VISITING AN OLD FRIEND

"VISITING AN OLD FRIEND VINCENT"

A rough draft splashed over the two artists as they stepped off the bus onto the slick pavement of Wilshire Boulevard. The wind was wet with a driving rain and the two were happy to have their blankets for the security they offered. Burkhart's was a rusted orange wool Army issue, whereas Newell's was a pleated white cotton affair he'd recently worn out the door of the Camarillo State Hospital. After two weeks it was covered with grimy abuse, but still managed to look rather dashing as it hung from the shoulders of the handsome black bearded Ed Newell. With his weathered skin and teeth he was the spitting image of the hard drinking, hard living and wayward merchant seaman that Burkhart envisioned his own lost father to have been.

It was true that Newell often functioned as a father figure to Burkhart, as the latter's naïve emerging as an artist screamed out for direction. Newell was a long time creature of the street and it was often his finesse that guided them as they patrolled the length and breadth of the beach front in search of the artists' life, pausing often to set up whatever make shift studio suggested itself. Any pagoda or passer by's whim provided enough of an inspiration to establish them right there on the spot, as they pulled from their pockets the pencils and markers of their trade.

The two proved to be perfect companions for one another, both having been abandoned at birth. On any given day, they floundered from jail to jail in search of the inevitable key that would free them, always careful not to abandon one another in their travels. Often their devotions took a bizarre turn of events, as each vowed to follow the other unconditionally into an unknown improvisation. From between the recesses of visions was their art glimpsed, as they dredged the bottom of the deepest nightmares that haunted them.

On this day, however, they were free indeed, as they traveled inland, venturing deep into the brown bowels of smoggy Los Angeles to visit an old friend Vincent at the Los Angeles County Museum. It was to be a surprise visit, in they hadn't told him they were coming. But they wouldn't miss this gala event for anything! This was to be Vincent's largest art showing to date, a first-time collection of virtually all of the artist's oils, water colors and sketch books created during a ten-year output. It was too bad that Vincent had been dead for nearly eighty years and would miss out on his own festivities, this at once illustrious and infamous Van Gogh.

For Burkhart, this was about as close as he would get to visiting his true beginnings. As a curious child, he had stumbled across the correspondence that Van Gogh had written, mainly to his brother, and began immediately to treat it as an omen, hiding the texts cleverly behind the pages of comic books carried to school, themselves cleverly hidden behind textbooks the school had succeeded in propagandizing the other youth with. (In a rather strange coincidence, during his adolescence he also discovered Napoleon's feisty letters to Josephine, the combined collections that may have scripted the young man's future for him, without the boy ever having taken thought.)

Finally to see the entire lifetime of this artist now spread out before him would be like participating in the actual evolution of consciousness. Men like Darwin had hinted about such things but only inside their heads, within the confines of their own theoretical imaginations. And while the softly forming heads of children looking for change might be gullible to their nonsense, Van Gogh, on the other hand, had stated it plainly enough for even the grownups to see.

The only person previously granted such a view was the rich man, John Paul Getty, who had single handily amassed and hoarded the largest collection of Van Goghs on the face of the planet. Not even Vincent himself had been privy to such a vast collection! Getty's booty, in essence, had been stolen and removed from the public domain, thereby denying access to the very people for whom Vincent had labored so selflessly throughout his lifetime. In fact, he had created such a rich inheritance for the sole purpose of bequeathing it to the poor. And finally, to witness these powerful and fundamental testaments captured and made to serve the wholly private fantasies of J. Paul Getty bordered on sacrilege, for Getty sought only to use the soul of these works for his own enrichment.

This proved to be a mistake, which backfired heavily on the old man. He sought to enslave a spirit, which will forever remain free, and in answer to Getty's treachery his own grandson was kidnapped and ransomed, the young man's ear sliced off and sent home, in much the same way that the original Van Gogh's ear had been historically delivered to a prostitute who held the artist in captivity. And yes there was weeping and gashing of teeth all right, as the old man sought to come to limited terms with the strange episode that had unexpectedly invaded his sanity. Indeed, like the Vincent whose soul and spirit he sought to confine, the elder Getty himself went stark raving mad and terminated his own life. A fitting conclusion to the attempted possession of a public treasury. In fact, it couldn't have been stranger, unless of course the kidnappers had located the real ear of Vincent and inserted it into the ransom note.

"We picked a great day for a visit!" With the day's downpour, the museum would provide a glimpse of a relatively empty mausoleum. A fitting image perhaps, as one thinks about the vast throng of grave robbers that cruise these temples of the dead in search of an idea or a thesis to promote their own lifeless pursuits.

Earlier that day, the two had prepared for their visit by ingesting Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, the drug commonly referred to as LSD, or quite simply called acid (assumedly because of its power to eat away the tough shell surrounding the dream). It had been extolled in the writings of Aldous Huxley and handed out in the halls of Harvard by the professors, Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert. And with all that hoopla it had recently become the hippie's drug of choice, right up there on the scales with marijuana and the ever increasing pharmacopoeia of mind altering substances that kept appearing on the horizon. They called these chemicals psychedelics, the majority of which were simply clods of earth, like mushrooms and weeds, and other molds and growths from which the chemists kept synthesizing. After an hour-long bus ride, the substance had already transformed the two artist's modest anticipations into a timelessness that attends every new birth and the opening up of an unknown world. In essence, LSD turned their entire lives into a guided tour, but alas, in their case, one without a tour guide.

At the corner of Wilshire and Fairfax, the two located a liquor store. As a rule, a bottle of Chivas Regal would be their companion, and when needed, a swift, albeit temporary reduction of the drug's uncanny effects. What did they say about LSD... Oh yeah, it put one into a transient psychotic state. Imagine that! And imagine what it would do to these two iconographers, who functioned as if they were in a permanent psychotic state in the first place. What would it transform them into anyway? A momentary normalcy? Perhaps so. Provided they also tempered it with the government's finest bottled in bond.

Simply put, this whiskey not only warmed their blood but it took the actual edge off the insanity of visiting an old friend in an institution that he had come to rest in. Oh yes, gentle reader, this Van Gogh of the 19th Century was still alive and well in the 20th Century and these men had no doubts about it! That very same spirit which during the artist's lifetime had defined him was again fully operational and hanging right there in space on the walls of Wilshire Boulevard, radiating for one and all to see.

"See anyone you know?" The interior of the museum was filled with laughing California housewives - what were they all doing out in the rain? - and an occasional uniformed hieroglyphic patrolling the perimeters. Burkhart and Newell made an anonymous entrance and sat the now opened whiskey bottle on the museum floor, near a centrally located column, and draped their wet blankets over the flask like a kind of trimming around the tree. For this is what their whiskey represented to them. It was the cultured sap drained from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In this instance it looked as good as it did evil, and too, it promised them access to the wisdom the world squeezed out in increments of pain and pleasure. Naturally they desired it above all things, soon to forget the reality, that the drink was not at all a portion of the true spirit from which they sought daily to derive their directions, but instead an 86 proof mockery that they were becoming more and more dependent on. This habit, this desire, this insidious dis-ease they drank from and ingested was the ultimate illusion the Buddha had warned them about.

"Oh Distant Buddha, we thank thee this day for our artworks, for they alone have produced the consciousness necessary for the return path, that we may once again see you and know you." The voice was tangible and the men smiled aloud, for they understood that their thoughts were already beginning to solidify around them, already becoming solid fields of energy with which they could establish their truth here in the midst of this so-called City of Angels. Although the words were without sound and unspoken, they nevertheless floated audibly around the men, serving to alert the strolling housewives and their single security guard that a presence had planted itself firmly in their midst. The cautious women at first appeared startled, but likewise, in an equally clever counter measure, planted themselves firmly on the collective ground of their combined museum memberships.

"They say that he was going mad when he painted this one!" ventured a pregnant edition of the group, as she glanced surreptitiously toward the two men standing engaged in contemplation of the work before them, composed and silent but for their otherwise tangible thought forms. She had referred to a landscape depicting a forked road above which the crows screeched, coloring the sky with darkened indecisions as they hovered back and forth overhead. Quickly distancing themselves from this difficult scene, the women faded into the next room in pursuit of the main tour they had become separated from.

It was obvious that the women were not questioning so much the sanity of the artist on the wall, but were redirecting their apprehension at the two in their midst. And with good reason. After all, these two men were obviously experiencing from some kind of first hand knowledge the madness contained in the painted spirits that loomed in the air before them. The electricity which sizzled and popped before them was indicative of the fire which burned and fried within their brains, as the chemical acid ate up huge chunks of time, and permitted the blankets to dry slowly at their feet. This subtle disappearance of time the women did not comprehend, but nevertheless accepted, as it coalesced around their wrist watches and helped to melt away their fears. To these somewhat sophisticated visitors, it didn't feel all that strange once they recalled how the surrealist Salvador Dali had teased them through his persistence of memory, producing similar responses in their otherwise tranquilized senses.

Burkhart glanced at Gauguin as the men advanced on the blankets for a long overdue drink. Newell returned his glance, as their movements transcended the scene that surrounded them. Or wait just a second! What was happening here? Was it really Ed Newell that Burkhart glanced at, and Paul Gauguin who returned the gesture? How confusing this history was becoming, the more they mixed it with mortar and pestle, extracting the last drop of nectar from the sour mash and yeast molds. But it mattered not, as the pair stood squarely in the middle of the room and drank lustily, pulling long and deep from the bottle's hot buffering agents, which had absolutely no effect on reducing the hallucinations which had now grown as huge as tidal waves, washing over them and splashing their feet.

Yet they were not oblivious to the somewhat curious and longing looks the women gave them. To be sure, the housewives had begun to transmute their apprehensions into giggles, as if to acknowledge their admiration for the men's unleashed fervor. The guard likewise condoned the obviously flamboyant violation of museum etiquette and let the men be men. Perhaps he too was transfixed by the obviously honored status these two held at the celebration of Van Gogh's genius. Really, it was of minor concern for him to overlook the potentially explosive scene, allowing instead for the ethereal psychosis to slip through the alert but inert fingertips of his gun hand, as it rested so proudly at his side.

"Van Gogh has the means to override all the art and argument of the earth. In him is only peace, notwithstanding the tourist traps and fancy boutiques that have been set up inside his head, to trip him up, to push him away from the star that draws him nearer." The voices again coalesced about them, as the two men nodded knowingly at each other. Again the women faltered in the face of so much aural humming of melancholy. And once again the guard stood guard over the moment it took the voices to pass over his head, the voices they all kept hearing that day. Voices that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, with nobody really uttering them. Voices very much alive and with a visible force that attacked the ears of the visitors.

What these voices turned out to be were the actual voices that transpired from the inside of Vincent Van Gogh's head. Presumably the very same voices he heard as his madness, that leaked out through his brain daily to plague him unto death. Everyone was astonished at this, each and every housewife and of course the guard who stood at alert. The two protagonists above all heard them clearly. After all, they were more voiced in the unfamiliar, having heard the very same voices on more than one occasion. True enough Vincent's madness was palpable that day, and it was understood by the two men that the voices that came from his head were no less than the voices of time. From Vincent proceeded even the voices of the women who mocked him with their books of art appreciation, stuffed ready and waiting within purses that were continuously stained and mixed with the blood of so many animal testings, in the name of so many painted on faces, to the tune of so many unheard of voices.

The museum was bathed now in dust, the identities melting in to one another. Soon, Van Gogh too was gone, as well as the idiots who daily plagued him with their dribbling of words. The room had become an intersection of voids, indicating that creation was at hand. The painting of the crows circling above an unsure future was no longer a problem. A touch of Naples yellow here, some cadmium red there, and the flurry of wings could be seen to lift them out and beyond the borders of the picture frame. Ahh, the Light now was so much clearer, especially over there by the window! Gently Burkhart reached to the wall for the painting, to move it closer to the available light. At last his masterpiece was at hand!

For Burkhart this moment brought with it an intensity previously unattainable in his lifetime. He marveled at how it began to crystallize in the room. But also this moment brought with it an audible gasp, as the women in unison and in shock backed away, and the guard advanced in Burkhart's direction. "My God, what am I doing? This is not my painting, nor my studio. This is not my problem at all! Am I too going mad?" he thought, as he stepped away from the wall and witnessed the museum push itself back into focus. And there stood Newell, smiling. And the guard, edging cautiously back to his former position of alert. The women too soon returned to their giddy conversations about things they had read in the books about artists.

"Jesus, this acid is kick ass!" Or was it just so many Van Goghs concentrated in the same room, or the fact that Newell did look a little like Gauguin when he smiled at you? Damn this childhood affliction and bookshelf of possibilities! Any artist in the encyclopedia but Vincent would've been a wiser choice to grow on, to nurture oneself. But to have selected the pattern of a poor, starving and insane benefactor for a role model was worse than folly. It was the guaranteed living out of a similar madness for one self. Could a mad man really be counted as one of God's own engineers? To fill oneself with the roar of an approaching tide and to reempty oneself when it recedes, was the ocean also mad?

What a dis-eased individual refers to as a bipolar affliction, the earth doses out elsewhere as healthy living patterns and life cycles that were designed to fill and empty us continuously, the measured movements of air and earth through the ages, the migrations of the geese and the stars overhead. Haven't you noticed yet how these planets are indeed predisposed to follow the pattern that all life follows? Let us weep with the storms that will merely flood another man's basement. Finally take hold of ourselves and begin to laugh in the face of all those doctors and their myriad prescriptions.

Who then is insane in a world where everything gives in and takes up until it's done with and disappeared at last? To lose every piece of the puzzle with the falling leaves in autumn, only to regain it all in the season of rebirth. The universe itself is mad when we come to think of it! Or it just appears so to us in its turning. We are the fools who label it.

But Vincent and Burkhart didn't know all that at the time, and in a nutshell, the one initiated the other into a bag of frustrations, leading eventually to an alcohol abandon and otherwise lack of nutrition and health. The wonder of history is that men such as Van Gogh were able to sustain any creative endeavors at all, trapped inside an inexplicable madness and eventual neglect. Then how powerful must be the urge of Creation, as it pushes the negligent shareholder aside for the necessary moment, so that life might flow through and animate the otherwise vacant bag of chemicals that we call our selves. Sometimes, through a veil of tears, the mirror cleanses itself, and it is discovered to be an invisible doorway through which we have already walked into our future. But mercifully it's never more than a rough draft of things to come, a sample lesson which we can modify by our learning about one another.

"They lack the solitude they were created out of, these beautiful museum beasts caught up and caged for the amusement of urban din." This time the guard was able to relate to what sounded like a potentially ordinary snippet of conversation, trapped as he was behind nine-to-five bars, although still no one could be certain who had uttered it. But hungry ears snapped up the bait and replied with some confidence, "It's closing time, gentlemen!"

The two artists sensed that he would have liked to go with them, if he could've freed himself from the duty of collecting his paychecks. Like all men, he looked to the day he too would be free of his uniform, free of the cosmetically colored house wives and the stupid answers he was tutored to give to their questions about art and the whereabouts of the lavatory. So with a genuine nod of approval he winked as the two walked away into the raining and still wet Los Angeles afternoon, looking for a return bus to the Pacific Ocean from which they had waded that morning.

But more importantly back to the siren song and the beckoning call of Circe. The calling. Like the one that had so enraptured Virginia Woolf before them, and had maddened the likes of Homer and Columbus, as they waded too deeply within the firmament, to seek and to squeeze out of the ooze some dry land for us to walk on. Back to the ocean and the oddly twisted wood that drifted its way down from the mountains. It was always a wonderful sight to behold, the gnarled wood working its way ashore under the watchful eyes of a million tiny beacon lights that were cast by phosphorescent crabs who came out nightly to greet the wayward branches. It was as if the two were playing out one of the absolutely curious harmonies that it was possible to discern in the flickering paint that reflected life from the Van Gogh surfaces, especially when curious souls walked by them and connected. At least that's how it looked to the two artists as they walked by on their way out of the institution, out into the open road that stretched before them.

"Sir... it's closing time!" The guard repeated himself with more authority this time. Newell looked over at Burkhart and grinned, marveling at the journey that kept opening up before them, easy with the knowledge that no one had yet moved an inch! The guard seemed not to want to disturb the taller artist in his frenzied contemplation of the picture on the wall, but at the same time there was no way he could let the man make one more pass at the painting he was sworn to protect. Though he couldn't understand what they were up to, it was safe to say that these two nuts didn't mean to steal or otherwise do harm to the paintings on display. But he still couldn't fathom what it was the one fellow wanted to do, the way he continually kept edging up to and dancing back away from this one particular scene of the crows in the cornfield and all that racket they were making.

To the artists, it was always obvious that it was a painter's problem before them, one that could be easily remedied with the hundred-year hindsight at their disposal. To be sure, it wasn't even a problem that Vincent would ever have solved by himself, but only with the help of those of us who now insist so rudely for so long a time to occupy his radiant peace of mind, his space and his paintings, without contributing one red cent or insight into his dilemma. It is clearly up to a new generation to right an old wrong.

"Of course, of course," and with this Burkhart seemed to hear the guard for the first time, as he moved to gather his blanket from the floor, leaving the now empty flask there for custodial services to rid. Newell, likewise and a lot sooner, was exiting the building ahead of him, just now walking into the sobering thickness of a perpetual smog that surrounded L.A. A steady and rough draft of rain helped wash the toxins from their eyes as they walked to the bus stop ahead, the drops thrusting steadily like stabbing knives that were, after all, only tears meant to define them.

The bus finally arrived, picked up its passengers and headed into an approaching darkness. The two men were hand cuffed together and riding on plastic seats that echoed the same configuration of men before and aft, perhaps 30 in all. An armed guard stood in front, separated from the men by a heavy wire screen. They'd been on these buses before, chauffeured from one jail to another waiting trial on some minuscule misdemeanor that was usually nothing more than the health related crime of public drunkenness. And like the alcohol that tortured and possessed them, they were powerless to do more than sit there and watch as the city shuffled them back and forth in its clever monopoly game of manipulation. With such great expenditures of money at stake, the state forced its citizenry to foot the bill, all the while concealing from plain view the continued abuse of thousands of men and women like the ones in this story. To this day they remain misunderstood by an ignorant population who are afraid to get too close to the situation.

But today's ride was different, the destination was Wayside, a penitentiary located somewhere amongst the rolling hills of California. The two men were being stripped of their artist's badges, on what merits they were unclear. A rough draft, to be sure! Eventually only one of the men would be sent to prison. For now, this ride was but a premonition, a chapter unfolding. The brief imprisonment was real enough in a sense though, as they struggled to free themselves from their heightened state of drug euphoria and regain focus.

Actually, the bus had yet to arrive, as another shift in consciousness occurred. Once more the hallucinogens kicked in and shifted them about a millimeter over to where they found themselves again standing dazed inside the museum's walls, contemplating the guarded words that surrounded them. Alas, how long had they been standing there in an attempt to decipher the words of the now agitated museum guard?

"Please, gentlemen, the museum is closing!" The guard now spoke with an immediacy that was not present before. Assuredly, he was becoming a little anxious with the unresponsiveness of these two blanketed creatures before him, standing as they were with half formed but unspoken words spilling from their glistening beards, their minds in ten thousand additional places than the one he so diligently guarded.

Finally Burkhart spoke directly to the officer in charge, "Oh of course, I was only thinking of Vincent's trials, how he chose to solve them, and how ours pale into insignificance next to his." How great indeed was the responsibility he assumed for himself, especially next to our tiny burdens. To be given such a great talent is one thing. But to be asked what to do with the created treasures is another! Should he have entrusted it to fools in the first place? Perhaps he could have eaten well, paid rent with the proceeds, and lessened his suffering and inconvenience. Granted. Should he have sold the work to speculators? After all, that's where the treasures have ended up. No, I think the dilemma before him was just how exactly was he going to provide and preserve this great body of work for the future generations, so that they - and we - might take up where he left off without losing any more time. Especially without losing ourselves in the bargain. His sacrifice was genuine, since he lightened ours forever. By himself alone. By wrenching every ounce of pain from the work so that it wouldn't harm us. So that we might begin unencumbered.

"Damn if that's not the answer!" Again Burkhart found himself at the mysterious painting, and again he stopped himself short of physically removing the artwork from the wall and carrying it toward a more auspicious continuance, near the window where the light streamed in to illuminate the solitary work. As before, the women flinched, the guard stood at ready, and Newell watched intently for the decision of his partner. The drugs no longer even factored into it.

"Damn this Van Gogh!" How all encompassing are his works, and how subtly they pretend to be Burkhart's very own. Indeed, the very same problems that had gripped Van Gogh now presented themselves to Burkhart for solution, embodying absolutely the same awkwardness of approach. Looking back, it is incredible that Vincent was able to even approach his own work in the very few short years he was allowed to perform on this planet, amazing that even an hour or two of lucidity was realized between the seizures and madness that broke him. Rent, materials, hospitals, and the continual taunting of those who did not understand him. We look around us today and see lesser versions of Vincent walking the streets with heads bowed, mumbling to the earth to reach out and consume them. And we still laugh and taunt them as they pass, wondering why they can't rise up to overcome their shortcomings. Vincent did rise up, after all, through his art works, and we have risen in consciousness with him. But of course, the poor man didn't at all, as he went to his lonely grave.

It was an uncanny connection that Burkhart had finally established that day with this legendary Vincent Van Gogh. There was not the slightest delusion that Burkhart fancied himself to be the great painter. No, no. It was more subtle than ordinary madness. The connection was one of interiors. And it takes place in the spaces between them. Burkhart fully realized this that day, as he stood in the shadow of greatness, between heartbeats and between souls. And in seeking after the beauty that Van Gogh unearthed, Burkhart lost his own puny concept of awareness, and fell sway to the hypnotic parade of sensations before him. So it wasn't an identity crisis he was going through. He didn't entertain the notion that he was Van Gogh. None of that past life bullshit here! And he certainly knew that he was not Vincent standing there in the middle of the museum. (Nor was he Napoleon, which is about as crazy as it gets!)

Standing there that day, tripping on 2,000 micrograms of acid and at least a half a bottle of whiskey, he had finally come to the conclusion that he was just Burkhart, and no one else. But there was a minor twist. He determined that the works on display were in fact his very own creations, not those of Vincent Van Gogh! Beyond that, he suspected that they were really the universal tarot of comprehension the alchemists talked about, that once and for all required the unrelenting concentration of a devoted magician. He was that magician. It didn't matter any longer in the least who actually painted the picture. He was just happy to be thinking the thoughts of the mighty ones as he stood there, opening his brain to the width of adept, so that he might carry a fuller measure of the creation. It was only the drugs in his system that misled him to think for a second that he could grab one of those paintings from the wall and start painting on it. Later that day, back on Venice Beach among the sand crabs when the acid wore off and he returned to normal (hmm), he would be okay again.

"Come on, man..." This time it was Eddie and a reminder that they did not inherit Van Gogh's problems after all. Theirs was the easy path. They were court jesters, after all. This was a comedy, not a tragedy. They had escaped the mad houses and the museums for at least the time being in their lives, and they were free to acknowledge themselves, and to freely act it out. The one important thing to Freddie and Eddie was to keep the world laughing. At them or with them. It didn't matter at all, as they turned onto Wilshire Boulevard and stood menacingly at the bus stop with their blankets soaked to the gills.