The Blank Page

Many people think writing is not a lot of work. Writers may lounge around, drinking coffee or tea, and they may have a distant look in their eye. Rarely does one see a writer physically writing, but I wonder - where do people think all this writing comes from? It amuses me, as much as when I heard artists classify engineers as being unable to appreciate art. A funny thing, artists who typically don't like being classified or categorized doing the same to others.

But if you hand an artist a bunch of spare parts, they may make it into a form that represents something. Hand it to an engineer, you'll probably get something that does something. Are functional works like an engineer would create something that could be considered art? It must be, or Shakespeare would be an engineer. And, if Shakespeare was not an engineer, he probably would not have been interested in a poetic turn of phrase or a powerful metaphor. He probably would not have used them. And so, he probably would not have written anything... and so we probably would never have heard of him. But we have heard of him - so he must have been an artist. An artist who created functional works.

There is no art, just as there is no engineering. There are blank pages. You can learn a lot from someone just by handing them a piece of paper and a writing implement and telling them to do something. Maybe they'll draw something - that doesn't make them an artist. Maybe they'll write something - that doesn't make them a writer. Maybe they'll stare at the piece of paper for a very, very long time and do nothing. What does that make them?

In categorizing people by what they do, we create divisions just as categorizing people and things in any other way does. Does the average person really care that scientists say that avocados are a type of fruit? Most people think that it is a vegetable - why? Are the scientists wrong? Are most people wrong? Is the avocado wrong? If there is one thing that is certain, it is that the avocado is not wrong. The avocado is. It probably doesn't care what you call it. Eventually, it will no longer be an avocado. How that happens is a matter of circumstance. Unattended, when no one is around, the avocado falls to the ground and rots. This is normal for an avocado, one would think. Maybe at some point between falling from the stem and hitting the ground it will ask itself what its purpose in life is, and whether it is a fruit or a vegetable.

Give an avocado a blank piece of paper and a writing implement and see what happens. I haven't tested my theory yet, but I am betting it would rather lose its composure than write something.

And while we're thinking of blank pages - have you ever seen a child not do something with a blank piece of paper and a writing implement? Certainly, given other options they may do something else, but with no other options what does the child do? Color. Draw. Why? And why is it that some of these children grow into adults who are completely stumped by the blank piece of paper?

Life is a blank piece of paper, really. Some people do nothing. Some do something. Those that leave a trail of things that they have done, on paper or otherwise, will be remembered. How they will be remembered is completely subjective. Those that do not leave trails are avocados, staring at blank pieces of paper, while others argue whether they are fruit or vegetables.