When I was a little girl, I learned about Vincent Van Gogh and his art, letters, and biography were etched into my heart. Maybe I was always a little bit over-empathetic, but I just felt so sad that he felt so alone and so unloved. And he made beautiful, captivating pictures I loved (and still love). When I figured out that the Don McLean song was about my beloved Vincent, it was one of the first cassette tapes I bought with my own money when I was about eleven.
I grew up and was still drawn to gentle geniuses. Or troubled geniuses, as I called them in a recent journal. I was terribly attracted to intelligence and talent, which was often accompanied by the drama of chemical imbalances. Almost all of the boys I loved before Rich (and many girl friends) fall into this category. One of them, my dear friend Kevin, even took his life after a long, long struggle and after making a long, long string of beautiful things like music, drawings, poetry, prose, and lots of good friends who could never reach his heart.
I am sure this has been studied and there is some medical explanation, but I can't wait to talk to God and figure out how that fits into the Big Picture. Like, why?--is it just a matter of fairness? If you're going to be excellent at this and this, you will also get this "Achilles' heel" of depression (or what ever). Or you're blessed with accute sensitivity, which will allow you to create amazing things, but will also allow you to be irreversibly stung by the meanness of The World. Is that how it all went down? I'm just curious.
Anyway, I enjoyed the movie (and I loved the extra clip of David Johansen singing "Come, Come Ye Saints," probably the most beloved Mormon hymn ever. Classic). And I liked being reminded of all the gentle geniuses that have graced my life, and remembering Kevin for a moment.
Now I understand
What you tried to say to me
How you suffered for your sanity
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.
-Don McLean (full lyrics here)
5 comments:
Jamie, I've always loved that song, too. I have a friend afflicted with the same sort of genius/illness. She calls it Artist Syndrome.
I think about Kevin a lot. I still have that silly picture of the three of us that was taken in one of those booths at the mall in Provo.
Just a note, the hymn is "A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief".
And I love this post!
Your point about the troubled geniuses is...well...genius! I think of Mozart and John Nash from "A Beautiful Mind" and the rest, and the way I see it, they aren't/weren't bound by societal conventions for some reason, and I think that's what makes them so great, but at the same time that's what makes them so distant from the rest of us, you know?
Brent, on my DVD, there is a bonus feature with David aka Buster singing "Come, Come Ye Saints with an acoustic guitarist. It pretty much rocks.
You mention a few more toubled geniuses here--great examples (I LOOOOVED "A Beautiful Mind"--it broke my heart, too). The pattern is so regular, I am really curious if God actually created their brains differently, or if it's nurture rather than nature or nurture/ experience altering nature...things that make me go "hmmm."
Rob and I watched a documentary about Henry Darger this weekend while we were opening 5000 envelopes. It's called "In the Realms of the Unreal." Don't know if you'd like it, but I found it mostly fascinating. I've wondered a lot of these same things about the creativity/illness connection. I think I fall on that whacked out spectrum myself, though surely I'm not at the Van Gogh end.
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