Starry Starry Night

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Today’s Prompt: Write about the three most important songs in your life — what do they mean to you?

Vincent (Starry, Starry Night) – Don McLean. There are other songs that will always haunt me because they are attached to particular persons or events.  A love song that She said was special to her, my son singing I can’t help falling in love with You” to his new bride.  Those are a part but they did not make me, me.  I recall a little boy hearing Don McLean’s American Pie album for the first time and being somehow moved by words and themes and music that were much too sophisticated for him. In 1971 he was 8 years old. But in spite of his naiveté and innocence he was strangely attracted to and moved by it. It was and still to this day is hauntingly familiar. Like part of my older story somehow, a part of me. Something I knew before and was reminded of and recognized as true. Perhaps it was the ferment of the times that my young heart sensed and acknowledged. But there has been a sad, persistent, longing, that required some answer for as long as I have known.  In fact the whole album (because it was a vinyl album then) contains several of the most meaningful songs in my life. So pick three. All of them are a part of my soul now.
But the Van Gogh reference has followed me my whole life. I have never formally studied his work but somehow that song and his life has played on the horizons of my consciousness for decades. I have for as long as I remember asked odd questions. I wanted to know things that many in my orbit had not considered. A few years ago, during a dark time in my life, I would say that I understood why he cut off his ear. Pain creates art. But not just any pain. It is the pain of needing to understand. An existential stubbornness that demands creativity and beauty from chaos. This year on my 52nd birthday I found out that Vincent and I share the same one. It was eerie but somehow again not surprising. I do understand why he cut his ear off. And I share his need for beauty amid the chaos, poetry from the ashes.  Even now tears puddle around my eyelids listening to these songs. Be most Groovy!

Empty Chair – Why does this song effect a boy and decades later the man?

American Pie – Full album if you would like to hear a real poet.

25 thoughts on “Starry Starry Night”

  1. “Starry Starry night” contains Van Gogh’s sad magic. If you go to the Louvre in Paris there is a room full of his work, and if you look at the visitors you will see that many of them are lost in the pictures, with tears running down their faces, as was I. That’s his magic working.
    I have had a love affair with Van Gogh since I was a young child, and I was very moved by Don Maclean’s song.

  3. I knew I was going to cry when I listened to the song, but I went ahead and listened anyway, while I read your words. Moving words, of the rites of passage, that never cease, because that is what life is all about. It’s an honor to be able to see another’s path. Thank you for sharing yours.

  5. This post is such a wonderful look inside your heart as a young boy. It makes it easy to understand how you grew into such a thoughtful, searching man. And why you so readily recognize the same needs in others. Truthfully, I think all people have those same questions and need to have them answered when we’re young. But for some of us they get squelched and we spend our whole lives doing whatever we have to to keep that genie in the bottle so we don’t have to deal with them through whatever our addiction of choice is — booze, drugs, food, sex, retail therapy… Your past makes you uniquely qualified to do what you do so well. That was beautiful.

  7. Oh mate, I had “Vincent” playing on repeat a few weeks ago. The song always reminds me of my mom because she used to listen to it a lot (she was a painter before her vision went downhill), and this is the first time I really took a moment to think about what the song means. (*currently has the Wikipedia page open, starts to type in “Vincent” in the YouTube search bar…*)

  8. PG! Don McLean’s album is the soundtrack to my youth…Empty Chair my absolute favourite! And van Gogh…how wonderful you have the same birthday. Again, who could not be moved by Starry, Starry Night…the tortured, unknown, abject artist…he is archetypal and intimate to all those who have suffered (I agree about the ear)…wonderfully written… thank you for this beautiful memory…

  9. I was 11 in ’71. American Pie played at every single school dance and we ALL got up to dance. Still an important song to me. My sisters and I sang Vincent to and with our mom all the time. He was her favorite artist. She was an artist too. Such sweet memories for me. Thank you.

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