Once upon a time back in the 10th grade when I took AP European history, I told a cute boy my favorite painting was (and still is) Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night. Later that year, he told me he gained more respect for me after he learned in class that my favorite painting was by a madman who cut off his ear and went insane in an asylum. LOL, in the spirit of transparency, that’s not why I like Starry Night but I’ll let him have it.
I grew up always seeing Starry Night everywhere from history class to popular media. Something about it always struck with me. It’s a beautiful, simplistic yet complex painting. I say simplistic because of the nature of how it was painted; simple, quick, short brush strokes, and yet complex because it is no easy task to have all those strokes come together to compose the bigger picture of such an idyllic sky of swirls and stars and a dream-like moon shining over an unassuming village. Something about it, I always found beautiful, wondrous and calming. It’s the way a painting just makes you feel when you look at it. And Starry Night makes me feel the same way as when I’m walking alongside the beach at 5 in the afternoon, listening to the cascading of the ocean waves washing everything ashore. I don’t know how to describe it other than I feel calm. Everything can be crumbling around me but for a moment I just take a deep breath and I feel calm. Like nothing else matters and the bigger picture shows everything is so small and insignificant to worry about.
Which is ironic to say as I type this because lately I’ve been feeling like the weight of the world is coming down on me. Student loans are about to start again, I’m turning 35 this year and I’m coming close to having to make a very difficult, heavy life decision soon, which gets a little complicated because I found out about some health issues recently I have that are also stressing me out as my doctor tries to figure out what the next steps to take are in helping me prevent further complications, I have to run a world major marathon in 58 days, on top of all the regular everyday shit I have to worry about like bills, my mortgage, stress of still working on finishing my house and all the other goals I still haven’t finished. There’s a lot I want to do next year and they all conflict with each other in terms of timelines and if I have enough vacation time to spare from work so I’m worried about what I’ll have to sacrifice to experience the other. I know I can’t have it all, but it still sucks when you have to come to terms with it. Maybe some things are just not meant to happen and maybe you’re meant for something more, but that doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to mourn what could’ve possibly been. In another life, I would tell myself to not be so ambitious with my life expectations. I feel like I want to do a lot and somehow at the same time, I don’t really think it’s a lot at all, compared to other people’s ambitions. In the end, I just want to be happy fulfilling my own life goals. I don’t have any career aspirations of climbing corporate ladders, I don’t want to raise a huge family, hell, I don’t even want to be that rich - I just want to make enough money to live comfortably and happy sustaining my lifestyle. I don’t even care about having extra wealth/income like how some of my peers are pre-occupied with side hustles and various streams of income. I acknowledge that I am privileged to not have to pick up a second job currently to make ends meet, because I selfishly do not want to give up my days off and my fun time spent doing whatever it is I want. Like visiting the van Gogh exhibit at the Met this summer when I discovered Starry Night was going to be on display. I know it also is displayed at MOMA regularly but I’m not as big a fan of the art on display there for the price of admission and if I'm being honest, I’m cheap, lol. I don’t like that I have to pay for tickets at MOMA while the Met is pay as you wish for NY residents and has so much more to offer. Don’t get me wrong, I believe artists and such should get paid too, but these big museums get enough money from donors and such, and let’s be real, my money isn’t going towards the artists whose works are on display here. And if we’re being real real, a lot of these exhibits were not exactly acquired fairly so you know they’re not being properly compensated to the original owner. But enough about that.
I learned about the van Gogh exhibit a little late in the season, basically a few weeks before it was ending. I tried to visit twice, and failed on the first occasion since the exhibit requires you to sign up via a virtual queue before 3pm and sometimes they take away the queue earlier than 3pm, which was what happened the first time I tried. I went back a week later and made it in the nick of time luckily. I would have been pissed if I had to try a 3rd time before the exhibit ended. While it is rather annoying that it was limited to a virtual queue, I understand why and I’m glad it was limited because as expected, once you get in, there’s a huge crowd in front of the Starry Night painting compared to all other paintings in the exhibit. Luckily, because it was crowd controlled, it didn’t take too long to be able to see it up close. There was one guard standing in front of it too, to make sure no one got too close or tried anything funny. He was really nice though in allowing me to get my photo with as little people around me as possible. It really is something else getting to see it up close in person. I remember seeing the Mona Lisa in person and thinking how small and underwhelming she was, so I was wary about having the same experience with Starry Night but I can personally say for me, it wasn’t the case. She was as beautiful as I imagined her and she continues to live on in my heart, representing the calmness I need when things feel rocky. Maybe that’s why she was painted. After all the instability and conflict going on in van Gogh’s mental health, maybe this beauty brought him a sense of calm, a sense of peace in his life. There’s a je ne sais quoi about my favorite painting that I will never be able to explain. Some things about art evoke certain emotions when you look at it, and Starry Night from my high school days to now, still very much speaks to me, in a hopeful “life is beautiful” kind of way.
If you made it this far, here's a cute fun fact. That same cute boy bought me a replica print of Starry Night for Valentine's day in our high school years. It was framed and everything. And to this day I still have it, although the frame and glass are gone due to poor storage at my parent's house, but I love that I still have a sentimental piece of our romance from younger years. 💖✨🌙🌀