starving hysterical naked

I remember a lecture from creative writing class. When Nick died I came to the professor, in the middle of my mess, to tell him that I wouldn’t make it to class on the day of the funeral. When I came back, he read, for me, no, for Nick - He read “Howl,” by Alan Ginsberg. You know, the poem:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
…
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
…
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night…

This same professor, showed me, once, the early paintings of Vincent VanGough. And the story, poor man! He never once, in his lifetime, saw the sale of even one of his paintings, which are now, of course, considered masterpieces the world over. His early paintings were startlingly unlike those masterpieces. They are dark and grim. They are dismal and boring. They are something like Edgar Alan Poe, set to canvas, but without any poetry. My advisor showed me the last of the paintings, on a postcard, and then he showed me the very next painting he made. The thing positively explodes with an impossible, a glorious yellow. Yellow was Nick’s least favorite color. In fact, he detested it quite furiously, as all of his furies were fierce, in their own way. What happened to Vincent? How could he possibly have gone from that first kind of painter to the second, from miseries to masterpieces?

Vincent VanGough had a father who loved him very dearly, wanted nothing but the absolute best for him. His father wanted him to work in the ministry, where he would be excellently well cared for and where he can do something of real significance for the world. Vincent tried, and failed. He had this other thing that he did, and all the time that he did it, he could probably hear his father in the back of his mind, saying to him discouraging things, reminding him of money and prosperity. After all, these paintings of him — they never sold, not a one of them. The reasonable thing for his father to do was to discourage him from something fruitless in the hopes that he might blossom somewhere else. His father grew bitter with vincent. Then, he died.

Free from that voice in the back of his mind, Vincent discovered a certain quality of yellow, one he had not been at peace enough to see previously, he discovered other things too, things it must ahve taken courage to relate. After all, his painting of the starry dynamo, it was quite unconventional considering the penchant for cotton candy paintings that ran rampant at that time.

It looks to me like you have three options in life. You can be “destroyed by madness,” You can capitulate to the macheniery of the night by taking the voice of a critic into you, by swallowing it — or you can look toward a brave yellow, even if you’re hungry, even if you’re poor.