Van Gough with an old friend, and thoughts on history
Yesterday afternoon I walked down Amsterdam's main drag to meet Paul Barach, a dear old friend from high school, at the National Monument. I tried to find him amongst the crowd, when someone practicing his "poi" alongside the statues of "the mask" and a gorilla caught my eye - I realiezd it was Paul! I ran up to him just like we were in a movie and we had the longest hug...meeting an old friend in a totally new location is just very exciting...Walking towards the Van Gough Museum, we had the sort of excited, sporatic conversation only friends who haven't seen each other for long distances can have - I say "long distances" rather than time because Paul and I did see each other only a month and a half ago, time-wise, but when travelling it seems distance has a greater effect on one than time.
We headed over to the Van Gough museum, where we learned that Van Gough (am i even spelling that right?) painted for only TEN YEARS. I had been to this museum once and studied his paintings before, but this fact had totally slipped my memory. We just couldn't believe it. He picked up his first paintbrush at age 27...this of course was inspiring first because of my whole internal debate about what to do with my life, as of late! Soon after that observation, however, I was able to just forget myself and become immersed in his paintings.
It was tremendously moving to see how they changed over time, and how those changes related to the people he met, where he studied, whose other paintings he had seen. Of course, it was also fascinating to see how his paintings deteriorated as he slipped further into madness...I foudn that some of my favorites occurred just before his suicide.
To me, Van Gough's paintings are certainly awe-inspiring, but they aren't wildly unique, on par with someone like Picasso or Miro. However, when paired with his personal story they assume a greater meaning and seem like more of an accomplishment. That's just one reason I like going to museums - I think visual arts can be very meaningful in and of themselves, but I tend to get more from the experience when I know where the artist was and where he/she was coming from.
Paul and i had lots of soul searching talks as always...he hugged me as I cried outside the museum, and we hugged from happiness later at a Jazz Cafe. Paul kept on saying how he felt out of "the fog"for the first time in a while, and it was just so awesome to watch (sorry can't find a better adjective). One topic i liked that we touched upon is how travel just reminds you of how small you are, both in terms of history and time as well as space. There is such a big world out there! So many realities, small differences in the way we value things and prioritize things in our lives...i feel i'm getting more out of my experience when i make discoveries like that...
In my sophomore year of high school, on the first day of my "world history" class, Chip Wall introduced us to many different theories about history; one of them was that "history is bunk," meaning that it's useless and we should just focus on the present, which I subscribed to at that moment and pretty much all through high school. I preferred to soak up historical tidbits through studying other things, such as English or Anthropology.
However, as I've gotten older I've experienced a renewed interest in the history of man...how did we get to where we are today? How much has changed over the past 400 years versus the 4,000 before that? As I travel, I find I'm more interested in how everything happened, and I look forward to reading more books and learning more interesting facts as my travels continue!
If anything, this trip has made me more curious, not only about myself but about the selves around me right now, and all the ones before. I know it may seem like sometimes all I do is talk about the trip rather than living it, so I will try to make some of my future blog entries more about what I'm actually doing rather than thinking! I like to chat about both, so it's all good.
Oh, real quick observation for the moment: our roomates at the hostel are all from London, and I LOVE THEIR ACCENTS! I told them today that their dry humor was confirming every stereotype I had of Brits - they seemed characteristically unbefuddled by this observation... | posted by Cheryl, 11/12/2005 05:49:00 AM
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