The Virtual Life of Fizzy Oceans (28 page)

Yet, the miners and their families are more than a little uncomfortable with Vincent’s devotion. “The parson is no longer normal,” they whisper amongst themselves. And it is true! Van Gogh lives more like an animal than like a man. He talks to himself. He prays on bended knees for hours at a time. He eats barely a morsel; his abstinence is notorious. What money he receives he gives away. He says he talks to God. Nobody believes God talks back to him.

This business of portraying another person—a real life individual now dead—is both eerie and exhilarating. I don’t know whether or not I like it, but my dedication to this project is documented in code, and there’s no turning back now. It is my long felt admiration for this man’s particular passion that has led me to create the REP, as well as a profoundly personal search to express something furtively felt within me, something long harbored, something anxious for expression yet fearful of exposure, something disorderly yet divine. I take the next tentative step in Vincent’s worn leather shoes.

Unable to relate to his parishioners, Vincent is finally dismissed from his post by the mission sponsors. Officially, they cite his lack of oratory skill, but in reality his behavior is simply too extreme. He moves to the next village where he lives on charity. He sketches the miners, honing his drawing skills. He sleeps outdoors, eats barely anything. Vincent’s father suggests having him committed to an insane asylum, but Theo intervenes on his brother’s behalf. He begged Theo, the art dealer, to send him prints by Jean-Francis Millet, an artist that drew scenes of peasant life; one he admired above all other artists. “Send me what you can and do not fear for me. If I can only continue to work, it will somehow set me right again,” he wrote his brother.

Taking a break from Vincent’s life, and from VL too, I (Amy Birkenstock) leave my apartment and trudge through a rainy Seattle morning down to the Pike Place outdoor market to see if I can find some work—even an odd job for a day or two—because I’m really broke now. I can’t even afford food, or toiletries, or cigarettes; in fact, I can’t even afford to take my clothes to the launderette, so I’ve been wearing the same jeans and flannel shirt for ten straight days. Thank God my Doc’s are sturdy, because I can’t afford to take the bus either, so I have to walk the entire way, twenty blocks, more or less. At the market I convince a Chinese fishmonger, Mr. Wang, to let me clean up after he closes his stall. The fish guts and blood make me want to vomit even though my stomach is dead empty. When I finish cleaning his stall he pays me a few bucks so I can buy a burger and fries. Call it good.

Unemployment (and the poverty that results from it) is no fucking fun at all. But hey, real food is expensive these days. Broccoli might as well be made out of gold; cherries out of diamonds. I’m really craving milk; I must be calcium deficient. There are plenty of leftover grunge-hippies here in Seattle, and they’d probably be willing to help out, but they’re in the same hard-up circumstance as me, so I don’t even bother asking. I make my own way. If Vincent could do it, so can I!

VL is my solace, my oasis, my home away from (home?). After all, everything in VL—except my Van Gogh REP, thanks to Sly Sideways—looks like California, the Golden State. Except California ran out of money back in 2009, and the shine is off that nugget once and for all. Look, it does no good to be bitter. I’m usually not one to complain, either; I just want a good meal once a week, that’s all. In VL there is no hunger. That’s something—a different kind of nourishment…

Fizzy Oceans is tracking Vincent to the South of France now—all in a few short steps, thanks to my VL REP. I’ve lent her my trusty Doc’s to make the pilgrimage (lol). She is standing in front of Vincent’s yellow house in Arles when Paul Gaugin storms out of the door cursing the Dutchman. “That potato-eater just cut off his fucking ear!” Gaugin swears. And he’s off to the South Pacific. Just like that!

Shortly, Vincent appears in the street, his severed ear bleeding like a butchered pig. His expression is dazed as he staggers off to present his ‘little gift’ to the prostitute of his fancy. Oh, what a night!

Look, I’ve never cut off my ear, so I can’t say I know how it feels. But I do know something about sacrifice. It’s what you do for love, or passion, or insanity. Or maybe it’s what you do when you want to find the
pure yellow note
and you just can’t find it. I don’t know, but I’m certainly not going to be the one to judge him. He did what he did, and I’m sure he had his reasons. I’m sure it made sense to him as he drew the razor over his skin.

Am I Amy Birkenstock now, or am I Fizzy Oceans? Is Fizzy Oceans that cute little emulation that works like a banshee at Open Books, or has she somehow transformed herself into the artist Vincent Van Gogh? Shit, VL can get to be confusing, can’t it? I’m sensing that Fizzy Oceans wants to speak for herself now…

As I work in the VL ‘garden’ writing code and recreating yet another Van Gogh painting—this time “Vase with Twelve Sunflowers”—it occurs to me that what we create, or more accurately recreate, with our computers is at best a binary representation of our literal world, minus its soul. What Vincent Van Gogh did with tools infinitely more fundamental—a brush, a knife, a board or a bit of canvas, pigments of the primary colors—is quite different indeed. Looking at his paintings, most would agree that the eccentric images—swirling skies (“Wheatfield with Cypresses, c.1889), wavy wheat fields (“Wheatfield Under a Cloudy Sky” c.1890), emaciated jade faces with amethyst lips (“Portrait of Dr. Gachet”, c.1890), a humble community of once-proud houses now sagging like melting candle wax (“Houses at Auvers”, c.1890), olive trees lined up like soldiers under a blazing Mediterranean sun that shines its light upon the earth in ever-concentric particles (“Olive Trees” c.1890), God’s glorious firmament exploding like a Chinese fireworks display at the New Year (“Starry Night” c.1889)—convey not a realistic recreation of the literal world, but a window into the soul of the artist himself. My effort in making this REP is one of re-creation; Vincent’s effort, borne of deep humility and lifelong sacrifice, tapped the quintessence of Creation. His unapprised contemporaries failed to recognize his vision, and they scorned him for his eccentricity. In his lifetime he sold but a single painting. Today, of course, his canvases sell for tens of millions of dollars (though you can have a facsimile created by
yours truly
for the very reasonable price of fifteen greenshoots). The song remains the same…

On a final inspection tour of the REP, I tell Sly Sideways what an excellent job he’s done in building the virtual environment to my specifications. He’s also added a few of his own touches, such as 3D dioramas of
The Red Vineyards at Arles
and
The Café Terrace on the Place du Forum
. We’ve both done a lot of work to complete the REP, Sly building out the physical representations, and me in the ‘garden’ replicating the paintings. I gladly pay Sly the six thousand greenshoots I owe for his work, and as a further token of my appreciation I place a digital representation of
Almond Branches in Bloom, San Remy
in his cache. “You don’t have to do that, Fizzy,” he tells me. But it’s my pleasure to give a little tip for a job well done.

So, now it’s time to send out invitations to all the seedlings in my database—more than ten thousand people in all. My list of contacts was compiled during the time I worked with Crystal at Open Books. It also includes all those with whom I’ve interacted as a VL greeter. Such a mailing list might seem extreme if not for mass mailing tools provided by the Farmers at Seedbed Studios.

Meantime, I return to Open Books to see how Crystal is coming along with her latest project,
The Complete and Unabridged Memoirs of Jacques Casanova
. It is an auspicious volume of six books comprising two thousand, five hundred pages, give or take a few. She has been working on the publication ever since I began working on the Van Gogh REP, so we are both feeling a bit exhausted by our respective projects.

“Sometimes I wonder why we do it,” Crystal says to me. “Why we work so hard for so little recognition.” Her fatalistic mood is a bit uncharacteristic. And probably short-lived as well, I understand.

“We do it to be of use,” I tell her. “To make a difference.”

“Sometimes I wonder if anybody really cares,” she opines.

“Remember all those people who attended the Mark Twain lecture,” I remind her.

“Little victories,” she admits.

“Exactly!” I affirm.

“Next I suppose you’re going to tell me that the reward is in the process, not in the result. And that there’s some implicit nobility in sacrifice and commitment.”

“Right again,” I tell her.

“What would I do without you, Fizzy?” she asks.

“Most of what I know about VL, I learned from you, Crystal.”

“I guess we’re just twin clowns in this weird and wild circus,” she says.

“Speaking of which, I want you at my side at the opening of the Van Gogh REP,” I tell her.

“I wouldn’t be anywhere else,” she says.

“And I want Kizmet there, too.”

“I’m sure she’ll be there with Hopi bells on.” Crystal smiles for the first time during our conversation.

“Get your chin up, girl,” I tell her. “Things could be worse.”

“How is Amy doing?” Crystal asks Fizzy Oceans. I am surprised by her inquiry, because seldom in the past have we referred to our PL personalities.

“Tough times,” Fizzy tells her.

“Can’t find a job?” Crystal asks.

“Nothing steady,” Fizzy relates.

“Tell her to keep her chin up, too,” says Crystal. “I’m sure something will turn up.”

“Yeah, I hope so,” I tell her a little gravely.

I can’t help thinking how ironic it is that here in VL both Crystal and I have far too much work, while over in PL poor Amy Birkenstock can’t find enough. All in all, neither gig pays a living wage.
 

All this I have made without pay. Whether my REP is entertaining or not, enlightening or not, uplifting or not, worthy or not, I humbly present it to all who wish to cross its frontier and experience what it has to offer, or partake in my humble rendition of the passion and the genius and the humility and the tragedy of Vincent Van Gogh. It is my gift to posterity. One more trek through the REP and I am ready to greet my first visitors.

In order to make a final survey of the terrain, I activate Vincent’s emulation for the first time. My creation is impeccable, I believe, but have I gathered the courage to finally walk in his shoes? My first steps in this strange body are not unlike those of any other emulation, yet I feel the artist’s peculiar presence bearing down on me. From his parents’ middle class home in Amsterdam I move to the Borinage in Belgium, then to the parsonage in Etten, England. I visit the Goupil et Cie Gallery in Paris where he worked for a short time as an art dealer with his brother Theo, then the hovel of a home he kept in the Hague with Sein the prostitute and her infant son. Finally, I move on to Arles, France, where Vincent lived for a short time with the artist Paul Gaugin, and where he cut off his ear in a castigatory rage. I also pay a visit to the asylum at St. Remy. In his room I spend a reflective moment peering out his window at the garden where he painted irises and sunflowers. Back in the village of Arles, I set out in my ragged clothes for a day of painting in the countryside, my brushes and pigments stored in a homemade satchel strapped to my back. Under my arm I carry my easel. In my free hand I carry my lunch—a crust of bread, a bottle of milk, nothing more. The children in the streets wait in hiding for me to pass so they can hurl stones at me, knocking my straw farmer’s hat off my head. In a wheat field, just beyond the city’s border, I paint furiously as a Murder of Crows circles overhead. They call out to me in a language I suddenly understand. Sheathes of wheat dance to the music of the breeze. In my waistband I carry a loaded .22 caliber pistol—a rusting relic of a firearm, really—for a purpose not yet determined.

Once more as the emulation of Fizzy Oceans, I greet Crystal and Kizmet, my two best VL friends, as they transfer into the REP near the museum.

“Oh, Fizzy!” Kiz exclaims. “What a world!”

Crystal, the European, is more demure.

“Let me show you the collection,” I offer. Walking through a corner of
my
virtual Amsterdam to reach the museum housing the collection of Van Gogh masterpieces, my friends are wide-eyed and full of compliments.

Once inside, we begin to view the drawings and paintings. Silence marks our collective reverence, and I notice a tear welling in Crystal’s eye as she stands before Vincent’s portrait of Père Tanguy. I fully understand this wash of sentiment, because I have felt it many times myself. In fact, while I was creating the replicas in the ‘garden’ I often found myself crying for no apparent reason, and I now understand that such emotion is not abnormal but natural when faced with such unequivocal beauty. It’s like staring straight into the face of God. Or suddenly understanding the nature of a universe. Real beauty causes us to release all the false pride and pseudo sophistication we work so hard to maintain in our daily lives. By the time we reach the last painting in the collection, Kiz appears a bit uneasy. She turns to me and asks, “Fizzy, how many invitations did you send out?”

“Uh…” It suddenly occurs to me that we three are alone in the REP. “More than nine thousand, I think,” I answer.

“Nine thousand?” she says, incredulous.

“More or less,” I confirm.