Staring at Blank Pages

Some days are just devoid of any creative insight and inspiration. For no specific or special reason, it’s just empty. No matter how hard I try, there is just nothing.

Oh, how I wish I could just fast forward such days, or store them for those idle times when I can afford to be without inspiration. But, sadly we cannot, so I’ll just have to wobble through this day. Fortunately, it is only 24 hours long, and if I am lucky, I could sleep for about eight of those.

My interest in the creative process started many years ago when, as a student, I stayed with a friend. We shared his studio: I was writing a dissertation, and he was painting and sketching. Some nights the studio was a beehive of activities as we would work and chat and argue and sing. You could taste the energy in the room and it was very intoxicating. When we hit ‘the groove’, we could create well into the early hours of the morning and keep going until we collapsed from exhaustion a day or even two later.

Then often after such a frantic period, when he failed to show up at the studio for a few nights, I knew he lost his groove and that painting had become painful.

One night when he brought me a sandwich, I asked him: “What, for you, is the most difficult part of the creative process?” “This”, he answered, then turned around and smashed his fist though an empty canvas. “I hate blank surfaces. I do not know what to do and where to start. It scares me and intimidates me. Why must they be white?”

I watched him pour various layers of paint to a small blank canvas. The floor was covered in rivers of paint, all different in colour. I understood his frustration. I hate blank pages too.

Over the years since then, I continued to pay attention to the creative process, that of others and of my own too. I understand a lot of what is going on in those moments where it all just ‘clicks’. But I understand substantially less about why blank pages are so intimidating.

However, what I find completely perplexing are the empty days. The days during which, no matter how hard you try, there is just nothing. It may start like any other day with a few chores to do and a few places to go, but then it just dies. The mind goes empty and then switches off completely. I have tried many of my own ways to discolour the white canvass, but none of them worked.

Best just to pack up and do something else: Sleep, wash dishes, sweep the floor, sleep some more, binge-watch TV, visit a bar, visit a friend or read a book.

Accept that there is nothing in this day and to try to squeeze something from it will be no different than trying to squeeze juice from a sundried tomato. You might get a drop but it leads to the total destruction of the poor dehydrated tomato.

Cooking is no different.

Some days you can’t get enough, other days it is best set aside.

You might follow an old favourite recipe, but somehow, the dish does not taste the same; something is off, just not quite right. It is almost as if the pepper had gone stale and the salt slightly bitter.

But rest assured. It is not the pepper and it is not the salt, and it is not your recipe either. It is you, the creator that has lost your groove.

It is the pain of staring at a blank page and a white, empty canvas and before you start pouring buckets of paint onto your pretty floor, let me suggest you take a break. Not a holiday, just a break.

To adjust and calibrate and find a little equilibrium before you burn out.

For I know, I have done both: Burned toast and burned my soul. And if the former is nothing but a slight inconvenience and misfortune, burning your soul annihilates your groove.

Believe me, that is one epic emotional tsunami you could do without.

On these slow days, I like to cook food that gives me comfort. Moreover, I tend to cook food that I can store for a little while. It fills the refrigerator or the pantry and makes my feel just a little better off and slightly more content, and that I find helps me locate my groove.

• 500 mililitre water

• 500 millilitre lemon juice

• 850 grams honey

• 2 teaspoons salt

• 1,5 kilogrammes beets, peeled

• 1 tablespoon black

pepper corns

• 1 tablespoon fennel seeds