An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can

Host: The night was thick with rain, a slow curtain falling over the city’s windows, blurring the light into trembling amber pools. Inside a small artist’s café tucked behind an old bookshop, the air smelled of coffee, turpentine, and the faint melancholy of unsaid things. Jack sat near the window, cigarette smoke curling around his jawline, while Jeeny leaned forward, her fingers tracing shapes on the table as if she were drawing silence itself.

The walls were covered with paintings — strange, raw, and incomplete. The kind that made people feel something they couldn’t name.

Jack: “Jean Cocteau once said, ‘An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.’ Seems like the perfect excuse for pretension, doesn’t it?”

Jeeny: (smiles faintly) “Or perhaps the perfect truth. A plant doesn’t understand the sun, Jack. It just reaches for it. Isn’t that what art is — a reaching?”

Host: Jack chuckled, the sound low, dry — the kind of laughter that hides a bruise. His eyes, grey as winter metal, shifted to the painting behind Jeeny — a storm of red and black, signed only with an initial.

Jack: “No, Jeeny. Art isn’t some mystical growth. It’s a craft, a skill, a series of decisions. You can dissect it like music theory, composition, color balance — everything can be broken down. If artists can’t talk about their art, maybe they just don’t understand it.”

Jeeny: “And maybe that’s the arrogance of the observer — thinking every mystery can be analyzed. A mother doesn’t explain why she loves her child. A flower doesn’t describe why it blooms. The essence of creation isn’t in the reasoning, Jack, but in the feeling.”

Host: The rain outside thickened, a steady hum like a heartbeat. The light from the streetlamps flickered through the window, casting their faces in shifting shadows — half illumination, half doubt.

Jack: “You’re romanticizing it again. Every time someone says ‘art can’t be explained,’ it’s because they’re afraid of being exposed — of having someone see the wires behind the illusion.”

Jeeny: “Then explain Van Gogh’s Starry Night, Jack. Go ahead. Explain how a man drowning in loneliness could create something that makes strangers across centuries weep. Tell me how you measure that.”

Jack: (leans forward, voice lower) “Technique, emotion, circumstance — that’s how. He was mentally unstable, obsessed with color theory, studied Japanese woodblock prints. There’s your equation.”

Jeeny: (sharply) “And yet, when people stand before that painting, they don’t feel a lesson in technique — they feel ache, wonder, infinity. Do you really think he could’ve explained what moved through him when he painted it?”

Host: The steam from their cups rose between them like ghosts of old arguments. Jack’s fingers tapped the table — impatient, rhythmic, deliberate. Jeeny’s eyes glimmered, not with anger, but with a kind of quiet sorrow.

Jack: “So what, Jeeny? Artists are just vessels? Empty shells for divine wind? That’s comforting, sure — takes the pressure off. But the truth is, art is intentional. It’s constructed. Picasso didn’t trip and fall into Guernica. He designed it — every line, every symbol.”

Jeeny: “Intent doesn’t mean understanding. You can choose your colors, your shapes, your words — but that doesn’t mean you understand the force that makes them alive. Picasso painted Guernica because war tore through him. Because the horror needed a voice. You can’t explain that kind of necessity, Jack. You can only surrender to it.”

Host: A pause stretched between them — the kind that vibrates, like a string pulled too tight. The café had emptied, leaving only the low buzz of the espresso machine and the murmur of rain.

Jack: “You talk about surrender as if it’s noble. But it’s dangerous. Look at Hemingway, Sylvia Plath, Kurt Cobain — they surrendered too. The line between creation and destruction gets thin when you start believing your emotions are divine.”

Jeeny: (softly) “And yet without them, the world loses its color. Do you think the world would be better off if they’d painted nothing, written nothing, sung nothing — just to keep their sanity tidy?”

Jack: (voice hardens) “Maybe. Maybe sanity is worth more than beauty.”

Jeeny: (leans in, eyes burning) “Then what’s the point, Jack? What’s the point of living if everything you create is only to be analyzed, sterilized, made logical? You can’t chart a heart on a blueprint.”

Host: The rain slowed, then stopped. The air held that fragile stillness after a storm — the kind that makes even silence feel sacred. Jack’s eyes softened. His voice, when it came, was lower, rougher.

Jack: “I’m not saying emotion doesn’t matter, Jeeny. I’m saying that if you can’t understand your own creation, maybe you’re not the one in control. Maybe art controls you.”

Jeeny: (whispers) “Maybe it should.”

Host: Jack’s hand stilled mid-tap. The clock on the wall ticked softly, a reminder of passing time and unspoken truths. A faint draft slipped through the window, stirring a sketch pinned to the wall — a simple charcoal figure, faceless, reaching upward.

Jack: “So you believe artists shouldn’t talk about their art at all?”

Jeeny: “Not in the way critics do. They can share what it feels like, not what it means. The moment you start dissecting your art, it dies a little. Like cutting open a flower to understand its scent.”

Jack: “That’s poetic, but impractical. How do you teach art then? How do you pass it on without words?”

Jeeny: (smiling faintly) “The same way a musician teaches rhythm — by listening. By feeling. The language of creation is older than words, Jack.”

Host: Jack’s jaw tightened, but there was a new kind of weariness in his eyes, like a man realizing he’s been arguing against his own reflection. He lit another cigarette, the flame briefly painting his face in orange light.

Jack: “You know… when I was a kid, I used to draw. My father burned one of my sketches — said it looked like madness. I stopped after that. I told myself art was childish. Maybe that’s why I want to explain it now. Maybe I want to control what I couldn’t defend.”

Jeeny: (quietly) “And that’s exactly what Cocteau meant. The artist — the real one — doesn’t speak about their art because they can’t. Because the moment they do, it becomes smaller than the truth that made it.”

Host: The silence that followed was not empty but full — a living thing. The café lights dimmed slightly as the last of the storm’s clouds drifted, and the moonlight spilled in, cold and silver, across their table.

Jack: (half-smile) “So what do you suggest? That I stop talking and start… feeling?”

Jeeny: “Maybe just stop trying to explain what’s meant to be felt. Let the art speak for you. Let it fail, let it breathe, let it exist beyond you. Like the plant that never questions the soil.”

Host: Jack’s eyes moved back to the painting behind her — the storm of red and black — and for the first time, he seemed to really see it. The shapes no longer chaotic, but inevitable. The kind of inevitability that only comes when something has lived through fire and survived.

Jack: “Maybe the plant doesn’t discuss horticulture because it doesn’t need to. Its very being is the proof of the process.”

Jeeny: (nods, voice soft) “Exactly. And the artist — if they’re honest — doesn’t create to be understood, but to exist. To make their pain visible, even if no one ever names it.”

Host: Outside, the streetlights glowed against the wet pavement, turning every drop of rain into a tiny mirror. The air smelled clean, reborn. Jack crushed his cigarette, and for a long moment, neither of them spoke.

Then — a small, almost imperceptible smile broke across his face.

Jack: “You win this one, Jeeny. Or maybe we both lose. Either way, I think I’ll start drawing again.”

Jeeny: (smiles back) “Then maybe art just spoke for you.”

Host: The camera of the world pulls back — out through the window, past the dripping awnings, into the silent streets of the sleeping city. Inside the café, two figures remain — one skeptic, one believer, bound by a single, unspoken truth:

That art, like life, cannot be explained — only felt, lived, and shared.

And as the moonlight lingers on their faces, the plant grows quietly in its corner, unaware of the conversation — yet alive, utterly alive — just as Cocteau intended.