Starstruck

Ever since our honeymoon, Monty and I have had a tradition of wishing on stars.  If we’re outside when night falls, we look up and take turns wishing:
Star light, star bright
First star I see tonight
I wish I may, I wish I might
Have this wish I wish tonight.

Monty likes to point out constellations, tell me the difference between stars and planets, and correct me if I wish on a satellite instead of a star.  Those details don’t matter much to me; I really only care about the beauty of the night sky.  So when Monty finishes his astronomy lesson, he has to listen to me wax poetic about the moon and stars.  My favorite nights are what I call “Van Gogh nights”—nights where, like in Vincent van Gogh’s painting, “The Starry Night,” the stars are so clear and vibrant that I feel like I can reach out and touch them.

Tonight was a Van Gogh night, which was fitting because I’ve had Van Gogh on my mind all week.  A few nights ago, I watched an incredible movie about him called “Loving Vincent.”  It reminded me of how much I’ve always loved Vincent’s work.  It also reminded me of the tragedy of his life.  He was born in Holland in 1853.  He spent his early adult years trying and failing at every job he had—from art dealer to preacher.  His brother Theo understood Vincent’s need to paint, so when Vincent continued to be unable to keep a job, Theo supported him.  Theo’s financial support enabled Vincent to dedicate all of his time to painting: in the last decade of his life, Vincent created over two thousand paintings.  Vincent suffered from mental illness and psychotic episodes—one resulting in him cutting off his ear.  To cope with his mental struggles, Vincent drank heavily and painted so compulsively that he almost never slept.  He sought help at psychiatric asylums, but reverted to his self-destructive habits as soon as he was released.  Mocked as a madman and a failure because he sold only one painting during his lifetime, Vincent shot himself and died at the age of 37.

Vincent’s life was the epitome of the cliché of the tortured artist—a cliché which intrigued me when I learned about it in college.  In my literature classes, I learned about the personal lives of writers I’d always admired, and I saw the tortured artist cliché again and again.  One writer after another suffered from mental illness.  Depression.  Mania.  The belief that without success in their craft, they had nothing, which invariably led to hopelessness.  To cope, most self-medicated with alcohol and drugs, leading to overdoses, suicides, or such damage to their bodies that they couldn’t survive even minor illnesses.  I couldn’t help but keep a mental tally of them: F. Scott Fitzgerald.  Ernest Hemingway.  Sylvia Plath.  Jack Kerouac.  Virginia Woolf.  Anne Sexton.  Louis MacNeice, my literary idol, died of pneumonia at age 56—an illness most would have survived.  MacNeice, however, was an alcoholic who, at the time of his death, was subsisting almost solely on whiskey, which so compromised his system that he was too weak to fight off the infection.

Instead of seeing these writers’ lives as cautionary tales, I saw them as a mirror of my own life.  I didn’t see myself as a writer who was anywhere near their caliber, but I identified with their struggles: like them, I had never fit in with my peers; I, too, knew the pain of being labelled as abnormal and being made fun of because of it.  Also like them, I struggled with depression, alcoholism, and drug abuse.  It wasn’t until I began to experience the torture of the tortured artist cliché that I stopped believing that there was something almost glamorous about it.  When you’re spending your days trying to remember what you did the night before, wondering what the bruises on your body are from, you begin to realize that this might be a group you don’t want to fit in with—especially when you start feeling like your own tragic ending is inevitable.

In recovery, I let go of the tortured artist persona and started working on simply being an artist and writer.  I made a new list of the writers and artists I admired who hadn’t died tragically and instead had lived long, productive lives:  Mark Twain.  Claude Monet.  Stanley Kunitz.  John Updike.  Seamus Heaney.  W. B. Yeats.  Maya Angelou.  I discovered that there were far more on that list than on the tortured artist list.  Yet many of those who lived long, productive lives also suffered from mental illness, the pain of never fitting in, and the constant fear of failure.  So what was different?  They used their craft as an outlet for their emotional and mental struggles.  And they found ways to cope—even when every day was a struggle to stay sane and rise above the desire to end the pain.

I’ve learned lessons from all of these artists and writers.  Some taught me about the dangers of self-medicating to cope with pain.  Others taught me about turning that pain into passion—about the unparalleled joy that comes from creating something that, without you, wouldn’t exist.  All of them taught me to take risks with new ideas, even if those new ideas give people more reasons to doubt your sanity.  Vincent’s risk of painting in an entirely new way, showcasing his thick brushstrokes instead of hiding them, resulted in paintings so different and beautiful that they outlived their creator by over a century.

I think, though, that the most important lesson to be learned from the struggles of these artists and writers is how to treat those who are “different.”  Vincent was mocked mercilessly for being different—he was called names, was physically assaulted, and had rocks thrown at him while he was painting.  Don McLean’s song, “Vincent,” has this line in it:  “Now I understand what you tried to say to me—how you suffered for your sanity. . . They would not listen; they did not know how.  Perhaps they’ll listen now.”  I wish it hadn’t taken Vincent’s suicide for people to listen.  And I hope that we can learn from his story and from the stories of so many others who lived—who still live—with the ever-present torture of mental illness and the pain of being misunderstood and harshly labelled.  I hope we can learn to love and accept everyone, no matter how different they might seem.  I hope that if we witness the kind of cruelty that Vincent endured, we’ll do whatever we can to stop it.  And I hope with all my heart that we can learn that we’re all different: we’re all a little broken and a little beautiful.

In a letter to his brother Theo, Vincent wrote, “What I am in the eyes of most people—a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person—somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low.  All right then, even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart.”  He did show what was in his heart: beauty and brokenness.  I rarely look at the stars without thinking of Vincent.  And now, when I do, I hope I’ll remember to pray for the ones like him—to pray that, even when the sky is too cloudy for them to see the stars, they’ll have faith enough to know they’re there.  And once more, the beautiful will win.