Muses

I thought Valentine's Day would be a good time to send a big shout-out of love to my muses. Muses are so mysterious....I feel sometimes like they're half us, half part of the ether. We give energy to our muses to make them strong. And we have to make sure not to piss them off since they've chosen us to mentor. I used to get such strange looks from some of my teachers when I would talk about muses. One of the common comments I received was: "Don't you think giving credit to muses takes away from what you bring to the work?" No, not at all. To me, everything and everyone and everywhere are connected. Thus, we're all pieces of energy, sometimes on the same plane, sometimes not. We have "give and take" relationships with our muses. They supply us with creative energy from the ether, and we respect this energy by following through with our talents and art....Side note: This energy doesn't always just have to be about muses. We assign power, that spark of Life, to books and lamps and clothes and rings, etc....Some of these things are tangible, some not....Okay, back to the core....It's interesting this connection that I have with my characters in my stories. Amanda--the protagonist of the novel I'm trying to get published--is one feisty teenager. I didn't feel so much like I was writing about her as much as CHANNELING her, giving her shape and form on the written page. If we all exist in various incarnations, who's to say some of us don't take the form of a character in a book? This doesn't make them any less real. They laugh, cry, hope, despair, and love. I cried so much when writing Amanda's story. She was helping me just as much as I helped her. And she came down through my muses because she knew that I--this Nathan incarnation--was the one to best empathize with her story and bring it to light. This is another comment from the cynical: "Don't you think these ideas are all coming from your head? Don't you take responsibility for what you're writing?" Of course I do. As artists, of whatever variety, it is our duty to flex our bodies/hearts/minds/souls so that we can best let in our "characters" (these characters can be novels' protagonists; tapestries weaved on looms; graceful dance moves). If we don't keep "working out," we lose focus, piss off our muses AND our "characters"....That's not to say they go away. They chose us for a reason. But they do get all huffy and turn their cold shoulders for a while. Just be careful. They love us. They are always here, inside and outside of us. Honor them as you want them to honor you. Tori says her songs speak to her in filaments of light; I think that's a great visual representation for what we have to let into our pores.