We Are All Philosophers
Letter from the Editor as published in the March 2024 issue
I have been chasing a creative life for as long as I can remember and I find myself magnetically drawn to others who are on the same quest. As a multi-passionate person, I’m blessed by never getting bored while simultaneously being bombarded with new, exciting ideas. (How to do you think Blank Spaces came to be?)
I’ve recently reignited a new focus on fiction and am deep in the trenches of drafting a manuscript. The process of writing is hard and exciting and it’s about showing up even when I don’t feel like it. I want the instant gratification of an Instagram like, but a large writing project is a grind that might span years and it can feel incredibly lonely—even for someone wired to be really good at aloneness.
It feels powerful to allow this project to take up space. It feels like I’m honouring an important part of my identity to lean in and watch it grow. As Margaret Atwood taught us, “a word after a word after a word is power.”
Just as a painter might find the act of moving a brush across the canvas to be a cathartic exercise, so too do I find the act of writing to be therapeutic as I use a fictional plot to explore some of my own big questions about the world and my place in it.
As I became conscious of what I was doing, I tried to unpack it on a podcast episode*, and this is where I landed:
“Maybe art is the vehicle through which we can be evangelists for our own message… That’s what we’re all doing—every artist, every writer, every poet—we’re all just trying to share our view of the world. Not to gain followers or bring people into our camp, but just to prove to ourselves that what we believe matters on a grander scale. And maybe that’s narcissistic, but I don’t think so. I think it’s just a human need to not be alone, and that’s all we’re doing with our storytelling: we’re perpetuating the things that matter to us. On some level, every artist is a philosopher.”
I really think that’s the crux of it; that is why we are here. To create and to chase meaning. We see this in action every day, in articles and books and galleries and Facebook captions. And we see it here, within these pages, whether conscious or unconscious; every piece of art is an expression of searching, it is an offering of meaning, of questions and answers and divine exploration.
Is there anything more sacred?
So to all you chasers of creative living, I see you. What you’re striving for is beautiful and in many ways, I hope you never find the end of that rainbow because to find it means to stop reaching for it, and if you ever stop, the world will lose a little bit of its colour.
Keep asking why. Keep showing up. Be the philosopher who is forever aspiring, leaving art in your wake like so many footprints to inspire those who follow behind.
Alanna Rusnak
Editor in Chief, Blank Spaces
