Dear Hendrix,
As I write this, you are sleeping soundly on the sofa, maybe dreaming about the alphabet or perhaps Peppa Pig. When you grow up, I can’t wait to fill your head with my stories about touring the world with my rock band, playing at a soccer stadium filled with 40,000 people, and sharing the stage with some mind-bending musicians like Mavis Staples, Weezer, and Death Cab for Cutie.
But none of that would have been possible if I hadn’t learned the value of staring blankly at a wall. It might actually be my favorite activity. Because Henny, I have a confession: I love a blank screen, a bare wall, growing grass, and drying paint. To some, they’re mind-numbingly boring. To me, they sparkle, and they always have.
I don’t remember a time in my life when daydreaming didn’t take up a big portion of my day, if not all of it. Your grandma probably still has my old school report cards to prove it. I spent most of my school days drifting in and out of imaginary worlds. My teachers sounded like Charlie Brown’s—all mumbly and fragmented. As they’d talk in the background of my daydreams, I’d pop back into reality from time to time, wondering Who? What’s a Plymouth Rock? Fractions? Wait, what’s going on outside the window…?
There are others like me, too.
My favorite YouTuber, Michael Stevens, said, “Boredom compels us to try new things; a propensity to boredom is a sign of a healthy mind.” People have invented and discovered amazing things because they were bored. When you allow your thoughts to wander, when your mind becomes a blank page, you can conjure up images and ideas and futures. Some of the songs I’m most proud of writing have come from sitting and staring.
My band, the Black Tones, have a song called “Striped Walls.” I was inspired to write it while, you guessed it, staring at my bedroom wall. I had been gazing at the black-and-white stripes I’d painted a few months before, and then a lyric came to me—“Two chords for two colors / Don’t lose its touch / Feeling happy, feeling lousy / It makes you feel like you’re downtown.”
I picked up my secondhand banjo and began to strum the only two chords I knew. I’d never written a song on banjo before; the Black Tones traditionally play blues-rock. But fast-forward a year later, and there we were, tracking “Striped Walls” with super producer Jack Endino (!), and the song ended up on our debut album.
Just like that. Boredom, man.
That said, my hobby can catch some people off guard. There were times when your father would walk into our bedroom and see me sitting, staring, thinking. “You okay?” he’d ask. I’d turn to look at him and smile calmly, happily, like we were on a dinner date over candlelight. “Yeah, I’m great!” Early on, he may have given me a puzzled look—I know that look. It’s the look that says, Are you needing a straitjacket?
But it’s quite the opposite. Silence, peace, tranquility—these aren’t signs of illness, burnout, or mental exhaustion. To me, they are signs of health. Of course, your dad gets it now. He understands it’s just me exercising my imagination. It’s something I’ve done since childhood, and something I’ve continued to lean into, even into my thirties. I hope to be staring at blank walls until the day I die.
So dear, if you’re ever feeling stuck, uninspired, or restless, try this:
1. Sit down in front of a wall in a quiet room.
2. Stare, think.
3. Make up a world, a story, or an event you could be doing in a parallel universe.
4. Make sure it stirs you.
Embrace a blank page, Henny. A bare day, an unplanned road. Boredom is the perfect canvas upon which to draw with every tool of your imagination.
I love you,
Mom
Eva Walker is a writer, a KEXP DJ, one-half of the rock duo the Black Tones, and mom to her baby girl, Hendrix. She also cowrote the book The Sound of Seattle: 101 Songs That Shaped a City, which was released in 2024. Every month for The Stranger, she writes a letter to Hendrix to share wisdom learned from her experiences—and her mistakes. Read all installments here.
