Field of Dreams

I had a choice to make this afternoon.  A local museum is having a Picasso exhibit.  I haven't had a fix lately from the Spanish master.  Or, do I follow the Van Gogh map (in Spanish) and find more Van Gogh places around Arles.  How many times can you stand in the spot where master pieces were created.  I can go see Picasso in a museum any ole time, right.

My first stop was my best stop.  I want to be able to tell Sean, and Kaelynn one day when she understands what Van Gogh means, that I had a beer in the cafe of one of his most famous paintings "Cafe Terrace at Night".

I'm sitting in the cafe, Le Cafe La Nuit (The Night Cafe), not more than 10 yards from where Van Gogh sat 124 years ago. How funny life is.  When he sat here, facing me ages ago, he had no idea what he would mean to so many people.  How very powerful his art was to become.  Picasso said "To know my art you must know my life"  That was never more true than with Vincent van Gogh. It's not just the brush strokes, the colors, the starry nights or magnificent use of yellow.  It's knowing the passion and the pain that was the lens that brought us fields of wheat, lillies or starry night cafes.  It's knowing his intense desire to be accepted and loved.  Love that never arrived, not even from his parents.

If I could go back in time and meet anyone, Jesus, Einstein, Picasso, Natalie Wood, it would be Van Gogh on that very night.  I would tell him that 124 years from now he would be loved and that there are plaques all over Arles commemorating some of his greatest works. And that people from around the world would visit this town because of him and his work. He would call me crazy, rightly so, and I don't know if anything I can say could ease his pain.  Part of the allure of him is that it is such a tragedy, along the lines of a Shakespeare play.  Such a great artist never knew how much he would mean to so many people, to everyone who feels different, unaccepted, unloved, doomed.  Maybe what we do in our lifetime will amount to something even if we never know it; if we just keep painting.