Amusements

In general, I don't believe in external Muses. "In general," because because my pagan tendencies vary with the wind's direction -- or perhaps it's by bathetometric pressure. I do profess to worry the Muses will someday wreck retribution for my ribald account of their contest with the Pierides (a poem still unsold, darn it -- anyone want to publish 150 lines of Ovid as acted out by cheerleaders?) but this is mostly joking.

But their internal existence, oh yes indeed. Muse is the perfect label for a mental state: when a prepared creative mind, seeded with knowledge and sown with craft, creates something from nothing -- as if what comes out is breathed through one by some other entity. Not all creativity comes that way -- sometimes it's mechanical crafting, or slogging through sloughs of apathy. But the white-hot inspiration -- when it flows, when you're in the zone, when it's you and your creation and oh yeah somewhere around here there may be a real life but never mind that -- there's no feeling like it, and no easy description except by metaphor, so why not symbol it already?

Until recently, my Muse went unnamed. Not that I know her name now, but following beth_bernobich and ogre_san, I've started calling her Fred. It's more concrete, if nothing else. Fred, like most Muses, is a capricious elf, but she's fun company when she drops in.

All this longwindedness, by way of preface to a poll. O ye who create, be ye writers, artists, musicians, or flower arrangers manqué -- what is your existential take on Muses?

---L.