- Paul Gaugin: The light here rocks. Doesn’t the light here rock? Have you ever seen light like that?
Vincent van Gogh: Lalalala.
Paul Gaugin: All the same, eh. [Drains glass] It’s like… how should I say it. It’s as if in an alternate universe there were a small boy, about five, with a pig shave and a shit-eating grin, with a hose in his hands. And he’s kinking the hose so nothing can get through. And this hose is the hose through which the cosmic energy flows to my brain. Or my soul or something. You know? [Refills glasses]
Vincent van Gogh: Sigh.
Paul Gaugin: I dunno. It’s a feeling like being constipated and entirely shat out at the same time.
Vincent van Gogh: [Takes drink, stares at so-so-looking waitress] Mmm.
Paul Gaugin: As if it were late spring, after a long debilitating winter and the tulips are finally budding, only their buds are like, tiny, because the garden hasn’t been fertilized in ages, and the bulbs are withering, so you wonder if they’ll even blossom this year.
Vincent van Gogh: …
Paul Gaugin: Vincent? More absinthe?
Vincent van Gogh: I beg your pardon?
hoo wah!
There is an exhibit of Van Gogh, Gaugin and a collection of Courbet that Van Gogh and Gaugin visited, in my area. We are going to see it in May.
do they talk about “spring depression” in austria? it’s something that i hadn’t heard of before i got here, but it’s considered a common thing, and is rather the opposite of “spring fever”… this sort of sounds like that.
although i don’t think gaugin was ever near this cheery.