Something to say When I was at school and dreamed of being famous A chill went down my spine when my teacher told me That doing it was the easy part. ‘To make proper art You must have something to say.’ But aged fifteen I could think of nothing I could call my own. And why would people want to listen anyway? ‘Nothing catches your attention to get you started? You can’t draw locomotives all the time. Not if you want to pass your General Schools exam. Still Life perhaps? What can you see around the room? Everything can’t be boring. Other boys are working.’ ‘If you really can’t find anything to paint in here Then try the window. What can you see out there? Well, if nothing outside gives you inspiration either, Turn your mind’s eye inwards and create a pattern.’ (That’s what we called abstract painting then.) A bearded man glares at me from the art room wall His stony inwardness reproaches slackers. That alarming patriarch was called Cezanne. ‘The greatest artist of his day’, so we were told. Opposite Lac d’Annecy in reproduction, But that was all I had to go on. Too many bluey-greens For me. And where was the sky? Was this what it means To have something to say? Was he truly a great man? I look down at a sheet of paper with nothing on it, Terrified at my own emptiness. Nothing to say.
Peter Lloyd Jones 