When you think of Vincent Van Gogh you think of that troubled genius with fiery hair and pale eyes. The passionate artist that paints in wild strokes and who chopped off his ear in an act of despair, anger or pain, no one would ever know. The absinthe abuser who ended his life tragically that have long inspired you with his unique version you then discovered was due to several diseases that affected his beautiful mind. And you look at his art and you see the evolution of his work, you can see the alterations growing, you can feel his periods of mania and others of dark spleen, you could see him portraying himself getting slimmer, the edges of his face getting stronger and the spark in his eyes fading away. You would look at his paintings and think of beauty and how it is subjective. You would get overwhelmed about the beauty of the troubled minds; you would feel touched by the pain of the damned artists who throw their feelings on canvas and whom geniality is never truly recognized because people do not take the time to observe anymore. You would read Edgar Allan Poe’s Raven and feel every single word like if it were the emanation of your own soul; you would feel charmed by Charles Baudelaire tremendous poems, and every single one of them spoke to you deeply and charmingly. You do remember that day when you first opened the Flowers of Evil and never let it down, you read every single poem several times, sensing every single emotion the French poet felt, his rage, his joy, his lust towards oh so beautiful exotic women, his drunkenness and inspirations. The dark beauty of his romanticism has always moved you, and you could feel his sincere love to all the women who shared his life were they wanton or virtuous such as the beautiful Madame Sabatier he depicted in his magnificent poem entitled Reversibility. And that poem particularly amazed you, and you read it so many times you learned it by heart, and every single time you would reread it you would feel like it were the very first time. You adored the way he spoke about her, idolizing her like the angel she were to him, that angel full of light joy and beauty in contrast to his fearful painful soul, to his agonizing body plagued by ailments and fevers.
You would sit down and reflect about how you were grateful of the 19th century and the artists it brought to the lights. You knew you wouldn’t be the person you are today if you didn’t wipe the dust off of so many books and works of art, your writings wouldn’t be the same, your photographs wouldn’t have existed, your own paintings would probably have other subjects and your emotions would have certainly been tamed down. You silent poet who sees beauty in eyes circled with darkness, who depicts dying vegetation and reaches for trance. You youthful amateur, eager for passion, pursuing beauty and letting your emotions flow away from in between your restless fingers. Your life is paced by your mood swings and you would let it all change if you would hear a meaningful melody or you if you would see ecstasy in a stranger’s eyes. Sweet rhapsody you embody at the sight of ravishing manifestations of this mysterious universe. You feel foolish, others see you as childish, but nothing matters to you because you know that you were fulfilling your faith, you were born with eyes that would see beauty even in the enveloping dusk and you refuse to let yourself be blindfolded by rationality and society’s pointless expectations.
You would feel disappointed at the sight of the new artists, and their insatiable greed, you are deceived by how they are selling their souls, how they adapt their talents to the markets, according to your opinion they didn’t represent the true meaning of art. An artist shouldn’t set obligation to him or herself in order to mass produce, but rather they should follow their inspirations, they should work only when they feel the need to, you believe that masterpieces aren’t thought and controlled: they are created by the universe itself through the body of inspired human beings. You saw that the most troubled minds were capable of the most beautiful creations because they let their demons guide them instead of calculating every single one of their motions and thoughts. Art is reckless, art is wild and artists should reflect that indomitability. An artist should be true. You have long since tried to follow that vision, you only wrote when the words pounded in your head restlessly until you felt the urge to release them, and you only painted when your emotions rose knotting in your throat begging for enfranchisement. You wrote never ending songs with your fingers dipped in pigments, songs that transported you and let you see who you truly were, you would go back and observe what you created years ago and see that you have never changed, that you are still that fragile dreamer, who sketched and composed, who closed her eyes and let herself grow unchained from any constraint.
Are you an artist? Are you a wanderer in the quest of beauty? You would never know, you would never tell as you hated labels. You only want to feel alive, existent and useful, you want to touch and feel everything and you need to overcome the material world to truly discover yourself. Are you an old soul? Who have you been in your past lives? You see your reflection in wrinkled wise faces as you also do in the translucent skin of an ingenuous infant. You dive in trance, you find your ease in delirium, you let your soul flock and you smile because there is so much more you just effloresce and never embrace. You try to live your life fully, you don’t have any times for regrets, and you breathe in loudly, holding the whole world inside your lungs, but as Vincent Van Gogh muttered as he was departing this stage of existence: “The sadness will always remain.”