Chasing Erato

The bathroom is my friend.

I've been using it all day today. I'm taking all of my pills and it certainly feels good. I can just feel my blood pressure going down. The stresses of the early week have born a resolve in me to rectify everything. That's what usually happens when I fret, I go into action. It's just that sometimes there's no REASON for the action. Fretting causes me to jump ahead and appear impetuous. This time I think it's too late to do anything but go through the machine and come out the other end, and then after the crisis, deal with F.E.G.S. WECare all over again. Gotta love it.

I worked hard today, finishing another episode of my screenplay, sending out emails, reading and playing 2142. I also finished ANOTHER book, this one AND GOD BLEW BREATH, was finished with 72 pages. I was going to go in and change the entire thing into a picture book, but I don't think I have good enough pictures for it. So, I just sent it in as a poetry book and it came out to $5.95 per book. Wow, what a price. When I get some more cash, I'm going to buy the little fucker. You'd better believe it. Then I wont have to walk around with a folder full of papers like a Nutty Professor.

Also, I'm am still productive on the poetry side. I've gotten to where I write a poem a day. My Muse is strong, and she carries me along. I am filled with power and creativity from her. I tap into a wellspring of inspiration. So, that brings me to what many of my fellow poets have been discussing. The Muse. Who is she/he/it? What is she/he/it? And most importantly how do we get her/him/it to visit us more often? Or at all?

Well, I wouldn't call myself a Muse-ologist but I can state my experience, and those that I read.

It is said that Charles Bukowski didn't wait for a muse. He wrote a staggering number of poems every single day. Although he himself said that many of them were for shit, he still generated some gems. That was how he gave his muse a kick in the pants. He coaxed it out through sustained effort.

And then there is the stroke of lightning, the bulb going off in the head that hits suddenly and we are filled with creative energy and quickly we're off, like a racing car. This was how Henry Miller wrote. He would collect information daily, a staggering amount, and then inspiration would hit. He would be in a cafe, or walking through a park and when it hit it would hit hard, and he would run home and disgorge information from his brain, to his hands to the typewriter, to the paper. It was as if he was possessed and could not get the thoughts out fast enough.

Which way is the right approach to the Muse? Which way is YOUR approach to your Muse?

Well, here's the fucking truth about the whole entire thing. THERE IS NO MUSE. This is a genetic outworking of our brains. We all have this capability. Every human on the planet is sometimes stirred by inspiration. Creative artists just rely on it more than others. Our brains are trained to react to certain outside stimulus, which is completely random to each of us.

My approach to the Muse is interesting. Since I've separated the reality from the mythology, I've come to realize it's in how the brain is trained. Bukowski trained his brain in a fashion that was comfortable to him. I think I mimic him the most. Miller trained his his way. Neither were wrong. It worked for them. Sometimes I get those flashes of creativity, but not often. My process is all about focus. Resolute and direct focus on an object of admiration. It can be anything I believe, but you have to have strong feelings over it. Maybe it's your newborn baby, your loving wife, your new Toyota, or your 52" HDTV. Whatever. You choose for yourself, as long as you have strong feelings about it. That's the key. It you are half hearted in your approach, it will not work.

When you focus on this object it will give you ideas back. Your brain will turn it over and in your head, and extract thoughts from it. How your HDTV is so good to watch the football game. How your wife is so loving and attentive. How your newborn wiggles when he's happy. All of these thoughts come flooding in, and now you must catch them and start writing. These images come quickly so you have to move quickly.

Further, sometimes I start a poem or a scene in a story and don't know how it's going to end, and midway through it, the Mind just speeds ahead and provides a suitable ending for me. Like magic it appears. Further, I've learned not to second guess the Mind. I make minor corrections, but I don't change much. The initial, pure expression is what I am after, the raw feed so to speak. I don't want the cold light of reason, and the desire to please others to alter it, to censor it, to 'fix it up a little', If it comes out raggedy or stupid, well that's what the Mind wanted expressed. I can't fight with that, I can only make it clearer. If my metaphors are fucked up...well they were supposed to be.

If it comes out confusing, well it was confusing in the Mind to begin with, and the Mind simply expressed itself. I've come to learn to put my writing in the hands of my mind. And since I have a wild imagination (which is the reason why I catastrophize so much) I can come up with a myriad of ideas from my focus on my object. It works every morning with a cup of coffee and sending out emails. My mind is already trained to prepare for the morning. Maybe at night, while I dream it is thinking of a myriad of images to put into the raw feed as soon as I wake up.

But that's how I approach my muse. Much like Bukowski, but not so prolific. A poem a day, whether I want to or not. The Mind will write it anyway. It will choose the topic, and then write the body of the text with me running along, and then conclude it the way it wants to. It's relatively simple. It's the same autopilot that Henry Miller and others experience, it's that it just happens daily for me. Hey, maybe much of my work is for shit to some, but it's pure, and that's what I'm proud of. It says exactly what I wanted to say to the last drop. You better believe that they're all gems to me. I don't really care what others think.

I guess I got lucky. I have an object to focus on, maybe an Erato of my own. Some of us don't have that, so they wait for an object to appear in life that the Mind will react to. A bird lighting on a branch, children playing, a statue on a stone pedestal, a word or phrase from a conversation, several notes in a song. Some object will trigger the un-coaxed, untrained mind to go off, and inspiration will leap and off you'll go. The regularity of this varies. Days, weeks, months, years. I tend to believe that the mind that is taking long between visits is actually storing elements from it's surroundings, creating a storehouse of ideas so to speak. This resevoir will one day burst, and a flood of creativity will surge forth. Be patient.

Well, that's just my opinion. That and a pile of shit are roughly the same.

Much creativity to you.

Hobobob