I didn't make it to the whole week in bed, but was in there until 11.30 which wasn't too bad a sleep! Amsterdam was mine for the day and I went cultural rather than sleazy or druggy (though I did smell some dubious smoke later in the day as I walked through the streets) and headed down to the Van Gogh Museum. I am glad I made the effort - it's a really great attraction, packed with paintings by the latterly one eared artist and Dr Who star. Though I have seen quite a few of his more famous works it was really interesting to see the whole history of his art and find out about his life story. Which is also a signal lesson for anyone trying to do anything creative, because famously he only sold one painting while he was alive and died with little to no idea of how important he would become. But also he struggled to find his own style, being influenced by lots of different artists and movements. I quite like the drabness of the Potato Eaters, but it's only when the paintings explode with colour that you can see the genius of the man. I liked "Wheatfield with a Reaper" which he painted towards the end of his life when he was very depressed, although it looks like a positive image. Then again Vincent colours the sky in green which is a ridiculous rookie error. No wonder no one wanted to buy his stuff.
I then jumped in a taxi and went across town to Anne Frank house to see where the famous and tragic diarist (who in my own teenage diary I had said was lucky because she only got published because the Nazis had "blown off her tits" which is an insensitive and inaccurate appraisal of her life) had hidden for so long before being betrayed (by an unknown person) and being taken to her death.
As an adult I am a little bit less of a dick and was moved to stand in the very rooms she had written her account. The Holocaust is hard to comprehend or contemplate at all, but by seeing it through the eyes of one of the people it destroyed it suddenly comes into focus. The pictures that Anne stuck to her bedroom wall are still there and that is the point where, if you haven't got it already, you realise that this was just an ordinary girl whose world was turned upside down by a madness way beyond her control. Re-reading the book later I found myself wondering what became of Hello, who was Anne's suitor just before she went into hiding and had called round for her on the day she and her family went underground (or over ground). I suppose because burgeoning teenage love is something we can all identify with and you can imagine how much it must have ripped him apart when Anne was there one morning and gone that afternoon.
It is totally bewildering to think that any of this happened and heartbreaking that after all those months in hiding and getting so close to the end of the war that the Franks and the others were betrayed and, her father aside, all perished. Incredible that that late in the war the Germans were still diverting their resources to imprison Jews. Unbelievable that humans could do this to each other in the first place. I wish I could believe it would never happen again, but it seems we keep on making the same mistakes, despite this incredible testament to how basically the same we all are.
Interestingly for me there is a picture in the museum of Otto Frank (Anne's father) with a toothbrush moustache. So I am reclaiming it for him as well. There is also a clip of him being interviewed by Lesley Judd on Blue Peter, which seems impossibly from a different era. But of course if they had remained hidden all of them would probably have made it to the 1970s. Anne might very well be alive now. Yet in death she achieved an immortality that she wouldn't have had otherwise.
Like I said as a teenager - lucky.
Seriously, both museums are tinged with tragedy, but also monuments to the human spirit and human achievements. And Frank is a genuinely brilliant writer.
I didn't have too much time to think about it, because after dinner I headed out of town to appear on a live Dutch TV show to talk about Hitler Moustache (the DVD is out in Holland -
whereever you live you can buy it here). I shaved down to the moustache again, which seemed a bit odd after where I had just been, but then again Otto might have approved. Being on a TV show abroad is a little bit confusing and unsettling. I didn't know anything about the style of the show and the people on it, unknown to me, were famous to the Dutch. It's a hard thing to step into. It's also an interesting lesson about celebrity, because I was in the make up chair alongside a very attractive young woman who for all I knew might have been the most famous person in the country, but I had no idea who she was. The interview was very fast and the hosts didn't give me much room to breath. I tried to work in a few punchlines, but they were stomped on by the next question or fell flat (at least with the audience in the room), but it was great to get the opportunity and the people from the DVD company seemed happy with it. You can watch it
online here - I am at 23.48. The moustache was off within three minutes of my coming off the set.
It had been an interesting and diverse day with lots to think about. Better than staying in bed. Or sitting in a cafe smoking dope. Or sitting in a high backed armchair as a Dutch woman danced.
I will save all those for the next visit.
