The other night I woke up with powerful and dolorous images running through my head, accompanied by words to match. Words that rhymed. It kept me awake for some time, the images changing along with the words. And then there was this tiny impulse in my brain that said, ‘get out of bed and write this stuff down’. But it was after 2 am and I didn’t want to get up. So I ignored the impulse and rode out the words and images until they quieted down again. And I went back to sleep.
The next morning, I woke up with the certain knowledge that I had missed something important. I couldn’t force the words to return, and only the vaguest forms of the images remained in my head. A poem had been held out to me and I had pushed it away. This is fairly common, I imagine, for people who are not writers. They feel ‘oh, that’s beautiful, but I couldn’t possibly do that…’ – they feel inadequate to the task of writing poetry, so they let these impulses go. Don’t get me wrong – poetry is hellishly difficult to create. It’s not an art form I would wish on anyone. And I am not naturally poetic, though I can occasionally create a bit of doggerel. But the Muse doesn’t usually hold something like this out to me. I may have offended it.
I should say right here that I don’t generally hear voices or go tripping out on mushrooms or other drugs. I don’t believe that I write better while drunk (I’m not sure that’s exactly what Hemingway meant, anyway), and I am not prone to hallucinations. I am firmly grounded in experimental science and logic. However. I am also solidly aware that there is a side to Creation which we cannot normally see and does not impinge on our awareness often. This is only partly related to the theory of Dark Matter, and actually has more in common with religion than science. One of the things that I have come to understand (partly) is the existence of the Muse.
Many creatives throughout history have expressed the belief that they are not solely responsible for their work, especially the masterworks. They feel as if they have been given outside help – help which feels, quite frankly, supernatural or otherworldly. Elizabeth Gilbert did a wonderful TED talk on this very subject: Your Elusive Creative Genius – go watch it. In similar fashion, in The War of Art, Steven Pressfield goes into great detail about the Muses and insists that no truly creative impulse comes from any other source. I’m not sure how much I agree with either of these people, but I do know that I can, at times, have rushes of inspiration that come at me from some source that feels external to me. And I don’t feel that these sources, whatever they are, are embodied as shy, easily offended, virginal girls. My Muse, if she has a body at all, would probably show up as a snarky, vivacious redhead in nothing but socks and a smile. Not easily offended – but that does not mean it’s not possible to do so.
I have returned to my creative endeavors late in the day, and need to relearn some very basic things about the life of art. One of the (many) things I’m relearning is the need to keep a journal space or two open for sudden flights of inspiration. When ideas come flitting through my brain, I know I have to write them down quickly or risk losing them forever. (This does not mean the idea itself is gone, just that I won’t have access to it. More on this later.) But one of the other things I need to learn is to be available to the impulse whenever or (possibly) wherever it hits. I just installed a voice recorder app on my phone for this very reason. Let’s see if it works.
But, presuming they exist, how does one take care of a Muse? Leaving out cookies and milk, as one does for Santa Claus on December 24th, does not seem appropriate. And somehow, I don’t think leaving the window open at night is necessary to permit the entrance of a non-corporeal creature. It seems to me that paying attention and writing down the impulses, images and words as they arrive is the most appropriate response. More difficult to do with visual art, I would imagine, but a similar process. And while I agree with Mr. Pressfield (and others) that the best way to attract the Muse is to have it find you already hard at work, I don’t remotely believe that is the only way. As I noted before, I had a poem show up in the middle of the night while I was sleeping. Agatha Christie preferred to be in the kitchen washing dishes to encourage the ideas to come. Several writers and painters insisted they did their best work while (or just after being) intoxicated. You don’t have to be doing your art to have the Muse show up.
Finally, if (as I suspect) the Muse exists in order to bring more art and beauty into the world, and the way that it does this is to inspire artists, then it behooves us as artists to pay attention. Even if we do not eventually use every inspiration that comes our way, I think we need to listen to all of them and write them all down. We need to act on as many of them as we can. One of the few things we can do as human beings, which has any impact on the world at all, is to create. We can make all the money we want, be as popular as any movie star, sculpt our bodies and faces to any fashion – none of it is permanent. Only the things we touch, and change by touching, outlive us. The more beautiful we can make them, the more meaningful, the more that others after us will cherish them, the longer they survive. This, I think, is how to honor the Muse.
Be well.
bcd