I find there’s something intrinsically terrifying about a blank canvas. (This one, thankfully, is no longer blank, so I can stop writing this from behind the sofa). And I don’t mean terrifying in the same way that clowns are terrifying, or white tights on fat girls are terrifying; I mean a more practical, corporeal terror; the sort of dread I feel as a left-hander when presented with a greetings card and an inky pen, or my sartorial panic in the face one of those little pots of UHT milk, or a sachet of mayonnaise when I’m wearing black slacks. My fear of blank canvases is one that I’ll stand by, so you can stop your scoffing right there; It’s the practical terror of a mistake not yet made – a protectionist fear of the inevitable cock-up. Because a blank canvas isn’t just the physical manifestation of potential to be realised, you simpering hippies, quite the opposite; a blank canvas is the grim-faced, stone-hearted mother of all potential fuck-ups. Like offering Amy Winehouse the keys to your local Superdrug, it’s an accident, just waiting to happen.
Now of course I don’t just mean canvas canvases; I’m not Rolf bloody Harris. I’m equally troubled by a new notebook, a blank Document1, with it’s blinking, expectant cursor and that smug cartoon paperclip raising its eyebrows at me and thinking ‘illiterate tosser’, an exercise book before its been spoiled by my pre-teen handwriting and penchant for smudgery. And more importantly than all these things, I’m troubled by that most chronological of exercise books; time. What if that blank canvas is an hour, a day, a career, or, even more terrifyingly, a life? Lao-Tzu gave us the philosophy that ‘a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.’ I’m not thick, I see the beauty of the sentiment, but something tells me that had Lao-Tzu’s first step been straight into a gigantic, steaming dog turd, he wouldn’t feel quite so optimistic.
A recent graduate, I am acutely aware of false sense of security university blankets its mollycoddled inhabitants in. When your greatest worry is where your next flaming sambucca is coming from, and why fat Tracey hasn’t called you back, (it’s probably because you’ve given her Chlamydia, you dirty little bastard) the real world, and the endless array of blank life-canvasses it presents you with, seems like a distant, fictional future. A future based on real events, but fictional nonetheless. Now a reality, my inability to pick a path no longer represents romanticized loucheness, the embracing of a bohemian lifestyle of gin and formation dancing more akin to a Baz Luhrmann film. To the contrary, it marks me out as a lazy tramp; the sort of coasting unreliable lowlife that would rather sit in eggy tracksuit bottoms and try to sneak out a cheeky wank in-between Richard and Judy and Loose Women. The oft-repeated promise that the world would be my oyster now hangs heavy over me, more a blood-curdling threat than a heart-warming reassurance. The problem with oysters, see, is that you crack one open expecting a nice shiny pearl, and more often than not you just end up with a mouthful of fish snot.
When everything that could go wrong might, starting at the very beginning suddenly seems like quite a shitty place to start, so Julie Andrews can shove that sentiment right up her arse, the smug cow. Starting in the middle, or more importantly, seeing through to the end, seems like a much nicer idea from where I’m standing.
I like to think this discomfort with the newness of it all is because I’m one of life’s ditherers – treating every tiny decision as though the world depended on it. Yet in reality, I am acutely aware of the fact that the fate of mankind isn’t balanced on the timing of my next fart; the intricate workings of the world, nay universe, couldn’t give the tiniest of fucks what colour socks I wear in the morning, or whether I should go for hazelnut or vanilla syrup in my latte. I am inconsequential; a freckle on the bum of humanity. And yet still I dither, in continual fear that my next mistake will be the one that tips the balance and sends it all to buggery. The problem with making mistakes is that, however fixable they are, it’s impossible to un-make them. Like the ghost of rubbed out pencil, they mark out your failures, jeering at you from the sidelines like the annoying superhero’s sidekick you wish would just get killed off.
Gondry, Kaufman and Bismuth’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was on the right track – though a mind-wipe smacks just a little-too-much of a papering over the cracks, if you ask me. What we need is some sort of Autosave for life; an existential System Restore acting as a get-out clause for fuck-ups. We’ll call it Mistakeaway, as in 'Ooh heck, I’ve just dropped my baby down a well – I’m popping out for a Mistakeaway. Want anything?' Those leaps into the unknown wouldn’t be half as scary if you were only a flick-of-a-switch away from innocence. Stuck in a job you hate? No problem – just alt-control-delete yourself back to school – Play-Doh is much more fun than telesales! Cheat on your missus? Just beep-beep-delete that guilt (and genital herpes) away! Let’s do away with mistakes, and culpability, and responsibility! Let’s do away with all that bloody dithering.
Of course, it’s entirely possible to do away with dithering without Mistakeaway. A friend of mine recently faced a potentially enormous, life-changing decision, and he explained it to me thus:
Before you go thinking I’ve gone all soft on you before I’ve even begun, I’m just easing you in. It is a blank canvas, after all. Now where did I put that Tipp-Ex..?
Now of course I don’t just mean canvas canvases; I’m not Rolf bloody Harris. I’m equally troubled by a new notebook, a blank Document1, with it’s blinking, expectant cursor and that smug cartoon paperclip raising its eyebrows at me and thinking ‘illiterate tosser’, an exercise book before its been spoiled by my pre-teen handwriting and penchant for smudgery. And more importantly than all these things, I’m troubled by that most chronological of exercise books; time. What if that blank canvas is an hour, a day, a career, or, even more terrifyingly, a life? Lao-Tzu gave us the philosophy that ‘a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.’ I’m not thick, I see the beauty of the sentiment, but something tells me that had Lao-Tzu’s first step been straight into a gigantic, steaming dog turd, he wouldn’t feel quite so optimistic.
A recent graduate, I am acutely aware of false sense of security university blankets its mollycoddled inhabitants in. When your greatest worry is where your next flaming sambucca is coming from, and why fat Tracey hasn’t called you back, (it’s probably because you’ve given her Chlamydia, you dirty little bastard) the real world, and the endless array of blank life-canvasses it presents you with, seems like a distant, fictional future. A future based on real events, but fictional nonetheless. Now a reality, my inability to pick a path no longer represents romanticized loucheness, the embracing of a bohemian lifestyle of gin and formation dancing more akin to a Baz Luhrmann film. To the contrary, it marks me out as a lazy tramp; the sort of coasting unreliable lowlife that would rather sit in eggy tracksuit bottoms and try to sneak out a cheeky wank in-between Richard and Judy and Loose Women. The oft-repeated promise that the world would be my oyster now hangs heavy over me, more a blood-curdling threat than a heart-warming reassurance. The problem with oysters, see, is that you crack one open expecting a nice shiny pearl, and more often than not you just end up with a mouthful of fish snot.
When everything that could go wrong might, starting at the very beginning suddenly seems like quite a shitty place to start, so Julie Andrews can shove that sentiment right up her arse, the smug cow. Starting in the middle, or more importantly, seeing through to the end, seems like a much nicer idea from where I’m standing.
I like to think this discomfort with the newness of it all is because I’m one of life’s ditherers – treating every tiny decision as though the world depended on it. Yet in reality, I am acutely aware of the fact that the fate of mankind isn’t balanced on the timing of my next fart; the intricate workings of the world, nay universe, couldn’t give the tiniest of fucks what colour socks I wear in the morning, or whether I should go for hazelnut or vanilla syrup in my latte. I am inconsequential; a freckle on the bum of humanity. And yet still I dither, in continual fear that my next mistake will be the one that tips the balance and sends it all to buggery. The problem with making mistakes is that, however fixable they are, it’s impossible to un-make them. Like the ghost of rubbed out pencil, they mark out your failures, jeering at you from the sidelines like the annoying superhero’s sidekick you wish would just get killed off.
Gondry, Kaufman and Bismuth’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was on the right track – though a mind-wipe smacks just a little-too-much of a papering over the cracks, if you ask me. What we need is some sort of Autosave for life; an existential System Restore acting as a get-out clause for fuck-ups. We’ll call it Mistakeaway, as in 'Ooh heck, I’ve just dropped my baby down a well – I’m popping out for a Mistakeaway. Want anything?' Those leaps into the unknown wouldn’t be half as scary if you were only a flick-of-a-switch away from innocence. Stuck in a job you hate? No problem – just alt-control-delete yourself back to school – Play-Doh is much more fun than telesales! Cheat on your missus? Just beep-beep-delete that guilt (and genital herpes) away! Let’s do away with mistakes, and culpability, and responsibility! Let’s do away with all that bloody dithering.
Of course, it’s entirely possible to do away with dithering without Mistakeaway. A friend of mine recently faced a potentially enormous, life-changing decision, and he explained it to me thus:
The fact that it’s so hard to decide just shows me that there isn’t a right answer. Whatever I choose will be right in it’s own way.(I know what you’re thinking – self-righteous tosser, right? No? Just me? Tough crowd…) But I think he was onto the right idea. Sometimes you can’t always see the bigger picture, and every now and again the box is a little too large to think outside. So you weigh it up, and you take a risk. Fail, and you pick up the pieces and you start again. Different canvas. Different picture.
Before you go thinking I’ve gone all soft on you before I’ve even begun, I’m just easing you in. It is a blank canvas, after all. Now where did I put that Tipp-Ex..?
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