'Self-portrait with Bandaged Ear' by Vincent Van Gogh

Who could have known what you might do. Not you. But, perhaps, those of us who know what is to come to when the knife is wet and red and used. One stroke. The ultimate alla prima. We know the fascination with our own bandages and what they conceal. Bandages white like a primed canvas or a zinc white smear. Zinc white paint set like a cast for that impasto imagination where ochre petals fall and swirl, and are whipped upwards by our carousel galaxy and spin themselves into the stars above the asylum at Arles. Who could have known what you might do. Madman. Invalid. Infamous. Even now I can hear the thrum between those unbalanced ears – paint this, paint this, paint this.