have the building blocks for it strewn all around me. It was always my plan to mount the play, then write the book.

I know I will perform Vincent’s Yellow again. And it will be even better then, more complete after my full journey.

photography by Shannon O'Neil

The truth is, I was always closest to him on the page…

Vincent has not left my side. He encourages me onward, reminds me to listen to my heart, he remains my mentor. He continues to whisper great wisdom all the time through the quotes from his letters I continue to post on facebook and twitter, whenever I can remember… On my desk now, in front of my keyboard lays a note card with words of his I am considering painting large, on my wall:

The weathercocks don’t make the wind east or north, any more than opinions make the truth true.

–Vincent 4 January 1884

I know, deep down, my show was more ritual than story. It showed, to a degree, what all this has been for me, but not all that will be in the book. The book will be more. The book will be travelogue, scrapbook, journal, letter… The book will be all.

I want you to know, Reader, that I have already chosen how I will mark the moment when I am finally done creating at the feet of Vincent van Gogh. I will get a tattoo of his work, a drawing of his cypresses (the painting that I have undoubtedly spent the most time staring at, sighing in front of).

thanks to vangoghletters.org

The tree will begin at my right heel, and swirl up the back of my calf. His signature will be put, simply, along the outside edge of my foot. It will be him with me always, it will be tying my bones to nature (the nature he taught me to recognize that I’ve always seen), and it will make me a tree walking. I do this for him, for me, and because my plan is to grow ever higher, to reach my roots down ever deeper, and to blossom for decades.

That is what Vincent taught me to do.

I thank you deeply for reading, and I promise there’s more to come very soon.

[production photos from Vincent's Yellow, as seen above, are available for viewing in the new Production Photos gallery!]

~

Van Gogh’s Popcorn (aka social riffing on VG — a new section!)

Elizabeth Taylor gets to keep her Van Gogh painting despite a controversy over its Nazi confiscation

thanks to dailymail.co.uk

A Starry Night Themed Wedding (an idea brought to my attention by Michelle‘s comment on the last post, thank you!)

thanks to junebugweddings.com

A Starry Night Hall

thanks to http://community.apartmenttherapy.com

In case you wonder why I care about these things, I see them as proof of the reach of Vincent’s influence. I know he would be confused and astonished by them… These events and images remind me of the power one artist can have, if she or he works honestly and beautifully enough.

I.
Smooth silky serpentine
Swirl of the tongue
Of the brush
Around and over under
Just up over the back of my ear
Wet
Salacious
Voluminous
Tickling me with
Color-saturation

Vibrant forceful virile
Thing
Like the crest of a wave
Overtaking you
Turning you over and around
In its insides
Like a lick of fire
Singeing the hairs on your neck
Yet you are inside the wet
Inside the insides
Like pins pricking
and daggers dragging
spilling your blood into the
mixture until
you are both
Inside Outside
Consumed Consuming
and we are dancing
swimming
rolling
fucking
eating each other alive

II.
You roll me around in your mouth
like nothing
like tumbleweed on rolling hills
and I fall deep into your chasms
and I bounce
Flying -
Fiercely -
Over your peaks

with long, wet, heavy seaweed arms
you wrap around me
and pull me over under into
your water dreams
the surface of which
impacts me with a bruising
strength
A slap in the
face
in the body

I’d go tumbling backwards
but your tendrils
yank me through
as though fastened to my
skeleton directly

There is no escape
From you
As you apply me to your canvas
Like paste
And string me through
Your fingers
I am your liquid color

And you will shape me use me
At your will
You layer me on thick
Or let me just barely drift on
Stretching
Till there is nothing left but a drop
A trace left
And then I am gone

You fill me
You buoy me
And then unravel me
into
nothing more
than
a sigh

I wrote the above poem just over two years ago, in reaction to these paintings. It was the first time Vincent elicited poetry from me, and it would not be the last. In fact, it is my favorite way to respond to him. Or as I once put it, I write back to him.

What some people do not know about Vincent, and something I surely did not know, was that he was a voracious reader. In one letter from June of 1880 he compares writing and painting, as he saw them as linked, and perhaps two of the highest art forms.

But you see, there are several things that are to be believed and to be loved; there’s something of Rembrandt in Shakespeare and something of Correggio or Sarto in Michelet, and something of Delacroix in V. Hugo, and in Beecher Stowe there’s something of Ary Scheffer. And in Bunyan there’s something of M. Maris or of Millet, a reality more real than reality, so to speak, but you have to know how to read him; then there are extraordinary things in him, and he knows how to say inexpressible things; and then there’s something of Rembrandt in the Gospels or of the Gospels in Rembrandt, as you wish, it comes to more or less the same, provided that one understands it rightly, without trying to twist it in the wrong direction, and if one bears in mind the equivalents of the comparisons, which make no claim to diminish the merits of the original figures.

If now you can forgive a man for going more deeply into paintings, admit also that the love of books is as holy as that of Rembrandt, and I even think that the two complement each other. [full letter]

The first time I really saw Vincent nearly four years ago in the Musée d’Orsay, my instinctive reaction was that we saw the world similarly, and that… as ballsy as it may sound, I write like he paints. I think what I really saw was that we had similar spirits and similar goals with our work. A passionate, spiritual non-fiction, if you will. For Vincent insisted on always painting from life, in fact on occasion he destroyed paintings that he had not painted from life because of that very fact. Except for the short period of time where Gauguin convinced him to do otherwise, Vincent was a man of the actual, the real, but also about reaching something higher… I have always felt the same about my poetry and my prose. And so, in this project, I try to reflect Vincent. I try to exchange paint for words.

I hope you enjoyed the poem, Reader. Now, I return back to my sisyphean task (as least that’s how it often feels) of composing a first draft of my play by the end of the month. I think I can in fact do it, but it will take an enormous amount of effort this week.

So, I speak to myself and to all my fellow artists out there now when I say… onwards!

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… :)