The Blank Pages

    A blank page.  A nightmare in a white dress.  Prison walls, freshly buffed.  The suffocation of an avalanche.  The stinging blindness of a dust storm.  Weather it.  If a silent page staring at you causes anxiety, then you’re in the wrong business.  Fear is your friend.  Uncertainty is the welcome mat into the dungeon of creativity.  Sacrifice yourself.  Meet it wild-eyed and screaming.  Otherwise, you’ve got no chance.

    It doesn’t matter if you do it in a fury with blind hay-makers, or with the quiet precision of a surgeon.  So many before you have laid down their swords.  They’ve relinquished their pen or their paintbrush, or their guitar out of the same fear that you’re feeling now.  Cus D’Amato said, “The hero and the coward both feel the same thing, but the hero uses his fear, projects it onto his opponent, while the coward runs. It’s the same thing, fear, but it’s what you do with it that matters.”

    Skip the rules and ignore the limitations.  Welcome the walls as they close in on you.  What better inspiration is there than the threat of death and disembowelment?  Make a party of this intimidating time.  Wrap yourself in the blank page like it’s the last coat in the Donner Party.  Don’t fight the shivering. It’s a necessary reaction.  The adrenaline will speak to you in tongues.  It’s up to you to interpret it.  It’s up to you not to retreat in the surefire face of despair.

    Failing isn’t the issue.  We’ve failed before.  Standing our ground doesn’t mean we’ll be crowned champion.  It might even ensure an ass whooping of biblical proportions.  Putting our name in that hat to battle the tornadoes in a stick fight, or a herd of bulls and bayonets using only the butter knife.  Stepping into the open arena, we might as well be pulling the lever to our own guillotine.  This disaster, however violent and unsuccessful it may be, is the source of all beauty. 

    The beauty, however must be spun of our own bloody webs.  It must be extracted like bone marrow and poured out onto the page.  Blood and marrow, vomit and guts — it isn’t enough.  It will sit on the white paper like road side entrails, awaiting birds of prey.  Left alone, it will spoil and stink and become infested with maggots.  Left undone, it becomes subject to scavengers and snake eyed opportunist.

    It’s more than blood and sweat and tears.  There are no slash and run victories.  It requires full effort not to be defeated every time you sit in front of something empty and daunting.  The price is a piece of your unleavened soul.  It would be much easier — it would involve much less agony to simply turn away.  Hide somewhere far enough not to hear the taunting.  To disappear, never to encounter anything so silent, daring you to create.  And that route would earn you nothing more than death.

    Explore it the barren landscape.  The wrinkled corners, the center where its heart would be.  It won’t lie to you.  But it won’t give you any hints either.  The responsibility falls on you, the creator.  The good thing about blank pages — there are plenty.  Each one more daring and perverse than the last.  All of them offering another opportunity.  How will you answer the challenge?

    When the dust settles, all of these pages will be read bedside as you breath your last breaths. They will be bound in some great booklet form, or strung together like a symphony and played back to you.  The hand of time will thumb through your work, swinging you into the ride of your life.  Only you will be blindfolded.  Bound and deafened.  A final reminder that you had your chance and it has passed.    

    When you are offered blank pages — fill them.