It's interesting, the blank page.
It never feels inviting. It feels
like a contained sea of nothing. I used to form black swirling and
spiky shapes, elegant stretches of lines and forms, creating
masterpieces of pen, with symbols threaded throughout. Just drawing,
just colouring; giving the impression of darker shades. Like henna on
somebody's hand, patterns on a blank sheet of paper.
But then words were invented and
words became sentences – which in my mind, was a mistake. I mean
what good have sentences done for anyone? I mean yes, sentences
themselves are harmless enough, right up until the moment when
they're not. Same as everything really. But what's dangerous about
sentences, and the possibility to say anything within them, is that
people don't. Sentences create a void, because they are fixed and
often simple. Even if they hint, they throw some grey shadows onto
the thick black unknowable substance of silence, they can never truly
sum up the void. For it is a void. By creating sentences, we created
silence – the ability to say and the ability not
to say. And it's what is not said that is the most powerful weapon of
all.
Sentences
were designed to create some form of reassurance – they provide a
definite answer, and if this is not given (it is only one possible
option of a thousand million darker ones after all), then another's
mind will rummage hands through the thick black sludge of the void.
The
void is opaque and yet for some it is grey. That's because if you
separated some of it, swung it into a clear container and held it up
to the light to see your options, to look at what you might not say,
it would appear lighter. The light would form a shield of hazy
particles around it, and you might think it looks grey. When it
isn't. It's only opaque, all it can ever be.
It's
hardest for those faced with blank pages. Blank pages instruct
sentences, and formless yet forming shapes are beautiful but conduct
neither what it said nor what is not said. The sentences instructed
by the blank pages (though some of them have lines – praise be to
whoever invited lines, at least they encourage some form of terrible
creativity) have to be fixed. They can be tweaked but they are fixed.
Speech is written through those sentences, sometimes. But it is
placed onto sentences commanded, not through them. Speech is clever
enough not to be recorded accurately or written down. Even if it is
close – speech is a facsimile.
For
you cannot have speech without the silence. It is what is not said
that is more, most, powerful, and you can say what is not said, or
hint through fixed body language and vague suggestions you're not
entirely sure of yourself what is not said, but it is not what is not
said. For what is not said contains such a myriad of options –
although the word 'myriad' makes it feel far too colourful. So how
can anyone pinpoint suggesting what is not said? They may
occasionally pinprick success, by saying what is said in such a way
it is implied what is not. But this is a rare occurrence.
We
cannot truly know how people think, or what they are truly like, and
characters are just as secret. If you have them say everything they
are weak, but no one ever says everything.
No
one ever says anything really.
It
is when you sense a sense of someone else's anything that you know
someone else's opaque sludge of what is not said has been slightly
diminished.
But
for the majority we cannot capture silence. We have never been able
to capture the impossible.
by
JR
Mortimer
2014
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