Sometimes I wonder if I’m overstimulated. Right now I’m watching a soccer game via internet stream on my laptop, with the text edit window overlapping just so. Wednesday I finished Cormac Mcarthy’s “All the Pretty Horses”, and I’m now reading Hemmingway’s “A Moveable Feast”, along with history books on Matisse and Van Gogh. Victor Valdes, keeper for FC Barcelona, has a lump on the back of his head, which makes me wonder why he’s chosen the shaved-head look. My very special friend pointed out to me today that I’ve got a similar lump on the back of my head. I was in Alameda this morning, walking the beach, and then I got in my car and drove the 10 miles home, using three different freeways and listening to two different radio stations and finally my favorite Bob Marley song “coming in from the cold”. Yesterday I watched “Magnolia” and today I’m going to start watching “Boogie Nights”.

So that’s a lot. Van Gogh wouldn’t have had that much stimulation in a year. He listened to music only when he heard it live, or perhaps on special occasions via phonograph. He travelled by train or by foot, and his only source of entertainment was reading.

We’re both after the same thing, Vincent and me. I want to make really good paintings, and lots of them. So I wonder if I’m better off than Van Gogh? Do my endless available stimuli help me make good art? I often feel like I’m trying to block out the outside world. I only lasted two years in the relatively calm city of San Francisco, and I don’t really like amusement parks or big music festivals. I like tea and books and a steady diet of quiet nights at home. I boycotted Facebook then text messaging then smart phones in the interest of “keeping it real” (before finally caving on all three fronts). I’m frequently referred to as “an old man” thanks to my tastes and cynicism about modern society.

I’ve often dreamed of going back in time, like Owen Wilson’s character in “Midnight in Paris”. To southern France, perhaps, before it became a tourist destination. When the towns were small and unspoiled and the dollar went a very long way. I could paint and write letters and meet all the most important artists in the world.

Today I don’t even know who the most important artists are. There’s no way of knowing, really, because there’s no standard to meet, and there’s no envelope left to push. There’s just too much. People don’t know what kind of art they like, because it’s gotten so weird and out of their reach and they’d rather stick to TV shows and sports teams that are a little easier to identify with and are widely known and judged according to some consensus.

The twenties are awfully appealing, as are the 1890s.

Would Van Gogh want to come forward to 2012? If you told him he could listen to music on a headset while he painted, or take photos of his paintings at each stage and go back and look at them while he painted would he be excited? If you told him he could call his brother Theo every day or even Skype him and see his little newborn nephew from miles away wouldn’t he accept without hesitation? If you gave him the keys to a Subaru with all-wheel drive wouldn’t he load up his paints in the back and head for the hills in a hurry?

My guess is he would, and my guess is he’d fall apart. He could hardly handle going into town, or three days in Paris. The modern world would be too strong for Vincent, and he may not have made it even to 37.

Here I am, and I’ve got it all. With the internet I can look at any artist from any time and study all of their work. I can send pictures of my paintings to friends and get instant feedback. I can stay in touch with my family and listen to music all day every day. And I can handle it. I can skim through articles, mute commercials, and write while watching a soccer match. I can go to a crowded nightclub with eardrum-rattling bass and have a good time and be OK the next day. And when I need to, I can drive to the hills and sit by the lake and be alone with nature.

In “Midnight in Paris”, Owen Wilson’s character learns that we must embrace the time in which we live, because this is our time and we’ll never be satisfied with some other time. And, thanks to the DVD which I rented at my local Blockbuster, I can think about that and realize it’s very true for me.

This is my time, and I’m lucky to be here. Today’s society is my society, and the world that surrounds me is mine. I’m here to make some art, and for it to be real and true it needs to reflect the real and true place from which it comes. I can’t ignore things because I think they’re loud or silly or fake. The more I embrace and absorb what’s around me, the better.

In “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”, Bob Dylan sings

I’m a goin’ back out ‘for the rain starts a-fallin’,
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest dark forest…
And I’ll tell it and speak it and think it and breathe it,
And reflect from the mountain so all souls can see it…

The song details the depths of despair in modern society, and the terrible things he’s seen and knows. The final stanza, partly quoted above, is what Bob plans to do about it.

Instead of hiding away or going back in time, he plans to head right to the center of it all, to the heart of darkness. He’s going to soak it all up, and then he’s going to climb to the top of the mountain and he’s going to shine it back out to the world, showing that he is whole and alive despite all the darkness that he has seen and knows.

Now my task may be a bit less dramatic than that, and I may hold myself a bit removed from the darker aspects of the human experience, but the method for making good art, art that is true and real like Bob Dylan’s songs, is the same: soak it up and shine it out.

We’re alive at a turning point of civilization, and I want to be a part of human evolution, I want to help us take the next step forward. If we’re going to do so, everything must be seen, accepted, and loved. Nothing can be cut away or cast aside as too dark or too ugly or too loud, because everything is a part of us.

So bring on the stimuli! The books, movies, songs, stories, and memes of my generation and of every generation before. I’ll take on as much as I can handle, and I’ll nod along and do my best to understand and appreciate, and then I’ll paint and pour my whole self and everything that I know into the work, and what comes out will be both modern and my own, and that’s exactly what I’m after.