Don't despair. In August of 1879, when Vincent Van Gogh was 26, his friends and family worried about him, too.
His brother Theo, 22 and already sending occasional financial support to his brother, suggested he take an engraving job. Theo said: "I was just afraid you were too fond of spending your days in idleness, and I thought you should put an end to it.”
Vincent's sister, Anna, told him to consider being a baker.
But Vincent knew, even at 26, that he wasn't a baker. He hadn't yet painted The Potato Eaters. He sketched church congregation members while (still) figuring out that he wasn't destined to be a missionary in the conventional way.
And Vincent wrote this about his strange, unemployed state:
May I observe that this is a rather strange sort of “idleness.” It is somewhat difficult for me to defend myself, but I should be very sorry if, sooner or later, you could not see it differently. I am not sure it would be right to combat such an accusation by becoming a baker, for instance. It would indeed be a decisive answer (always supposing that it were possible to assume, quick as lightning, the form of a baker, a barber or a librarian); but at the same time it would be a foolish answer, more or less like the action of a man who, when reproached with cruelty for riding a donkey, immediately dismounted and continued his way with the donkey on his shoulders.
A year later, in July of 1880, Vincent wrote Theo to say thanks for sending 50 francs. He still didn't have a conventional job. By then, Vincent was greatly disillusioned by the hypocritical, law-bound church. But his letters show that this disillusionment carved space for a deeper faith in God.
In that July letter, Vincent urges Theo to "try to grasp the essence of what the great artists, the serious masters, say in their masterpieces, and you will again find God in them." He saw God in truer ways the church could never fathom!
What kills me is this: Vincent was never a prominent painter in his lifetime. He never had money. And what historians and critics mistake for "mental illness," I believe, was really the possession of his calling—that undying knowledge that he was painting with a purpose the size of galaxies.
Vincent wrote whole letters about the color yellow. He obsessed over artists' biographies. He knew his name and his art were supposed to sear his culture. But he saw little fruit.
Rainer Maria Rilke was the same way. Ever since his youth, the poet simply knew his art would shift entire paradigms in many worlds to come. Rilke knew this on a richer level than Van Gogh did. And he could settle for nothing less.
Today at lunch, C remarked about how "young people are naive in college and still believe they really can change the world." She laughed. She said, "It's cute."
I don't think anyone understands—no one (!!) except maybe one or two dear friends—that I don't simply "believe" I'm going to change the world. I really am going to. I'm not in this to publish a couple books. I don't want to scribble articles for magazines. It's not about the money. I don't care about the money. There's no money in poetry anyway.
I don't think anyone understands that I've bled this knowledge since birth. I don't belong on a corner shelf in the library. I belong in history books. My art will shatter our culture—and the future—in ways I haven't even begun to imagine. If not, kill me now.
Call it vanity. Call it a mental illness. Roll your eyes. Dismiss this. Dismiss every crazy word.
You see—every time I read Rilke and Van Gogh, I weep and weep. I take comfort in knowing how wretchedly they struggled with their own "knowledge." I feel an (irreverent? arrogant?) kinship I can't explain.
Both Rilke and Van Gogh borrowed. Struggled and borrowed. Borrowed homes. Borrowed money.
C, the physicist/pastor, explained:
When the Big Bang happened, its explosion was the product of borrowed energy. Sometimes, when we find ourselves sinking—borrowing money and energy from others—we descend into a space below the norm. As we descend, activity happens in a higher plane we cannot understand. And all that borrowed energy from our hole shoots up—
then bam: A miracle. Creation.
Every time I lose heart, I need to remember: I'm still so young. This is simply the beginning.
Source: http://boiledraspberries.blogspot.com/2010/08/van-gogh-me-and-big-bang-theory.html
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