starry starry night pain ain’t always genius

 

    I watched “Oppenheimer” last night on Netflix. I had not seen the film. Much of it is set in Los Alamos.

    I was put off by the movie not dealing with President Harry Truman wrote in his diary that he did not drop the A-bombs on Japan to win that war and save American soldiers’ lives. Japan knew America had the A-bomb and was trying to surrender. He dropped the A-bombs on Japan to intimidate the Russians. 

    Around dawn today, I dreamed of being in Pensacola. 

    I wondered if some new sport to banish care might be afoot?

    The first clue was an email from Poetic Outlaws, which caused me go to go looking for the Starry Starry Night song.

Vincent van Gogh: What Am I?

POETIC OUTLAWS

JUN 23, 2024

What am I in the eyes of most people —

a nonentity, an eccentric, or an 

unpleasant person —

somebody who has no position

in society and will never have;

in short, the lowest of the low.

All right, then —

even if that were absolutely true,

then I should one day like to show 

by my work what such an eccentric,

such a nobody, has in his heart.

That is my ambition, 

based less on resentment 

than on love in spite of everything,

based more on a feeling of 

serenity than on passion.

Though I am often in the 

depths of misery,

there is still calmness, 

pure harmony 

and music inside me.

I see paintings or drawings 

in the poorest cottages,

in the dirtiest corners.

And my mind is driven towards 

these things with an irresistible 

momentum.

This passage is from a letter written by Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo on July 21, 1882.

    

Sloan Bashinsky

Sloan’s Newsletter

“Vincent"

Don McLean

Starry, starry night

Paint your palette blue and gray

Look out on a summer's day

With eyes that know the darkness in my soul

Shadows on the hills

Sketch the trees and the daffodils

Catch the breeze and the winter chills

In colors on the snowy, linen land

Now, I understand what you tried to say to me

And how you suffered for your sanity

And how you tried to set them free

They would not listen, they did not know how

Perhaps they'll listen now

Starry, starry night

Flaming flowers that brightly blaze

Swirling clouds in violet haze

Reflect in Vincent's eyes of china blue

Colors changing hue

Morning fields of amber grain

Weathered faces lined in pain

Are soothed beneath the artist's loving hand

Now, I understand, what you tried to say to me

How you suffered for your sanity

How you tried to set them free

They would not listen, they did not know how

Perhaps they'll listen now

For they could not love you

But still your love was true

And when no hope was left inside

On that starry, starry night

You took your life as lovers often do

But I could have told you, Vincent

This world was never meant for one

As beautiful as you

Starry, starry night

Portraits hung in empty halls

Frameless heads on nameless walls

With eyes that watch the world and can't forget

Like the strangers that you've met

The ragged men in ragged clothes

The silver thorn of bloody rose

Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow

Now, I think I know what you tried to say to me

How you suffered for your sanity

How you tried to set them free

They would not listen, they're not listening still

Perhaps they never will

Catherine Wallace

Thanks for sharing this song. I was hearing it in my head as I read along. :)

Barbara Sinclair

The Quaking Poplar 

I've always loved this song. Thx for sharing it!

Rod Bluhm

A Journey of Words

It's an incredibly sad song, but it seems to capture his life so well.

    My second wife was an opaque (gouache) watercolor artist. She had more talent in her right hand than I could imagine. “Starry Starry Night” was her soul song. 

    Quite by chance in my law office, if you still believe in chance, one of my law partners made the introduction. Hearing her last name, I said, “You must be so and so’s sister, because you look just like him.” 

   Her brother and I once had a big fight he started over a girl. After we beat each other up for a while, I asked him why we were fighting? He said, “She said you said you could beat my ass.” I said, “I never told her that and you can have her." I turned  and walked away. 

    Not long after I met his sister in my law office, I found on my desk a curious invitation to a meeting of the G.I.P.s at the 3rd window booth in a popular Five Points South pub called Dugan’s. My law partner, who had made the introduction, suggested I make an appearance, it might be interesting. He did not say why.

   On the designated day, I drove to Dugan’s after work, and there she sat by the window with another lawyer I knew pretty well, and two men and two women I did not know, who introduced themselves. That’s when I learned G.I.P.s stood for John Lennons’ Genius Is Pain song, of which I had never heard.

    After we became an item, she told me that she was an artist, and she was doing awful in high school, and her parents took  her out of high school and enrolled her at the Birmingham School of Fine Arts, where she had blossomed. She said she never liked art shows, but she sometimes sold or gave her work to her to people she knew.

    When she said she had stopped painting, I asked why? She said she needed money and borrowed $3,000 from the son of a rich white man in Birmingham, and she would repay him with her next three paintings. Instead, she stopped painting.

    I knew the guy somewhat, and I went to my bank and had a $3,000 cashier's check made out to him. I gave her the check to take to him, which she did. 

    She said she didn’t want to start painting again, because she didn’t want to show or sell her work. I said, okay. 

    She wanted to have a baby. I had two children, whose older brother had died of sudden infant death syndrome, and I was in poor health, and I did not feel I had the juice to have another child. Birth control was not working. She got pregnant twice, and she went to an abortion clinic twice, and she was torn up and I was torn uo for her, and I got a vasectomy. 

    She came up with the idea of starting an art school for young children. I came up with the sales pitch, “I want to teach your children how to draw and paint.” A lawyer friend with some wood skills created a vase with a bunch of paint brushes sticking up out of it, and she painted it pretty.

    I rented her a studio in an A-frame building on the edge of Mountain Brook, the rich, white enclave south of Birmingham, ska, The Tiny Kingdom, where we and the guy who had bought her next three paintings had grown up, but now she and I lived in Birmingham. 

    She had cards made up with her invitation and her name and phone number, and she left them in drug stores, grocery stores and beauty parlors. She got her first class of young students, and she was happy as a clam.

    I told her she needed to start painting again, it was her gift. She said, okay, if she didn’t have to show or sell her work. I said, okay.

    She did a painting, and it was fabulous. She did another painting, and it was fabulous. The subjects were what we had found driving around in the countryside with her Nikon camera. I came up with the names for her paintings. She was happy as a clam, as an artist. Living with me, who was never happy as a clam, which had nothing to do with her, was another matter.

    Eventually, I told her that she needed to show her work. She said I had promised she would not have to do that. I said, yes, but I changed my mind, because the world needed to see her work, and she needed to get over her fear of showing her gift to the public. 

    She said she didn’t like people comparing her to Andrew Wyeth. I said she was better than him and to get over it.

    She drove down to Pensacola with some of her paintings for that city's annual sidewalk art show. Her painting, “Jesus saves,” an old worn out barn with “Jesus saves” painting in white paint on its slanted roof, won first prize in watercolor. She was beyond happy as a clam.

    She was invited to show her work in a Birmingham gallery. 

    She was friends with several prominent local women artists, who were in that gallery. They told her the owner was a bitch in the rhyme with witch way. The gallery owner set the date for a show, and my wife went to work. She was really nearsighted and sometimes used a magnifying glass while she worked her craft. 

    The gallery owner started behaving as advertised. I listened to my wife’s reports, hoping it would run its course, but it didn’t. I asked her if she wanted me to get involved? She said, yes. I said all hell might break loose. She said she didn’t care. I got involved and she was thrown out of the gallery.

    I’d heard karma can be bitch. 

    A couple of weeks later, the gallery owner called my wife and said Birmingham's daily newspaper had advertised the art show and named the artists to be featured, and she could bring her pieces to the gallery for the art show. The other artists' pieces had been hung and there was no space left on the walls in the gallery, so she set up her paintings on the floor against the baseboards..

    The local newspaper’s art critic attended the show and wrote a review, which saidJane Shea’s paintings were delightful, but they were really hard to find.

    Jane and I kept driving around in the countryside away from Birmingham with her Nikon, and I kept naming her paintings.

    She drove down to Orlando for Disney World’s annual sidewalk art show and was assigned a booth in the back of nowhere. She set up her little art show and sat there for two days. Mickey Mouse came by Sunday afternoon and gave her a check and the blue ribbon for 1st place in her medium.

    I was very slowly coming to.understand lawyering and me were not working out. 

    I wrote a book for which I now am sure Jane was the Muse. 

    I self-published HOME BUYERS: Lambs to the Slaughter? It  had some wicked cartoons of sheep and wolves created by the artist daughter of the fellow who produced the book for me. It was saddle stitched, maybe 40 pages.

    I hired a publicist in Birmingham to help me promote the book. She sent me on a media tour in south Alabama and Pensacola, I convinced a chain bookstore in Pensacola to carry the book and left a dozen copies. The store sold out the book and I mailed them more copies. She bookstore manager said people from the Pensacola naval air base were buying the book. She asked for 100 more copies. 

    I also sold a few copies by mail order after publishing how to buy your home articles in offbeat magazines, such as Mother Earth News.

    I met a whitewater paddler via the Birmingham Canoe Club, who had moved to Birmingham from North Carolina. He said he heard that I wrote a book. I said, yes. He said he worked for a publishing company in North Carolina, Menasha Ridge Press, and he would like to see the book. I gave him a copy.

    After reading it, he said Menasha would like for me to make it longer and they would carry it. So, I rewrote it and made it longer. He put me with Menasha’s book editor, who taught me how to write a book. It was embarrassing, pained my ego, and  proved I was no genius.

   The public relations firm sent me on a tour in Nashville, Louisville, Kentucky, Columbus, Ohio, and Knoxville, TennesseeI was interviewed by local radio and TV stations. The call-in radio interviews were wild, the phone calls kept coming. Same, when the NPR station in Birmingham interviewed me several times in their studio, 

    Menasha got Simon & Schuster in New York City  interested in the lambs to the slaughter book, and its sequel, Selling Your Home $weet Home. Jane was the second book’s muse, too.

    In early January 1985, my Birmingham publicist got Jane Pauley to interview me in New York City on the Today Show. Suddenly, I was somewhat a celebrity. But no chain bookstores had my books.

    Menasha asked me to write a book about lawyers for lay people, and I stated writing what became KILL ALL THE LAWYERS? A Client’s Guide to Hiring, Firing, Using and Suing Lawyers, which did not kill every last lawyer, and killed a few clients no lawyer would ever want to have to represent. Jane was that book’s muse.

    Simon & Schuster bought Prentice-Hall, which published lots of books about law stuff. My books were transferred to Prentice-Hall, which was in disarray, and Lambs to the Slaughter and Selling Your Home $weet Home, and chain bookstores did not have my books. 

    My Birmingham publicist got me interviewed by CBS Morning News and RKO Radio in New York City, and by CNN in Atlanta.

But chain bookstores did not have my books. 

    I taught free adult education buying and selling homes seminars in Birmingham.

    My law practice was down to a trickle

    An artist son of a rich white Tiny Kingdom man, who had moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico and was doing very well there as an artist, and his wife, whom Jane also knew, invited us to visit them and stay in their small guest cottage. Jane and I drove out there and stayed with them for two months. I fell in love with Santa Fe and told Jane I was going to move there and she was welcome to join me. 

    I was very interested in the New Age and alternative healing, because I was not well for a very long time. A natural healer friend, first name Senneca, was a hippie living in Madrid on the back road from Santa Fe to Albuquerque when he attended J. Dr. Victor Scherer’s massage and natural healing school in Santa Fe. Seneca advised if I wanted to get into healing work, I should go to massage school.

    In early 1986, Prentice-Hall published Kill All the Lawyers, and the Birmingham publicist got me interviewed about 200 times on local, regional and national radio, including CNN in its Los Angeles studio. 

    The Birmingham daily newspaper gave Kill All the Lawyers a rave review. A Birmingham TV staton covered the book signing in Birmingham. But chain bookstores did not have my books. A local bookstore in downtown Birmingham had ordered 100 copies and sold out in a week. The store owner told me I would be better off with no publisher, than have Pentice-Hall as my publisher. 

    I was getting a sense that I was headed somewhere else, maybe I would write about healing. 

    I wrote something I had no business writing, because I didn’t know shit about healing. 

    I mailed the manuscript to Simon & Schuster’s Editor, with a note about all the media interviews I was getting, but no books in chain bookstores, An editor wrote back that he had read my submission, but they were sorry, they could not use it.

   Attending massage school 5 days a week, I turned my attention there.

   Jane got a great gallery in Santa Fe. She wasn’t selling a lot of pieces, but she was becoming known, and she really liked Santa Fe. I hoped I would really like Santa Fe, but there was too much awry in me to really like anything, to be dead honest.

    Jane’s  paintings became smaller and smaller, true bonsai.

    I became more and more unsettled.

    We split up.

    I met a woman at a gathering in Santa Fe, who said she lived in Los Alamos, about 50 miles across the desert from Santa Fe. She worked in one of the labs there, and her lab was trying to use vegetation to soak up all the toxic wastes the other Los Alamos labs were pouring into the ground. 

    She was Australian, and had come to America with her parents when she was young. She had a closet mystic side to her that her fellow scientists would not be able to wrap their minds around. We started dating and I spent weekends at her home in Los Alamos. I met some of her scientist friends and found they were not interested in anything I was interested in. 

    I knew the move to Santa Fe and attending massage school and taking “advanced” trainings in alternative healing had not fixed anything. I felt like I had failed in every way a man could fail.

    Feeling at the end of my rope, out of bright ideas,, I prayed one morning in my apartment, “Dear God, I do not want to die like this, failed.” I paused, said, “I offer my life to human service.” 

    About ten days passed. 

    Sleeping over with my Los Alamos girlfriend, I woke up maybe around 2 a.m,  and saw two white shift-shaped beings hovering above me in the darkness. No wings, but I assumed they were angels. I heard in my mind very clearly, “This will push you to your limits, but you asked for it and we are going to give it to you.” I remembered the prayer I had made, and I saw a  bright white flash and I was physically jolted by something electrical. That happened two more times.Total time lapsed was about 10 seconds. I was sweating and shaking. The two beings faded out.

   Sensing my new girlfriend was awake, I asked her what she saw or heard? She said she saw my body lurching. I asked if she saw or heard the angels? She said, no. I told her what had happened. She laughed, said, “Let’s go back to sleep, you strange man.”

    It began that starry starry night.

    The two angels would turn me every which way but loose, and upside down and inside out, and they would stand me before endless mirrors, looking at me, with plenty of refresher courses. They would painfully destroy any notion that I might be a genius.

   They began with a vision in the fall of 1987 that would write a book about practicing law in a new way. I went right to work, writing garbage. I was not ready to write it. When the time came a year later, the two angels put human editors in front of me, who taught me again that I had not looked in the mirror nearly enough.  

    I kept at it, and finally something emerged, the gist of which was legal problems are messages from God about stuff we have not dealt with, and if we go about our legal problems in the regular way, we miss the point.

    I mailed The High Legal Road manuscript to my editor at Prentice-Hall, who wrote back that he agreed with much of it, and he wanted to argue with much of it, but it was too spiritual to be a legal book, and it was too legal to be a spiritual book, and Prentice-Hall didn’t know how to market it, and he had to decline.

    I went back to using money I had inherited from my father and his father to self-publish. 

    As the time passed, I wrote quite a few stranger than fiction pain ain’t always genius books and poetry about what happened after two angels showed up that starry starry night in Los Alamos, where the atomic bomb was invented.

    I also wrote 5 pain ain’t always genius stranger than fiction novels, three of which survived.

    Kundalina, Alabama (1992)

    

    Heavy Wait: A Strange Tale (2001)

    Return of the Strange (2023)

    The leading male actor in those three novels, Riley Strange, and his to die for lady loves, had themselves some r-e-a-l-l-y s-t-r-a-n-g-e adventures. 

    All of those starry starry night pain ain’t always genius books, except The High Legal Road, can be read for free at the internet library, archive.org, which is operated by American colleges. That library specializes in out of print books and books by authors not trying to monetize their books. A similar library run by Cambridge University, in England, bodlean.eu, can be used by people in Great Britain and Europe. 

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com