Dying Alone Together Again Without You
After Van Gogh cut off his ear he sold his headphones in order to buy more oil paint in tubes. Prior to 1841 oil paint came in pig bladders. Or glass syringes.
After Van Gogh cut off his ear two years prior to shooting himself in the chest with a 7mm revolver from which he died 30 hours later, he painted The Starry Night. Perhaps you know the painting? But did you know the window from which he looked upon the moon and stars hung heavens high was framed in a lunatic asylum?
(Singing… When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie… when the stars make you drool just like a pasta fazool…)
After Van Gogh cut off his ear and sold his headphones in order to buy more paint he just wasn’t the same. Neither was his ear, although it eventually achieved a small measure of stardom in a film directed by David Lynch.
“I wish they would only take me as I am,” said Van Gogh.
“ This whole world is wild at heart and weird on top,” said David Lynch.
“I can’t hear you,” said the ear.
The townspeople called him the redheaded madman. The police closed his house, forcing his eventual return to the asylum. It is from that very window that The Starry Night was born.
Van Gogh thumbs the internet like a twisted TV Guide, searching for the salvation he believes hiding in the laptop’s blue light.
If only I had me a TV, he mutters. I’d swim in its love light. I’d buy some new headphones. I’d… I’d…
Just before he died, Van Gogh whispered to Theo, his brother, “The sadness will last forever.”
He was wrong. About the sadness.
If only they had tossed their headphones.
If only they had listened.
If only.
