There is a muse

There is a muse, but he’s not going to come fluttering down into your writing room and scatter creative fairy-dust all over your typewriter or computer station. He lives in the ground. He’s a basement guy. You have to descend to his level, and once you get down there you have to furnish an apartment for him to live in. You have to do all the grunt labor, in other words, while the muse sits and smokes cigars and admires his bowling trophies and pretends to ignore you.

Do you think this is fair? I think it’s fair. He may not be much to look at, that muse-guy, and he may not be much of a conversationalist (what I get out of mine is mostly surly grunts, unless he’s on duty), but he’s got the inspiration. It’s right that you should do all the work and burn all the midnight oil, because the guy with the cigar and the little wings has got a bag of magic. There’s stuff in there that can change your life. Believe me, I know.

Stephen King, On Writing, p. 145.

I’ve met some exceptional people since starting this blog, and one of them inspired my muse this week. It seems that hers had gone missing, and I could just feel the butterflies of longing, sorrow, and a little fear as I read her blog.

I’m sympathetic. Quite sympathetic, having just come out of a dry place myself.

I’ve noticed that, in my own life, when the Muse is silent, the whole house is silent. That is, the Muse is AWOL and the gods seem to have gone with her. My spirit and my imagination are silent as a void moon. I also usually do not dream during these times, signifying that my unconscious is in on it, too. The deep well into which I lower the bucket and bring out living waters seems to have gone dry. I can hear the bucket clanking against the bottom of the well. Ghosts rattling chains.

the muse leaves: we become boring

In their fascinating look at psychotherapy, We’ve Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and the World’s Getting Worse, James Hillman and Michael Ventura discuss why much psychotherapy is useless (or worse) at helping people who are interested in transcending consciousness–becoming whole and alive.  They say that the very process of therapy, the “processing” therapists are trained to demand, works against the numinous and esoteric self. This principle applies both in and out of therapy–that is, as a culture we ‘process’ everything rather than simply letting it be.

Some stuff is not meant to be understood, translated, processed, categorized, or even transformed. Trying to manipulate it is counter-productive to getting it to work for you. Hillman explains:

“Either I can use it or I can get rid of it, but it’s fucking inefficient to have it around where it’s not usable but it’s still there.” This is what makes us, Americans, white Americans, psychological amateurs and innocents. We don’t have enough stuff in the psyche, we keep getting rid of the ore! We’re not psychologically sophisticated people.

I’d rather not say is it or isn’t it processing. I’d rather say, “What happens if you call it processing?” And you described what happens, you either try to get rid of it or make it useful. So it’s exploitative. The notion of transformation that dominates therapy: transform something useless into something useful.

Hillman & Ventura, p. 33.

Ventura agrees that this approach to understanding exposes “[…] a consumer’s ideology. You’re consuming your psyche, as both a consumer and as a carnivore,” to which Hillman adds,

“And also as an industrialist: you’re making a profit out of it” (p. 33).

“And the psyche doesn’t like that,” Ventura says, “So what it says is, ‘Okay! I’ll make you boring‘” (p. 34).

And this is how it happens that the Muse leaves us alone, and we become boring.

This act of objectifying the Muse (also the Self) and luring people away from the vibrant unpredictability of the psyche is a stance against it. It only drives the Muse back to its dark places and makes me boring.

inviting dialogue with the muse

In his marvelous book, Healing Fiction, Hillman recounts the dialogue between one of his clients, a writer, and the writer’s Muse or “soul figure,” named Agatha. According to Hillman, this writer, William, “had been a successful journalist who had more intelligence and talents than his work had yet showed […] His writing was utterly cramped and he was ruled by moods, sprees, and hypochondria. In this condition he began his letters to his soul” (Hillman 89).

William asks Agatha, his soul figure, “tell me what you want” (Hillman 90). To this, Agatha responds:

Dear William, You ask what I want. I need your companionship as you need mine. I want your love and devotion. You must dedicate your life to me and in return I will give myself to you. But you must discover how to come closer to me. I can’t tell you that. You must make the decision yourself. This is also how you can find out about your vocation which has been so troubling you lately.

Since I’ve seen what you have been doing today, will you permit me to comment on it? You have a good idea to write about, but do it from within. Put soul into your writing. Why not let your imagination run wild again? What you were writing is trash, because you don’t care about it. It doesn’t have value to you. I’ll help you.
Love, Agatha

Hillman, p. 90

William continued the correspondence with this part of himself for some time. Agatha answered his questions in good faith and with great affection; William persisted in psychologizing his own soul and calling it his “anima.” Like most of us, William needed the soul (or Muse, or inspiration, or creativity), but he wanted her needs to remain secondary to those of his ego. William insisted on being superior, and finally, in exasperation, Agatha exclaims, “I’ve had enough of what you think, what you need, and what you feel. I’m going back into my jungle and my nature until you come up with a more important question for me.”

Exit Muse, stage left.

working with the muse

There are things that can be done, and attitudes adopted, when the Muse has fled, and especially when we’ve been the cause of that withdrawal. First, one must again pay some attention to the Muse and offer some gift. Have a conversation.

“You’ve been silent, and so far away,” I begin. “I see now that something’s up. I don’t know what it is, because I’m dense–and you know how utterly dense I can be. I’m sorry.

“I’ve brought you fresh flowers, and I’m lighting this candle for you, and I’m just going to putter around and wait on you because, you know, I can’t live without you. It’s not Life when I’m not with you. So, I’ll be busying myself with the mundane and things I need to do, but my heart will be with you like a lover. My eyes will constantly be lifted toward you, and I’ll be going to your well often, and leaning over, breathing in the smell of the moss and peering into the deepest reflection to see if I can catch sight of you.

And one more thing: I’ll have paper and pen in hand. I’ll be at my keyboard at regular hours. I’m waiting for you, dear.”

Then, I work. I work as if I have dues to pay. I wait, and I work.

I like the way Stephen King wrote about the muse:

Don’t wait for the muse. As I’ve said, he’s a hardheaded guy who’s not susceptible to a lot of creative fluttering. This isn’t the Ouija board or the spirit-world we’re talking about here, but just another job like laying pipe or driving long-haul trucks. Your job is to make sure the muse knows where you’re going to be every day from nine ’til noon or seven ’til three. If he does know, I assure you that sooner or later he’ll start showing up, chomping his cigar and making his magic (King 157).

I also like what journalist, editor, and writing teacher Brenda Ueland said about being self-disciplined about not only writing, but also about writing truthfully:

Now get to writing the truth . . .[and] if you do not know what this means now, write . . . a true, careless, slovenly, impulsive, honest diary every day of your life, and you will. And you must in time learn to write from your true self not only in your letters and diary, but in fiction (Ueland 135).

As a human, spiritual being and writer, I hope to become practiced at honoring my Muse. Ueland said, “He knows himself greatly who never opposes his genius” (Ueland 158). While I’m not there yet, I’m getting better at being still and looking into my resistance rather than using it to oppose my Muse.

Even people who attend to their Muses rather than bridling them like work horses will, being human, go astray from time to time. Like me, they’ll forget who’s the boss and they’ll become arrogant or neglectful.

One day we wake up and realize we’re boring. Every inner voice is silent. There is nothing to say. We are in Dante’s seventh circle of hell.

Winston Churchill had the antidote to journeys through hell, urging, “When you are going through hell, keep going.”

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Notes

Hillman, James. Healing Fiction. Woodstock, CT: Spring Publications, 1983.

Hillman, James and Michael Ventura. We’ve Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and the World’s Getting Worse. San Francisco, CA: HarperCollins, 1993.

King, Stephen. On Writing. New York: Pocket Books, 2000.

Ueland, Brenda. If You Want to Write. St. Paul, MN: Gray Wolf Press, 1987.