The Muse
The Muse - Part I - She only reveals what she wants you to see
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The Muse
As a creative, you’ve probably experienced the whisper of The Muse. She is your guide and mentor. You can think of her as a sort of sage who helps you to access The Mystery and, to translate, to some degree, its indescribable transcendence.
She may choose to guide you deep within the heart of The Mystery, or, she may simply provide a clever turn of the phrase, a perfect brush stroke, or a brilliant idea when you least expect it. As Billy Joel said, “she only reveals what she wants you to see.”
However, the Muse can only help you when you are receptive. She prefers to see that you are devoted to her and to your chosen medium. The best way to prove this to her is to return to your studio to work regularly and often. A daily practice loosens her lips. When the Muse feels your devotion, she opens a poetic flow to the Mystery within you.
The art practice – the habit of regularly engaging in the creative act – is the oil that lubricates the hinges of the door to the Muses’ realm. The more you engage in creation, the further and easier those doors swing open, which enables her to provide more and more poetic light into your life.
She tends to approach when the clouds of your egoistic self have thinned. And, when conditions are just right, the two of you may merge into a glorious frenzied tantric flow of sustained creation. Those are the times when you may say, “it just painted itself.” I wrote a short story about the Muse and her flirtatious and confusing advances in the Romance of Art.
It’s not required that you believe in literal muses, although it is helpful if you simply act as if you do. The Muse may very well be your own subconscious self. It’s okay to think of her that way if believing in muses is to “woo-woo” for you. I find that it helps my creativity to believe in mine and trust in their guidance.
Steven Pressfield calls his writing career "a practice" and he says that a practice space – your art studio, your writing space, your dance area, whatever – is sacred. I agree with him.
The place where you create art is holy ground. It is sacred. It should be, if possible, "set apart."
I suppose that makes your art supplies – your brushes, paints and canvases – sacred objects. But, for them to become sacred, you must use them. What's the point of having sacred objects if you don't use them?
It is the act of playing your instruments, regularly, for poetic purposes, that makes them sacred: Mine include a keyboard, a computer, a kindle, and occasionally, paper and pen.
The Muse seems to prefer to have such sacred ground upon which to approach you. While she can be frustratingly silent, you can maximize your “Muse encounter surface area” by working regularly in your holy space.
All of the above means you need a place of solitude. You need a place where you can escape from the world for a while. For your studio to be sacred, it needs to be a place of solitude that is regularly used in a temporarily “sinless” state.
You see, you must also be sacred and holy, at least temporarily, to catch the Muse’s gaze. You must be purified, so to speak, and free of “sin.” It just the divine nature of creation. The Muse doesn’t like to visit when you are a state of sin. “Sin" literally means "without." And, for our purposes here, I interpret that to mean, "without the divine.” And what separates us from the divine in this very moment?
It is our own egos, our own worries and anxieties; it is our own petty and not so petty desires that take us out of the magic of now. These worries prevent us from achieving flow. Some artists call this flow “being in the zone.” The “zone” is a purified state.
Creating art is a time when we must drop our egos. We must drop our state of being in sin — without the divine — and then we may commune with the Muse. When our egos become chatterboxes, dragging us into an impure state, her whisper can not be heard.
To create, we must notice the beauty and wonder of now, and, ideally, drop into a flow state of communion with existence, where we freely experience our creative dance within it.
It is a time to allow our inner forces of order and chaos, of masculine and feminine energy – logos and eros – to enter into us, together, where they birth a new creation.
The act of creation works best when the feminine and the masculine embark in an equal dance. This required dance of masculine and feminine is obvious in the material world, when we create life — when we procreate.
But, in creation, both energies, in subtle form rather than material, live inside of you, and when you embrace both, along with the muse, they dance. Then we transmute the power of procreation into the creation of Art.
The logos envisions the future state and sets about exerting its force on reality while the eros energy keeps the artist in the present, noticing the beauty of the now, providing inspiration and guidance, while also providing the raw, natural, creative power that bubbles up from the Muse, and these two energies dance together to bring something out of the Mystery – to bring something new to life which you create in material form. You are the channel that transfigures the spiritual into the material.
So, as long as we keep our own egos out of it, the flow suddenly happens and we cease to exist as we float in the divine, timeless river of creation.
This communion with the divine, this time that we temporarily drop our "without god" state of sin, deserves to be considered holy. And, as such, the place where this takes place – your studio, your bedroom, your garage, your writing desk, your mind – is sacred. And sacred places are places of solitude, at least while doing the work.
Next week we’ll take a closer look at how these energies and your shadow side work to bring about inspiration and the risk of suppressing your need to create (spoiler - it’s not pretty if you suppress it!).
Sum ergo creo!
Clintavo
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Beautiful post, Clint. I'm especially vibing with this: "The art practice – the habit of regularly engaging in the creative act – is the oil that lubricates the hinges of the door to the Muses’ realm."
And this: "It’s not required that you believe in literal muses, although it is helpful if you simply act as if you do."
It will not surprise you to hear that ripples of affirmation coursed through me upon reading the latter.
Can I use your phrase “ noticing the beauty of the now”. This might be a title for a future Plein air exhibit. Thanks