Tabula Rasa

Tabula Rasa.

Every moment a blank slate.

This old mind scraped clean.

I face the empty screen.

What remains to be written?

Henry Miller at his writing desk.

Every artist faces the same dilemma. What to say? What to paint? What to create? Some minds search their murky imagination and find nothing but darkness, nothing but endless depths, without bottom and without treasure. While other minds are brimming over with so many ideas they cannot decide what thread to follow or what seed to implant. Yes, some gardeners have many fields but no seeds with which to sow them. Others have countless seeds but no fields. And so it goes. The seeds remain dry in their shells. Numerous fields still lie fallow. The poor artists—both poor in spirit and poor in pocket—praying for that long absent wind to fill their sails again. Their indecisiveness leaving many writers mute before the blank page. Dipping their brushes into a fresh daub of paint, a painter’s hand trembles before the canvas, unable to make that first mark.

A crucial ingredient seems to be missing. A lack of imagination in some cases. A lack of courage in others.

After a year now spent in my own creative wasteland, I sit here now, an empty shell, incapable of finding anything to write about. I want to plant flowers in this desolate place. I envisage colour, vibrancy, growth, abundance. I dream of creating a world in which I am comfortable living, a fantasyland peopled by children birthed from my own uterine mind. And yet, whenever I sit down to write, my confidence fails me, my imagination continuing its year-long game of hide-and-seek. Perhaps my seed is now infertile or has never learned to swim. Or else, maybe there is no womb in which to receive it, let alone one to gestate it to full term.

And so, with nothing to say, I write about the fact I have nothing to say. And with this, by some strange alchemy, it turns out I have something to say after all. Granted, it isn’t much, but it’s a beginning. Good or bad, I cannot say. The main thing is, the gears are turning again. Whether I can turn this lead into gold, only time will tell. Even a nugget of fool’s gold would be a result worthy of these mediocre efforts mining my own mind.

At this early stage of the game, it doesn’t hurt to aim low.

Indeed, I’m outdoors again, at The Italian Forum, enjoying the last rays of this winter sun. A dismal yet charming scene. A building developer’s poor attempt at transplanting a slice of Milan to the centre of suburban Sydney. There’s the green-shuttered apartment windows, the wrought iron balconies, the sun-faded yellow and terracotta paint. Several vacant shops and restaurants on the ground floor and the mezzanine surrounding the near empty plaza only add to the feeling of desolation here. The big hands of the clock six-storeys above me have long since stopped turning as if time no longer has any bearing here. The aged statue of Dante Alighieri looking out on the plaza, a hand clasping his cheek, still looking a little dejected by the sights. The fountain that once bathed his green copper robes is now extinguished, the basin at his feet drained to expose the paltry pump and the algae-green underwater lights. Yet, even in the face of this desolation, I return here for the third weekend running hoping to resurrect my creativity. Perhaps this desolation is the perfect complement to my windswept mind. Somehow, I’m still charmed by the scene. The open sky above. A few dusty pigeons. The occasional passer-by making me raise my head to watch them pass. Young and old, I observe my fellow citizens. Pretty girls with canvas tote-bags and colourful dresses, inspiring my lusty amorousness. Strangers of various age, making me wonder at the tales they keep secreted inside them.

Across the way, at a long table, two young girls face me, their laptops open, as mine is, tapping away on their keyboards, perhaps expressing their own creative frustrations. Off to my side, seated at another table, perched on his high chair, a vagrant munches on a stale bread roll. A long white beard, wine-red around his lips, brushes his bulging belly. His fingers are tobacco-stained and his shopping trolley piled high with his salvaged possessions. And yet, alongside this obvious poverty, I notice that his gaze his steady and his expression tranquil. I can’t help wondering if he’s happier than I am, in spite of his surface wretchedness. From appearances alone, I would guess he has found a semblance of peace I haven’t yet discovered. It’s in his eyes, in the way they look back at me, as if to say, “I don’t care what you think of me, you frivolous little man. I’ve shed myself of all my petty ambitions.”

Yes, one thing is certain. He doesn’t nurse any desires for recognition, any dreams of creative glory. Which only raises the question, why do I bother? Writing a blog that will be all but a drop in the ocean. Another piece drowned out in that cess pit of dross called the internet. After all, I’m just another voice shouting out over the noise of seven billion souls, all hoping to be heard. Pray tell me, why is it so difficult for me let go, just like that hobo has? Why, even though we have the right to remain silent, do we feel the need to say anything at all?

Ugh, the artist is surely born under a dark cloud. Cursed from birth. Or maybe it's just the bad ones, those with fallow fields? To think, I once romanticised the failed creators who never received their recognition while they were alive. The usual candidates. The van Goghs of this world, the Kafkas, the Pessoas, the Lautréamonts. Those tragic figures who died in poverty and anonymity, only to be celebrated once they were snug in their paupers’ graves. Now, in maturity, my youthful romanticism struggles to survive in the face of two-decades of literary failure. Deep down, I’m aware that my manuscripts won’t be dug out of a dusty chest after I pass away, like Fernando Pessoa’s, only to be collected into an acclaimed masterwork like his Book of Disquiet. Yes, the realist inside me knows there will be no Max Brod, who, upon my death, will promote and publish my work to the world’s acclaim. And hell, even if there was a Herr Brod to immortalise my name, what good would it do me? What pleasure would posthumous praise ever provide me?

Ah, but still this curse endures. This stubborn Taurean bull still sits here trying to spin these words into a bewitching web, and all for an audience of one. Indeed, what to say, what to paint, what to create? The curse of all creators. Some want to entertain, some want to express a deeply-felt truth, others simply relish the mere act of creation itself. Naturally, the act of writing can be a pleasure at times. I’ll admit it. But it is also like pulling your fingernails out with pliers. And, like most artists before me, ever the masochist, I return to the blank page and try to find my voice. Naturally, not all creations are equal, and perhaps I can take comfort in this thought. The Creator, after all, gave birth to universes, galaxies, lions, women, flowers. And at the same time, she also created the worms and the fleas. With this in mind, while I might not create the contemporary equivalent of War & Peace, perhaps I might create the literary equivalent of an intestinal worm.

Yes, yes, as I mentioned earlier, it doesn’t hurt to aim low. Surely the intestinal worm serves a purpose in the Creator’s grand, unfathomable plan, perhaps one even higher than us paltry humans.

What to write, indeed. What to say? I’ve heard some argue, an artist must always keep their audience in mind. I’ve also heard others argue the opposite. For myself, for now at least, I cannot think of any reader but myself, and perhaps a fellow writer friend, who shares and understands my struggles. Yes, to think of an audience in my current mental state, I’m liable to exhaust my last remaining stores of confidence and finally fall to the pavement, mute. Therefore, I write for a single reader. Directing these words to my self and my self alone. At this point, to imagine an audience’s desires or expectations, I run the risk depleting the last dregs of my sincerity, and simply resort to hollow platitudes instead. And we can’t have that now, can we? Hell, if I can’t write anything readable, the least I can do is write something from the heart, bland or not.

At 43 years of age, (the same age I am now), it’s said that the late great Henry Miller threw his life overboard and left New York for Paris. No money in his pockets. No French in his head. His only possessions the suit on his back and the small fire that still burned inside his heart. He later wrote that he had to die to his old self before he could find his real self, his real voice. The first great work he produced, The Tropic of Cancer, was the result. “A gob of spit in the face of Art,” he wrote. “A kick in the pants to God.” The killing off of all his pre-conceived ideas regarding the artist and writer, even his concepts regarding his own identity. Murdering all his pretences and poses. Stripping his body and mind completely naked. Yes, he was prepared to live as a beggar on the streets of a foreign city, rather than live a lie in his home town a single day longer. And even with all that, he never lost his dignity. Not the false dignity bestowed by others, but his real dignity. That kernel of truth inside himself that he refused to let die. The immortal child, even, that still believed in something, that still wanted to dream in spite of society’s attempts to smother it.

Some argue the man was merely a pornographer, but they’ve obviously never read his entire oeuvre. Sure, the man enjoyed sex. But that’s no flaw. No, in my eyes, Miller will always be a modern day sage. In fact, what the heck, if I can’t write anything decent myself, I may as well quote the great man at length in the hope he might help make my point for me.

He wrote,

“I thought I was an artist. I no longer think about it. I am. Everything that was literature has fallen from me. There are no more books to be written, thank God.”

He also wrote,

“This then? This is not a book. This is libel, slander, defamation of character. This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty . . . what you will.”

Ah, and if only I could find the same courage inside myself. The courage to kill off all these false idols, the courage to let my real self bloom in this here weed-strewn garden. Like me, he also spent several decades trying to write, emulating the likes of Dostoyevsky, adopting what he thought was a literary voice. For years he lived in misery amongst his so-called fellow citizens. Decades of suffering that only produced more suffering, until he finally grabbed his balls in hand and leapt into the great unknown. I too have lived in a lukewarm misery these last two decades, numbing my pain and loneliness with marijuana and the humdrum routine. My friends have fallen away from me. I’ve worked in the same god-forsaken factory for 17 years, still too frightened to leap into that proverbial abyss. There’s a famous Zen saying. I’m sure you’ve heard it. “Leap and the net will appear.” But it’s clear I still lack that Zen-like quality Henry Miller found within himself at 43. I still hold on to the guard rail, peering out over the edge, afraid to make the jump. I’m attached to my routine like a young monkey clinging to its long-dead mother. I’m still too frightened to commit that symbolic suicide required for my rebirth. Heavens, even after 10 months of illness, I still haven’t died to my old self.

What will it take for me finally speak honestly, to live honestly, to live with courage and faith?

Miller spent years writing what he thought was literature. Writing fiction as the market saw it. Spinning his wheels. But only when he reached the limits of his despair and howled like a dog into the night sky, did he finally discover what he needed to say. No more fiction. No more literary posturing. He finally wrote from his guts. He finally found what to write about. Dozens of books followed, written with a sincerity so rare and admirable, that when I first discovered his words, I read everything from his pen that I could get my grubby little hands on.

What to say? What to paint? What to create? Maybe I should just take a page out of Miller’s book and write about myself. Just express what’s going on inside, without the false guise of fiction obscuring my deeper truths.

And voila. Would you look at that? Here I was, wondering what to say, and the process of writing itself has provided an answer of sorts. Yes, like a magic trick, the writer with nothing to say has since found reason to play this keyboard again as if it were a grand piano. I began with nothing—a blank canvas—despairing at the void before me. And yet, after a few bland thoughts, and a few observations later, I’ve found sufficient manure to fertilise this once barren, infertile field. As for whether or not these are flowers I now see blooming upon the page, or mere weeds, I leave that to my dear, non-existent reader to decide.

In the end, who am I to judge?

I finally look up from the page. The pale blue sky above—almost white—now as blank as my mind.

The spell is lost. For a moment, the scene warranted my attention. It gave me something to say. But just as fast as the flash has flashed, the sky fast turns blank again. Ah yes, the return of that famed tabula rasa.

Perhaps another cigarette and a sip of lukewarm coffee will dislodge some fool’s gold for your reading pleasure. Maybe there’s something else of note worth observing. My eyes caress the scene. A young couple, pushing a newborn babe in a pram, coming out of one the last surviving restaurants. In their wake, a middle-aged couple, the woman pushing an elderly relative along in a wheelchair. A new life fresh to this world, and, following close behind, an old life, now incapable of walking, coming nearer and nearer to the grave.

Really, what is one to make of it all?

In the meantime, the two young girls have closed their laptops and vanished from their table across the plaza. I find myself disappointed not to have seen them go. Even at a distance, it looked like they were both attractive and I was hoping to at least gain the short-lived pleasure of watching them moving. Admiring, perhaps, their choice of fashion, or the way it might have accentuated their bodies, even the way they wore their hair. Anything really to give life to these faltering words. But no, their empty table now stares back at me as if intentionally mocking me for the emptiness of my mind. And now, it is the old hobo’s turn to flee, almost as if all my new friends are suddenly intent on abandoning me. Yes, the old man rises from his seat, and on weary legs, moves off. Pushing his trolley with the broken wheel in front of him. Wearing his hunched back like a burden and his long grey beard like long-forgotten wisdom. Shit, and at this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if good old Dante Alighieri didn’t climb down off his plinth and abandon me too. Even the sun is fast fleeing, descending for the coming night, casting my table with a bone-chilling shadow.

A voice inside whispers to me to take the hint and leave. However, another more vigorous voice—the voice of the stubborn artist—refuses to be cowered. I left my apartment to come down here to write, after all. Sure, these words make a mockery of my earlier intentions, but am I already willing to accept defeat?

The cold wind has picked up and I’m now trembling in the face of it. And yet, still I remain, a soldier fighting an unwinnable war. Granted, the canvas is no longer blank, but that’s not to say these words are an improvement on that silent, simple white space that preceded them.