By The Landlord
“It's so fine and yet so terrible to stand in front of a blank canvas.” – Paul Cezanne
“The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamouring to become visible.” – Vladimir Nabokov
“I only type every third night. I have no plan. My mind is a blank. I sit down. The typewriter gives me things I don't even know I'm working on. It's a free lunch. A free dinner. I don't know how long it is going to continue, but so far there is nothing easier than writing.” – Charles Bukowski
“Writings scatter to the winds blank cheques in an insane charge. And were they not such flying leaves, there would be no purloined letters.” – Jacques Lacan
“The great appeal of the doctrine that the mind is a blank slate is the simple mathematical fact that zero equals zero.” – Steven Pinker
“I always thought I'd like my own tombstone to be blank. No epitaph, and no name. Well, actually, I'd like it to say ‘figment’.” – Andy Warhol
“Every new album for me is a blank book of stories to write.” – Laufey
“An actor is an actor is an actor. The less personality an actor has off stage the better. A blank canvas on which to draw the characters he plays.” – Arthur Lowe
“I am a blank slate - therefore I can create anything I want.” – Tobey Maguire
Ever feel like you are staring at an empty page or a blank canvas? Is your mind drawing blanks, and void of ideas? That's me, initially most mornings, especially as I set about creating this weekly feature. Yet it's a strangely paradoxical phrase, to "draw a blank", particularly as it implies actively creating and depicting something. And yet out of the dark soil of temporary despair, watered by a deadline, a creative drive, and a hungry readership, something always takes root and begins to show a green shoot.
And that's where this slightly offbeat song topic comes from, reversing the energy of the metaphorical black, or indeed blank hole. And we've all been there - sometimes thematic topics prompt an initial response of feeling stumped, but this week it literally is about blanks, empty spaces or containers, wishing to be filled, enriched, poured into. So this isn't so much about nothingness per se, or specific sorts of holes, which may already contain something. Both of those topics of which have previously come up.
So songs could be about that feeling of a lack of ideas or direction, or a sense of feeling lost and clueless, blank expressions, but all sorts of blank spaces might call out in lyrics, perhaps writing paper or a computer screen, an art canvas, but also blank forms, slates, or more promisingly, open-ended cheques, crosswords or other puzzles, empty buckets or other real or virtual containers, or anything else that occurs to you.
And then, miraculously, from the mind having initially gone blank, suddenly that void is filled with ideas and lyrical idioms or other contexts that could have other associations - point blank, shooting blanks, blank looks, or even more specifically, mentions of the post-punk transgressive Blank Generation, which could be the literary scene of 1970s American post-punk or transgressive fiction writers, or the music of Richard Hell and the Voidoids, to the earliest of the released low-budget DIY punk rock films from the No Wave scene in New York City in the mid-70s inspired by Jean-Luc Godard, and with that title of 196 filmed by No wave cinema filmmaker Amos Poe and Ivan Kral from the Patti Smith Group, and another film of the same title featuring Richard Hell in 1980.
Richard Hell …
Out, then, of that void something, somehow always comes. And as well as those above, there's a crowd of other creative people making our Bar very busy with the subject of blankness in all forms. For a start, there’s a big table of writers. “I enjoy the freedom of the blank page,” declares the upbeat Irvine Welsh, still enjoying last week’s ecstasy topic.
“Having a blank slate is sometimes as daunting as it is exciting,” says the comic book artist Joe Madureira.
American film-maker Barry Jenkins admits that: “As a writer, a blank page will humble the hell out of you. It always does, and it always will.”
And here’s author John Updike, who personifies the blankness like this: “Each morning my characters greet me with misty faces willing, though chilled, to muster for another day's progress through the dazzling quicksand the marsh of blank paper.”
Best-selling author Dan Brown is also in the house, bleary-eyed from a long session: “I still get up every morning at 4 A.M. I write seven days a week, including Christmas. And I still face a blank page every morning, and my characters don't really care how many books I've sold.”
Another huge seller, Ian Rankin, agrees: “No matter how many awards you've won or how many sales you've got, come the next book it's still a blank sheet of paper and you're still panicking like hell that you've got nothing new to say.”
Playwright Thornton Wilder displays more open, and optimistic outlook, but also admits some of it is out of his control: “Many plays - certainly mine - are like blank cheques. The actors and directors put their own signatures on them.”
And here’s the historian and novelist Peter Ackroyd, who describes the immersive ness and circularity of the whole process: "I just tend to believe in things when I'm writing them. For instance, when I was writing Doctor Dee I believed in magic. And when I wrote Hawksmoor I believed in psychic geography. But as soon as I type the last full stop, I'm back to being a complete blank again.”
We’ve already heard from a couple of actors, the great British straighten of Dad’s Army, Arthur Lowe, and Hollywood’s Tobey Maguire, but here’s another star, Amy Adams, who describes how her face is usefully imperfect. Is it? She’s certainly not conventional, and a great actress: “Perfect isn't normal, nor is it interesting. I have no features without makeup. I am pale. I have blonde lashes. You could just paint my face - it's like a blank canvas. It can be great for what I do.”
Viggo Mortensen is in the house, but has other interests: “When I have a day off, I won't spend it at a Hollywood party. I'd rather be at home with paints and a blank canvas,” he says taking the metaphor into the artistically literal.
But let’s now also hear from a selection of musicians. Here’s Neneh Cherry: “I think I've always been slightly addicted to not repeating myself. When you're doing something the first time around, it's often the best time. I think 'Blank Project' is about carrying on. Its that thing where you're making something because you have to, but you don't know how or why.”
Neneh Cherry
The Australian electronic musician and producer Flume describes his process starting from a blank state: “I basically kind of play the computer as an instrument, I guess you could say. I guess I play the Mac. And how it works is, say - I have a program called Ableton Live. And, you know, you'll open it up, and it's just blank. There's nothing there. And then you start.
And here’s the truly original and alternative Arca, describing more of a mental state: “When I sit down to make music, I try to enter a flow; I always open a blank session and just make something that I feel like making. Only after a piece of music is done does my frontal cortex allow me to organize what might be trying to come out of my subconscious.”
But now it’s time the let the blank of your mind find its own fertile route of imagination with whatever comes from the void. Who will take the chair for this week's eventual place? It’s the super knowledgeable Nicko! Place your song ideas in comments below for the deadline on Monday UK time 11pm, for playlists published next week. The green shoots are on their way ...
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