The Blank Slate Syndrome

Beginnings are terrifying. There is nothing quite as intimidating as a blank piece of paper, a blank computer screen, or a freshly primed canvas. I think it's the plethora of possibilities. Blank white anything can turn into a success, a failure, a surprise, a disappointment, a miraculous mutation of ideas. Someone once said that success frightens people more than failure. While I'm not sure if that's true, I think success is definitely frightening. Blank white is the essence of every "what if" question. What if what we create is fabulous? What if it's fabulous, but not what we thought, or not as fabulous as we thought?

And, to a certain extent, I think any creative person must train himself or herself to ignore or get past what I shall hereafter call the Blank Slate Syndrome. I'm calling it that because: A) it's got the word slate, which I have a certain liking for, given its lexical relationship to my surname, and B) I can also refer to it as the BS Syndrome for short, which references the cure for the Blank Slate Syndrome: BS.

The fact is, most of us creative types really don't know what we're doing. Every creative endeavor is a stab in the dark, if blank-white-ness can be metaphorically connected with the dark. Even geniuses feel like they're failing every now and then. Sometimes every second. The idea gives me hope as I start out on this slightly mad endeavor of keeping a creative blog. The scary secret: I've got no success stories when it comes to keeping a journal. And so I start this blog with the fear that permeates every blank canvas and computer screen: I could fail. Very easily. Very, very easily. So, I return to the solution I listed above: BS. Yes, this is it. Complete BS. Every word you've read thus far. It goes back to a quote that I love, from the TV show Doctor Who. A character accuses the Doctor of "making it all up as you along." And the Doctor says, "Well, yeah. But I do it brilliantly." And that's what artists, writers, poets, screenwriters, and musicians (especially jazz musicians) do all the time. They make it all up with the attitude that it's going to look (or sound) brilliant as they go. Being a creative person is a careful balance of enough humility to change things and a really obscene amount of vanity.

Case in point on BS and the Blank Slate Syndrome: this doodle.

It took about an hour, all told. I was listening to a lecture-type thing and wanted something to do with my hands that wouldn't detract from my listening (doodling helps with listening, by the way - audio memory is reinforced by visual memory). I opened my sketchbook, had no clue what I wanted to draw, and started moving pen on paper anyway. What came out was chaotic, insane, Dali-esque, and more brilliant than anything I've done in the last month. Although that's not saying much, because it hasn't been a great month, creatively speaking. But there it is: Blank Slate to BS to Brilliant Stuff. Or so I'm going to label it, anyway. And if you say it with enough confidence, people believe you. Blank Slate conquered.