White. A blank page or canvas. The challenge: bring order to the whole…
  through design… composition… tension… balance… light… and harmony.
    — Stephen Sondheim, Sunday in the Park with George

I sit here, looking at this page upon which is written nothing. But is there really nothing here? Is the ocean solely its surface?

This gleaming page, mocking me with its expanse of icy stillness, is merely the frozen surface of a wild sea of ideas. Think of it! Among eddies and chaotic currents of imagination, everything conceivable stirs somewhere in those abyssal deeps. I know this to be true.

From a shimmering and unblemished page, any idea can be coaxed from the maelstrom that lies beneath.

I watch the roiling sheet and see something beautiful upwelling from the turbid depths. My pen moves, carving its likeness upon the page, racing to complete the transcription before it descends again, only to rise to another author in a future time.