The Blank Page

    

The thing about being incredibly insecure about the shit you make is sharing it is tough.  Especially old shit you’ve made.  I look back on stuff I’ve just written earlier this year and I get embarrassed.  I mean.  I get embarrassed whenever I read anything I write, but not in the same way.  Nearly everything makes me sick.  There’s an exception here and there, though.

I recently read this paper I wrote for a writing class I was in 2 years ago.  It was around the time I was ruminating on actually being a writer in the future.  I thought about it a lot.  It took a lot of deliberation to even get to the point where I said to myself that I wanted this, and then when I got there, there was even more deliberation on what it actually meant to be a writer.  I was scared and sad and down on myself and in that empty place I go to back when I was four crying on my bunk bed because I was afraid about what happened when I died.  Something I was discovering at the time that was incredibly comforting when in that place, was that I could work through things I was feeling and thinking; slowly letter by letter forming words on the screen in front of me.  This is among the more polished of those workings through of things.  This in particular, came from my writing teacher and the Woman who saved me from High School*, Melissa Hasebrook’s writing class.  Very typical of me at the time.  Barenaked Ladies quote.  A little too heavy on the film-noir narration.  Very little editing.  I couldn't help editing it a bit for this post. 


The Blank Page.
By Max Wilson

Wiped out down the stairs
I'll bet you there's a song in there
I'm not sure I'm prepared to write it down

That guy should be me
I'd look much better on TV
Then the world would see
That I can do anything…

Don't write me off as an also ran
Just mark me down as an angry man…
Life passed me by, but it's not my fault
I'll lick my wounds, could you pass the salt?

If I were the king
All my subjects they would dance and sing
They could kiss my ring
And kiss my ass
When I'm old and grey
I'll look back on my life and say:
"Give me one more day,
And still I'll never do anything."

-Never Do Anything (Steven Page/Ed Robertson)

By Barenaked Ladies

            Here I stare again, at the white nothingness of the blank page.  Not just any kind of blank page.  That empty void. Having nothing at all to fill it with.  No stories of stoic detectives hunting down twisted child-molesters, no boxers on the brink, biting people’s faces off, no rants on politics, no nothing.  I can almost feel the cinder block in my skull, weighing me down.  My neck straining to keep it held on my shoulders, in danger of falling on the hard wooden desk in front of me.  Cracking open like a thin glass vase.  Maybe then I can sift through the bits of skull and cement and find one possible idea or story, or anything to fill this blaring white page.  Gnawing at me.

     It’s hard to ignore it, it being the only source of light in my darkened room as I tap out the rhythm for that stupid E-Z-Pop-popcorn jingle out on the manila folder on my desk.  For a second I forget that inside of the folder is tucked another rejected story from another magazine; another round of the reality of the difficulty of making it in the writing world is fired in my chest.  I can’t stand being in that cold glow of the blank page any longer.

     Ah, what does it matter?  You think you’re going to kid yourself for another few months, thinking you’re not going to check yourself into the hotel of the billion other also-rans?  All the other assholes who thought they had the Great American Novel between their ears?  Then when feet hit the fire they whimpered and scampered into the corner, tail between their legs, with nothing to their name but a once perceived potential.

     Even if I reached that seemingly unattainable title in the sky, what would it prove?  I go down in history as the Twain of Twenty-Ten; college’s studying my work, scholars debating my philosophies, high-school students being forced to read my books for their Lit classes all the while being tempted to throw it down for playing Halo 7?  What would that mean?

     My dreary gaze is turned outside my window, to another blank page.  This time black.  Much more haunting.  Millions have tried to fill it with meaning, some brilliant, basing their philosophies on scientific studies, empirical evidence and deep thought.  Others not so much, filling it like the unwilling mouth of an eight-year-old alter boy, with lies based on lies, and stories with no roots to reality, and willing to kill and torture by the billions for the preservation of it.  Some never dwell on the meaning of it for a fleeting second, seeing it just as the backdrop of the boring, cliché-ridden play of their lives.  However, one thread of similarity is sewn through them all; they all are just the content of the brains of creatures with no meaning.  As you pan farther and farther away from Earth, it’s hard not to dwell on how goddamn small we are.  How the monumental nature of the universe is completely unaffected, and keeps on churning in spite of all the things that seem so important to us ants. Friends moving away.  A cute girl dumping you for a pig-fucking neo-Nazi. The cat you had since childhood being run-over by your republican next-door neighbor.  Your friend’s and family’s deaths.  Your own. 

    
    I turn back to the blank page floating over my desk and smile.  The universe could collapse upon me like the hungry mouth of a great, cosmic lummox, and I wouldn’t care one tiny bit.  It could be the Paxil talking, but I know for sure I wouldn’t sprint to the page, to write something, anything for my legacy in the universe to be known.  In fact, I might give out one final chuckle at all of those Falwell’s and Reagan’s, who sold their souls for a legacy, a shiny golden pyramid scraping the heavens, built on the backs of the unfortunate.  Just so their memory can remain as a tiny skidmark on the boxer shorts of history.  Them and all the people worrying every second of the day about what people think never grasped the concept that none of that matters, and that there’s something more out there in the nebula somewhere.

   
  So yeah, the world’s going to end, and the nothingness of the page won’t matter in the long run, and sure that’s scary as shit, but for some reason it’s not terrifying me to tears as of now.  Maybe for  there’s comfort in how small and insignificant this page is in comparison to the Scheme.  Whatever.  All I know is that I’m not going to spend my insignificant existence letting a tiny feeling of fear stop me from the pursuit of everything behind that title in the sky, and keep myself just a little bit longer, from that 6X3 pit of never done anything.

 
* Of course she’s not the only person who saved me from high school, Mr. Yant, Ms. Reese, Ms. Santer, and Mr. Stotts deserve oodles of credit as well, and I wish were able to better express how much of an impact all of you had on me.  All that said, it’s undeniable how much Hasebrook was McGonagall* to me.

*I use this reference knowing full well how much more awesome Hasebrook is than McGonagall, and how much I need to write about Harry Potter here.  People who know me know I’ve got strong feelings on both- “Oh my god I love this.” and “Oh dear god this is the worst thing ever.” sides of the debate.  …But when (highlight for spoiler lovers) McGonagall protected Harry from Snape in Deathly Hallows pt. 2, I got teary eyed.  A lot of times the parenty love between a teacher and student is unspoken; sort of showed in gestures, approaches, and challenges, and not in words and communication as much as other relationships.  Sometimes, especially for someone like me who is severely unsure and sees glasses as half empty as I do, it’s hard to see.  But that moment reminded me of when it's clear as day, and almost made me forgive all the slights Harry Potter made before, like...  This one thing I can't mention because I'll go into a blind rage and destroy the focus of this post and make it all about Harry Potter.  Okay.  This certain magical object used at the end of one of the movies that is never addressed ever again and has the power to solve every single problem in the series and the use of it is so silly and stupid and...  Ugh.  I'll write about it a few weeks from now.  Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a cupcake in my eye.  Love to all of you.