At the Immersive Van Gogh Multimedia Projection Exhibit

At the Immersive Van Gogh Multimedia Projection Exhibit Mitchell Jacobs (bio) The beginning is perhaps more difficult than anything else, but keep heart, it will turn out all right. In gold script, any sentence by itself on a purple wall is about life. But was it "all right"?As if he didn't famously… Google tells me Vincent was writing his younger brother Theo who'd started a new job. Words of quick comfort. That's all. In the vast room, irises tongue open across all surfacesto rhythmic synth, quivering on the cheek of a woman taking a selfie against the wall, And look, Theo died six months after him, stricken with grief and also late-stage syphilis. All right, all right… on children splayed out like starfish, the floor blue and blooming but never quitethat moment of blue stillness, and then the garden melts into brushstroke crowscomputer-edited to flap. I re-open yesterday's email to my younger brother: It took real persistence to extend your flow to this length. Which was not about life but about his latest rap lyrics,sent to me as grainy jpegs: pages inked edge to edge with interwoven rhymesthat I could map, yes, grazing each pointillistic syllable but unable to hear the lushcomposite indigo wringing the night sky radiant— End Page 14 would I have been that foolwho used a painting to fix a chicken coop, but now it's worth 50 million dollars?Of course not. We would have plucked Sunflowers from his sensitive hand,given him the cash, a hug, maybe it would save him. We'll buy a mug from the gift shop.A yoga mat. Pour one out with old Vincent. Lie down with old Vincent.GOTTA GOGH? reads the sign for the restroom. And I remember that joke:Kill myself? Killing myself is the last thing I'd ever do. Google tells me Homer Simpson said that. The bandaged self-portraitmaterializes while horseflies buzz, before it fades into the faces of townspeoplehe met, some of whom disliked him. Something of too much care, or fear, in their featuresrippling and twisting—that by stepping into the work we step into his brain?—into triumphant abstract fanfare of technicolor paint. This song's my masterpiece, my brother typed. Each line's worth one million dollars. His fingers wrenched the patio table apart, punched through a window, and alsoadorn this handwriting with swirls and loops and serifs as the words go on.More beauty. More pressure. More— Somehow only now I seethe severed ear was not an act of art. A squirming sun setsover peasants and yellow wheat, while Édith Piaf who drank herself to deathsings, "Non, je ne regrette rien." I'll admit, it's beautiful to baskin this house of his mind, but I could not have shared a house with him. End Page 15 It's just, and don't get angry when I say this, I'm not sure what these lyrics mean. What is it you're trying to tell people? My brother refreshes his SoundCloud, waiting for a single download.When he offers me his roll of pages, like a bouquet plucked from winter,I look for a gold coin to place in his rough hand. End Page 16 Mitchell Jacobs Mitchell Jacobs is a writer from Minnesota with work in journals such as Black Warrior Review, The Massachusetts Review, Ploughshares, and The Southern Review, as well as on the Slowdown podcast. He is currently a PhD candidate in creative writing at the University of Southern California, where he serves as one of the editors at Ricochet Editions. Copyright © 2024 Pleiades and Pleiades Press