The Starry Night
The Starry Night © Vincent Van Gogh (1889)
Best Interpretation: “You can choose to get lost down there, or up there. You will never know where you’re heading before you realize you’re already there.”-gilyotina
Issue Feb 2007
Impressionism
7 Responses to “The Starry Night”
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Hallucinating power, rhythm, poetry.
This painting reminds me of the lyrics of “Tonight Tonight” by Smashing Pumpkins:
Time is never time at all
You can never ever leave without leaving a piece of youth
And our lives are forever changed
We will never be the same
The more you change the less you feel
Believe, believe in me, believe
That life can change, that you’re not stuck in vain
We’re not the same, we’re different tonight
Tonight, so bright
Tonight
And you know you’re never sure
But you’re sure you could be right
If you held yourself up to the light
And the embers never fade in your city by the lake
The place where you were born
Believe, believe in me, believe
In the resolute urgency of now
And if you believe there’s not a chance tonight
Tonight, so bright
Tonight
We’ll crucify the insincere tonight
We’ll make things right, we’ll feel it all tonight
We’ll find a way to offer up the night tonight
The indescribable moments of your life tonight
The impossible is possible tonight
Believe in me as I believe in you, Tonight
Radiant beauty beyond my reach
Who am I… so small in this immense universe?
A child of God.
Vincent, I can’t speak to you of this again. So many rounds around those drain-circling stars, the sky a flush and a sky must wait behind that sky poised to swallow these demons, your stars, your demons, these stars, the steeple-punctured heavens, whole. Vincent, I’ve written to you so often about this one. The way everything is humming, or sliding away. The way the sky seems craggy with angry building, the way your world is both light-dancing-light and melting away.
You can choose to get lost down there, or up there. You will never know where you’re heading before you realize you’re already there.
It actually reminds me of Chinatown of Polanski, somehow.
I’m trying to find comments or interpretations of this painting involving the Demon (for lack of a better word) in the sky. It so dominates the painting and yet I’ve not found any comments about it. It is right in the middle of the sky — sweeping hair flowing to the left, arm outstretched to the right ending in a curl. They eyes and grimising mouth and even an ear are so visible. Does anyone have an interpretation of this?
This is a beautiful painting, the work of a true genius. So masterful with all of the underlying metaphors. But my question is about the black squiggly thing…Is it a bush?