An admirable attempt to paint the song with van Gogh's work.
My 7th grade art teacher had that Don McLean album in the classroom along with one of those boxy portable record players:
I wonder now whether he thought we were little vessels to be filled, or little fires to be kindled.
19 comments:
Little pitchers with big ears perhaps?
My 6th grade teacher drove a Crosley, then, after Packard went out of business, switched to Packards. His yard was full of them. He was my hero.
Big Joe bought a Martin D45 from Don McLean.
Perhaps irrelevant. But, why not say it?
This is the internet.
Nothing is too trivial or irrelevant.
My chronic insomnia has finally produced something of value: The only ecstatic experience of my life.
I wasn't sure what was going on at the time, only that I was in bed, conscious, and paralyzed, with the perception that I was in a different plane of existence. I wouldn't describe it as happy or mystifying or overwhelming or anything like that. It was more like the sensation of a profound and unutterable need being satisfied, expressed in an unfamiliar language of time and space.
To me the experience was my brain firing in a random, weird way. Any meaning would be a post hoc rationalization and I even had to do research on the internet to figure out what I'd experienced.
But I can definitely see how someone of a religious bent could interpret it as a mystical connection to the divine.
ST made me realize that I had misspelled McLean's last name. Fixed it. Thanks.
Respectfully, I think your art teacher was wrong to impose that breathless video on the students. By breathless I mean the approach to art as a soulful activity, when, if you really look hard at almost any painting by Van Gogh what you see is the result of a war. He plunked himself down in front of a subject (landscape, portrait, still life) and fought with it, every inch of the way, until he had realized. Realized what? His idea of the subject versus the subject itself. Van Gogh HACKED his paintings out. Like with an ax, not a wand.
@ricpic: To be fair, the video didn't exist back in 1972. He only exposed us to the song (the whole album really). Maybe you're angry at the maker of the video.
Me? Angry? Why, I'm a teddybear. ;^)
Fruity, you were in bed? And you had an ecstatic experience? Was that before or after ripping a machine gun fart?
As a Colorblind American (awaiting recognition from the ADA) I always appreciated sculpture more than painting. Sure, I liked some paintings, but mostly didn't pay any attention to them.
Right up until I was in the National Gallery in London - there a Van Gokk painting of irises reached out and grabbed me. Would not let me go.
Ever since then I have been a huge fan of the Vin-man. Even watched "Lust for Life" the other day - powerful stuff.
Now what were we on about?
Oh yeah, nasty teachers extinguishing any and all creative sparks. With time and therapy one can overcome even the best teachers...
Don McLean interview "Why I had To Write 'Vincent'"
I did not know about the whole "Killing Me Softly" connection.
I always assumed that McLean lifted the melody from some piano étude or something like that.
@ Sixty. There is a theory that Van Gogh was color blind and a cool video linked at this site which explains it. Interesting.
As you might know my mother was, and brother is, color blind. Couldn't tell between red/green brown/blue green/brown yellow/green blue/anything actually... and pastels forget it. It is difficult navigating as a color blind person sometimes in the world made for non color blind.
That Smithsonian site is cruelty personified - is there any difference in those two representations of The Starry Night?
If so, then whomever created the CB version gets it.
Yes. But it is very subtle.
The version which represents what the non color blind see is really rather drab to my eyes. But the version supposedly representing what the color blind see and then translated (I suppose) for the non-colorblind is really quite vibrant. The yellows are brighter and some areas of the lower sky that are kind of a yellowish green are more brightly yellows. The colorblind version has less of that sickly green tone and more vibrant yellows, darker blues. I don't see much change in town other than the green tinge is less. I much prefer the colorblind translation.
Fascinating - I have heard much of that sickly green but have never seen it. Sounds like a benefit!
My mother tended to wear a lot of that chartreuse green and sick yellowish green and bright orange. Ghastly colors. Sometimes all at the same time. God knows what they looked like to her.
Fortunately for her, that was in the 70's when the entire world seems to have gone color blind and lost their sense of taste....so....she was IN STYLE. Therefore I didn't say it when she asked "Do these go together?". NO!!! > That was the style then so the answer was "Yes. Yes they do." And given her skin tone and auburn hair. It worked on her.
:-)
I miss my Mom.
The way to go for a colorblind person is to settle on a combination of colors (obviously with the help of a full spectrum sighted person) that go well together and are appropriate in almost every situation, and then wear that combination all the time. I'm thinking of Alistaire Cooke, who was the host of Omnibus, Alistaire Cooke's America and Masterpiece Theater. He ALWAYS wore a navy blazer, a white or pale blue shirt and mid-grey slacks. Occasionally the slacks were tan or ecru. And he wore that combo whether in an executive suite or out in the wilds. He always looked right, not out of place. It could be a navy sweater with tan pants. Anyway, Cooke, who had great self-possession, would wear the blazer and slacks at the edge of the Grand Canyon and it worked!
I have no idea whether Cooke himself was colorblind. But maybe he was and he had arrived at that winning strategy on his own.
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