# The song of the bird > [!noteinfo] > 16.11.2023 · #statement #art I began making art very early. At the age when one usually starts to confront the world, I gave it up. Later I took it up again, when I had to begin anew. I'm still at it, twenty years on. With art, I went as far as getting drunk and gorged on it. Now it seems clear to me that art will not save the world — this art. Nor this world. But perhaps it will give us breath to keep on hoping. I'm wary of art that claims to give answers, and I hold that swapping poetry for an astonishing product will not free us from blindness. I still admire painting, for as Joan Walsh Anglund[^1] wrote, a bird does not sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song. [^1]: Joan Walsh Anglund, *A Cup of Sun* (1967); a line often misattributed to Maya Angelou.