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I've been working on--okay, obsessing over--a very difficult jigsaw puzzle this past week. Or two. Or maybe more.
It's crafted from a print of Vincent Van Gogh's "Starry Night Over the Rhone," the first of the artist's "Starry Night" Series. Typical of Van Gogh, a Post-Impressionist, the dozen bold colors and broad kinetic strokes of "Starry Night..." convey emotion and energy.
It's captivating.
Interpreted as a jigsaw puzzle, it's very difficult to discern the numerous hues of blue and to distinguish the river from the sky and the sources of light from their reflections.
It's maddening.
And, as it turns out, captivating and maddening are two words that capture the life and work of Vincent Van Gogh, whose troubled days were cut short by a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the age of thirty-seven. Composer Don McLean eulogized the tortured genius in the 1988 song, "Vincent"--beautifully interjecting allusions to Van Gogh's paintings throughout the lyrics:
Starry, starry night
Paint your palette blue and gray
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
And how you suffered for your sanity
And 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
Now I understand 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 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
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 strangers that you've met
The ragged men in ragged clothes
A silver thorn, a 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
McLean--writing a century after Van Gogh's passing, reflecting on his own personal and creative struggles--empathized with the painter's lifelong effort to be heard and understood and loved: "Look out on a summer's day with eyes that know the darkness in my soul."
The creative life is highly romanticized. Journals and sketchbooks; pencils and brushes; coffeehouses and seashores. But, creativity is so much more than the carefree ability to create pretty things. Most creatives are driven by a vision, an imagination, a message, that is beyond their ability to convey. Consequently, many creatives spend their "uninspired" time either striving or sulking.
Mightn't it be that creatives, more than most, bear witness to the tension between their divine origins and their human nature--a boundless imagination frustrated by unimaginable boundaries?
But enough already. I've got to get back to this puzzle. I'd give my right ear to gather all of these disparate pieces into something beautiful.
How have you--if indeed you have--learned to be at peace with the tension between your divine origins and your human nature--reconciling your boundless imagination with your unimaginable boundaries?
Where's the "be-better" place? Where will you find it? Who can help you?
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