What do blank journals, a silent musical composition, white canvas, and still water have in common? They are all blank slates, receptive, and open to possibilities.

Blank Journals

In her latest book, When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice(paid link), Terry Tempest Williams explores how women especially find their voice. The thread running through all fifty-four essays is the story of her mother’s blank journals. Williams was bequeathed her mothers’ journals after her death. She did not even know that her mother kept journals. When she found them they were all blank.

Williams says that in the Mormon tradition, women are expected to raise their children and keep journals. Her mother’s blank journals were possibly an act of defiance. Throughout the fifty-four essays, Williams speculates on the meaning of those blank journals. In one essay, she talks about the importance of silence and stillness – creating a blank slate – in order to allow one’s voice to emerge. She references John Cage’s musical masterpiece from 1952 – 4’33” – four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence. Listen for the accidental sounds. What do you hear?

Did you hear the sounds that emerged – paper rustling, people shifting, etc? The piece created itself spontaneously. When I listened, I was outside in my backyard and the sounds of birds and crickets and neighbours talking filled the piece.

“Within silence our voice dwells. What is required is that we be still. We focus. We listen. We see and we hear. The unexpected emerges. John Cage sees the act of listening as the act of creation.”

A White Canvas

Cage was inspired by Bob Rauschenberg’s White Paintings (1951), which one critic called “landing strips for light and shadow.” Just like Cage’s musical piece, the white paintings were continuously being created, as light and shadow played with the surface.

Still Water

Water is another example of a blank slate. When it is still, it reflects everything around it like the image at the top of this post. For me, contemplative photography is a practice for creating that blank slate, for letting what is within me merge with what comes up spontaneously in the environment.

How does one create this blank slate so that the creative voice can emerge? I think it requires presence, vulnerability, transparency, stillness, non-judgment, and trust. What about you? Can you think of anything else?

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