I don’t believe in inspiration, and my muse just scoffs at the idea. “Just bleed,” she said. She is a sucker for Hemingway, I should have known. She just went out on the back porch to smoke a cigarette. Lucky for her imaginary entities can’t get lung cancer. Inspiration is just another word. Whenever I write, there is a nudge in my gut about something, but that something often has little or nothing to do with what I might be writing about on any given night. I am dead sure that I am not the world’s best writer, but I know I am a thousand times more prolific that 99.9%of the rest of the world. Why should I care about who might be better than me–there is always someone with better style, more profound ideas, great poetry, or a more intricate philosophy or world view. Yet, most of those people are waiting for inspiration that will never come. Waiting for inspiration is a lot like waiting for Godot. You can wait, but the wait will be eternal,melancholy, lonely. Writing is more like mowing the lawn than most would think.Writing is a deliberate self-conscious act in which the writer must put aside his own image while creating something new. Whether a writer fails or succeeds cannot be the criteria for writing anything. Writers will never be able to predict their success or their fall into oblivion. Inspiration is a mirage, an excuse, a straw man that really doesn’t exist in any shape or form. All of our ideas–good, bad, or ugly–float up out of sub-consciousness, rumble around our brain pan before exiting onto a screen, or in more folkloric fashion, onto apiece of paper. Regardless of what one writes about, the muse is working overtime to pile up the nouns and verbs, images and tropes, motifs, metaphors and similes. All writing is essentially always a series of metaphors that pileup like drunken sailors while trying to climb Mount Everest in jockey shorts. Writing is hard, but not because of a lack of inspiration. Writing is hard because writers are afraid that someone might not like their choice of adverbs.My muse says that the best way to write is to turn off the internal editor–that OCD editor that sits behind your eyes and criticizes every word,every period, every strangely alliterated phase–and just let the words flow. Set them free. Yet just doing it once is not enough. You are only a writer if you continue to write on a regular basis. From time to time, you might come up with a sentence that really sings, that reflects your interest in life’s bigger questions,, its most profound questions. Nevertheless, the object of writing has never been to resolve anything. The object of writing is to discuss the problem and recognize that some questions, life’s big questions, don’t have answers, only discussions. In the end, a writer who waits for inspiration is not a writer at all. Only those who write find inspiration because they are not looking for it. As the words pile up, the creative process begins to reach critical mass, thoughts pop like lightening, creating new words, new thoughts, new ideas. Images dance through the discourse, rhetoric blossoms, and before you know it, you have a new piece of literary art, which may delight, teach, amuse, provoke, inspire, or question. It all depends on the writer dismissing their self-doubts and forging ahead, or as my muse says,”just bleed.”
Category Archives: muse
On inspiration
I don’t believe in inspiration, and my muse just scoffs at the idea. “Just bleed,” she said. She is a sucker for Hemingway, I should have known. She just went out on the back porch to smoke a cigarette. Lucky for her imaginary entities can’t get lung cancer. Inspiration is just another word. Whenever I write, there is a nudge in my gut about something, but that something often has little or nothing to do with what I might be writing about on any given night. I am dead sure that I am not the world’s best writer, but I know I am a thousand times more prolific that 99.9%of the rest of the world. Why should I care about who might be better than me–there is always someone with better style, more profound ideas, great poetry, or a more intricate philosophy or world view. Yet, most of those people are waiting for inspiration that will never come. Waiting for inspiration is a lot like waiting for Godot. You can wait, but the wait will be eternal,melancholy, lonely. Writing is more like mowing the lawn than most would think.Writing is a deliberate self-conscious act in which the writer must put aside his own image while creating something new. Whether a writer fails or succeeds cannot be the criteria for writing anything. Writers will never be able to predict their success or their fall into oblivion. Inspiration is a mirage, an excuse, a straw man that really doesn’t exist in any shape or form. All of our ideas–good, bad, or ugly–float up out of sub-consciousness, rumble around our brain pan before exiting onto a screen, or in more folkloric fashion, onto apiece of paper. Regardless of what one writes about, the muse is working overtime to pile up the nouns and verbs, images and tropes, motifs, metaphors and similes. All writing is essentially always a series of metaphors that pileup like drunken sailors while trying to climb Mount Everest in jockey shorts. Writing is hard, but not because of a lack of inspiration. Writing is hard because writers are afraid that someone might not like their choice of adverbs.My muse says that the best way to write is to turn off the internal editor–that OCD editor that sits behind your eyes and criticizes every word,every period, every strangely alliterated phase–and just let the words flow. Set them free. Yet just doing it once is not enough. You are only a writer if you continue to write on a regular basis. From time to time, you might come up with a sentence that really sings, that reflects your interest in life’s bigger questions,, its most profound questions. Nevertheless, the object of writing has never been to resolve anything. The object of writing is to discuss the problem and recognize that some questions, life’s big questions, don’t have answers, only discussions. In the end, a writer who waits for inspiration is not a writer at all. Only those who write find inspiration because they are not looking for it. As the words pile up, the creative process begins to reach critical mass, thoughts pop like lightening, creating new words, new thoughts, new ideas. Images dance through the discourse, rhetoric blossoms, and before you know it, you have a new piece of literary art, which may delight, teach, amuse, provoke, inspire, or question. It all depends on the writer dismissing their self-doubts and forging ahead, or as my muse says,”just bleed.”
On creativity
My muse has been absent during the month of February. Muses are like that, disappearing when you most need them. Being creative is the hardest part of creativity. When writing I am often assailed by the thought that other writers have already plowed this ground and that my time would be better employed as either a dog catcher or sign painter. Poets, writers, philosophers have often fought the idea that they have arrived late to the dance, that other writers and thinkers have already recorded their original ideas, and that their efforts are going for nothing. My muse has always been a little cranky and cynical, as if she got up on the wrong side of the inspiration, but most of the time she has some great ideas about remodeling or menu suggestions or a new paint color for the bathroom. I would like to write about transcendental ideals that guide the human psyche to do good, to be less egotistical, to work for world peace, and to resolve the persistent human problems of hunger, violence, and isolation, but I don’t get any good vibes about any of that. Being creative is hard. My muse is always bugging me about being derivative, about stealing my ideas from other writers, about not being open to new ideas. She says I’m always playing it safe with subjects, verbs, and compliments, writing complete sentences, observing the rules of proper grammar and syntax. She says I’m conventional to the core and no fun at all, a typical liberal tree-hugging granola eater who fears death and global warming, wears comfortable shoes, knows enough to come in from the rain, eats sensibly, and doesn’t speed. Boring, she says. You need to learn how to juggle chainsaws. You know, you’re not Picasso. Yes, I know I’m not Picasso, but then again, does the world really want or need another crabby Spaniard cubing the world into an unrecognizable mess of disassociated lines and disembodied body parts? You call that creativity? Some people do, I guess. To be a creative failure, one must sink below the creative horizon into a tired mire of overused metaphors, trite phrases, and tired symbols, and believe that the junk you write should be original, as if that last word had any real meaning at all, and that thinking for yourself is the real road to creating avant-guard trends in new film noir with a sort of neo-negative potential in epistemological endeavors. You are too sober, she says, as if I need any help in making myself look stupid. The riddle that is creativity is an insolvable conundrum enclosed in a mystery. We “get” creativity when we see it, and we know when someone is ripping on someone else’s mojo, covering someone else’s creativity. From the time we are taught to cut out our first circle from a square by trimming off the corners of a square, we are reminded that nothing is original, that creativity is an illusion, and that everyone has arrived late to the creative party. Perhaps creativity is more about being surprising, and less about being original, which is impossible anyway. So stop being interested in being creative, my muse coos between sips of coffee. Since there is nothing new under the sun, forget about creativity and do what you want. All circles are the same, except for size, color, texture, and imperfections, so in cutting out a circle, we re-invent the wheel and follow the yellow brick road. I just got a text message from my muse: don’t write about creativity. It’s make you maudlin and God knows you don’t need any help with that. No such thing as creativity anyway.
On creativity
My muse has been absent during the month of February. Muses are like that, disappearing when you most need them. Being creative is the hardest part of creativity. When writing I am often assailed by the thought that other writers have already plowed this ground and that my time would be better employed as either a dog catcher or sign painter. Poets, writers, philosophers have often fought the idea that they have arrived late to the dance, that other writers and thinkers have already recorded their original ideas, and that their efforts are going for nothing. My muse has always been a little cranky and cynical, as if she got up on the wrong side of the inspiration, but most of the time she has some great ideas about remodeling or menu suggestions or a new paint color for the bathroom. I would like to write about transcendental ideals that guide the human psyche to do good, to be less egotistical, to work for world peace, and to resolve the persistent human problems of hunger, violence, and isolation, but I don’t get any good vibes about any of that. Being creative is hard. My muse is always bugging me about being derivative, about stealing my ideas from other writers, about not being open to new ideas. She says I’m always playing it safe with subjects, verbs, and compliments, writing complete sentences, observing the rules of proper grammar and syntax. She says I’m conventional to the core and no fun at all, a typical liberal tree-hugging granola eater who fears death and global warming, wears comfortable shoes, knows enough to come in from the rain, eats sensibly, and doesn’t speed. Boring, she says. You need to learn how to juggle chainsaws. You know, you’re not Picasso. Yes, I know I’m not Picasso, but then again, does the world really want or need another crabby Spaniard cubing the world into an unrecognizable mess of disassociated lines and disembodied body parts? You call that creativity? Some people do, I guess. To be a creative failure, one must sink below the creative horizon into a tired mire of overused metaphors, trite phrases, and tired symbols, and believe that the junk you write should be original, as if that last word had any real meaning at all, and that thinking for yourself is the real road to creating avant-guard trends in new film noir with a sort of neo-negative potential in epistemological endeavors. You are too sober, she says, as if I need any help in making myself look stupid. The riddle that is creativity is an insolvable conundrum enclosed in a mystery. We “get” creativity when we see it, and we know when someone is ripping on someone else’s mojo, covering someone else’s creativity. From the time we are taught to cut out our first circle from a square by trimming off the corners of a square, we are reminded that nothing is original, that creativity is an illusion, and that everyone has arrived late to the creative party. Perhaps creativity is more about being surprising, and less about being original, which is impossible anyway. So stop being interested in being creative, my muse coos between sips of coffee. Since there is nothing new under the sun, forget about creativity and do what you want. All circles are the same, except for size, color, texture, and imperfections, so in cutting out a circle, we re-invent the wheel and follow the yellow brick road. I just got a text message from my muse: don’t write about creativity. It’s make you maudlin and God knows you don’t need any help with that. No such thing as creativity anyway.
On Marilyn Monroe
A true movie star if there ever was one, Marilyn Monroe was a larger than life figure who embodied, literally, a wide-open sexuality that revolutionized puritanical America, its films, its entertainment industry, its cultural icons, its politics, its sexual mores and practices. Even with three husbands in her column, whether Marilyn herself ever participated in this revolution remains to be seen, but the long-lasting effects of her image, her movies, her photos, her charisma, are still felt today. She came of age as an actress in an extremely repressed post-war America that had long since lost its innocence on the battlefields of Europe and the atolls of the Pacific. After so much violence and killing, there was no possible way that the millions of returning soldiers could live in the pre-war innocence of their childhoods. They had seen too much, killed to many, been wounded, lost friends and colleagues, opend up concentration camps. They were jaded, cynical, tired. The image of the blond bombshell, i.e., Jean Harlow et al., had been around for awhile, but a sexually repressed America had always shoved these images to the margins of culture by designating all such women and images as sinful, dirty, or bad. Marilyn came along and changed all of that, bringing sexuality into the mainstream of the American conversation, eventually changing the way America looked at itself and the way it discussed sex. The reception of a novel such as “Peyton Place” is proof of that. These changes in American post-war culture were not brought on by Marilyn, but Marilyn and others certainly nudged Americans to question such important issues such as equal rights for all, racial or sexual. Questions of economic equality would have to wait decades. We are known by our repressions, and the interest of pop culture in Marilyn as an icon of sexual desire suggests that social repressions only last so long before older generations are swept away and younger generations re-evaluate what is going on and how they will deal with it. Some of Marilyn’s movies are important, if not unforgettable, but the revolutionary nature of her presence is what changed how America talked about sex, desire, bodies, and relationships–“The Seven Year Itch” is a prime example of this change. She and her image became an economic venture developed by Hollywood to take advantage of her marketability as a desired object of the male gaze. Regardless of who Marilyn Monroe was as a person, it was her appearance as a sexually desirable woman which still gives life to her iconic image some fifty years after her tragic death. Even actresses such as Elizabeth Taylor or Jane Russell, both of whom were very present in post-war film never achieved the giant iconic status of Marilyn Monroe. Taylor, especially in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” or “Suddenly Last Summer,” was as alluring or desirable as Monroe, and Russell was more blatantly sexual, especially in “The Outlaw,” than Monroe ever was. Yet in a movie such as “Some Like It Hot” where sexual roles are played footloose and fancy free by the entire cast, Monroe’s character oozes a white-hot feminine sexuality that eclipses all other performances in the film. After America makes those films, any of them, they could not put the genie back in the bottle and pretend like sex doesn’t exist, which, of course, was very bad for all three actresses, taking an enormous toll on their private lives and tormented relationships. Today, we live in a very wide-open society that, although it still has many hang-ups and repressions, is finally able to at least discuss sex without blushing, turning away, or giggling too much. Yet, for Marilyn the price was high: no privacy, tormented relationships, possible drug usage, paparazzi everywhere, insomnia, which caused her to be difficult and unpredictable. She was fired from her last film for not appearing on set for the shooting schedule. She died of a drug overdose, possibly suicide, in 1962.
On nights like this
Darkness has descended upon the landscape. Wind buffets the house. The temperature is dropping. On a night like this one must count one’s blessings that the furnace is working, the windows are solid, the insulation is effective, and the fire in the hearth is bright and warm. It’s on nights like this when the stars are spinning overhead, light years away, frozen at absolute zero, swirling in cosmic dust and random space rocks, that one feels the pull of existential angst, that one feels small and lonely standing on the edge of the universe, watching time unfold before your very eyes. Time stretches out in front of you, infinitely unfolding as the wind howls in your ears. On a night like this you wonder about what you do for a living, pondering the importance of your life in the grand scheme of things. Frost is forming on the windows, the moon hangs icily on the horizon, the night deepens, you sigh deeply and think dark thoughts. My muse bustles into the room, drinking whiskey, and wearing a sprig of mistletoe in her hair. “You worry way too much. Makes you a bit of a holiday wet blanket, you know.” December, despite all of the holiday lights, is a dark month, and many people hate the holiday season, all that cheer, eggnog, Christmas presents, music, songs, inflatable snowmen and lawn decorations. Sometimes the holiday cheer is just a little too cheerful for words. On a night like this on the shortest day of the year, when daylight is as a premium, your thoughts turn morbid and dark. Personal philosophies, the meaning of life, your great reason for being all seem so trivial when surviving seems like a good priority. This is what winter is all about–the long winter’s nights when not a creature is stirring, not even a mouse. On nights like this, the mice a especially quiet because they know that their very survival depends on their ability to sleep away the dead of winter. Their own simulacrum of death is the same thing that keeps them alive. Perhaps on a night like this, it is the mice who understand what making it through the winter is all about. My muse sips her whiskey and glances over my shoulder. “Are you getting all morose and nostalgic, thinking deep thoughts about existentialism and death? You know, nobody wants to read about that stuff. You need to be writing about medieval existential stuff that nobody in their right mind will ever read. Or drink more. You never drink enough.” On a night like this, one struggles to understand the way the world works, random violence, accidents, war, strife, conflict, the fiscal cliff. Nothing particularly funny about any of that. Or the Mayan prediction that tomorrow will be the end of the earth. The mice are sleeping soundly because they know that tomorrow will be another day, that nights like this are always followed by another day when the sun comes up, and everyone starts over. Maybe the meaning of life is so simple that any attempt to describe or explain it only serves to obscure it even more. So I should work more, worry less, and let my muse do her stuff. Perhaps it is our very resistance to the universe which hides its strange beauty to us. Perhaps it’s on nights like this when the universe stands before us, clear, cold, frosty, magnificent, mysterious, an enigma if there ever was one.
On inspiration
I always resort to my muse for inspiration, but it is summer, and she is on vacation. “Work it out,” she said as she escaped out the back door on her way to the airport. She needed a vacation anyway. “Lately, I feel a little burned out, and this summer heat is really repressive. Scotland, if you want to know, but don’t call. I’ll come back when I’m ready.” And the door slammed shut.So, that’s where inspiration goes when you can’t find any. Inspiration has always been an elusive animal for me. I mean, I could sit and write about books or movies or accidents or terrorist attacks just as everyone does, but I would like to write that one really good essay on palimpsests or sub-atomic particles or death in Wordsworth’s poetry. The mundane clouds my imagination with shopping and garbage and lunches and television and a hundred other inconsequential matters to which no one will ever pay any attention. Nor should they. Inspiration is about creativity and originality and beauty and creating a prose that sores without breaking, a prose that enlightens without boring, a prose that elucidates the meaning of life without being either pedantic or soporific. Instead, all I can hear is the bang of that door as my muse flees the scene of the crime. New ideas? Who has new ideas? It isn’t easy to come up with a new idea every day. Inundated by the mundane noise of everyday existence, it is hard to see the beauty in a world that is often overwhelmed by violence, injustice, tragedy, and sadness. How does one see the beauty in the world through all the tears? If my muse would only come back, we might write about the beauty of concentric circles, of prisms and labyrinths, of rainbows and lightening, of starry nights and cool breezes, of rain and puddles and cool water. But it’s hot here and I’m out of ideas. Sweat runs down my neck, my head hurts a little, and I’m frustrated with myself. This urban setting is not particularly conducive to liberating new ideas, setting free the imagination, or dredging the sludge from the subconscious where lots of strange things reside. Maybe I should drink a glass of water? My chair could be more comfortable. Maybe I should write a new treatise on the insanity and violence of modern consumer societies where death is only another movie date away? Naw, not original or imaginative, not pretty, not aesthetic. Nightingales? No, that’s been done, but I could give it a new modern slant and use the nightingale as a metaphor for peace and justice and love–a small noisy bird of no consequence that goes unnoticed by the masses on their way to buy something new. My muse is a wonderful person, but she would think it hokey. Well, she’s gone and told me to work it out, so I’m going to write about nightingales.
On inspiration
I always resort to my muse for inspiration, but it is summer, and she is on vacation. “Work it out,” she said as she escaped out the back door on her way to the airport. She needed a vacation anyway. “Lately, I feel a little burned out, and this summer heat is really repressive. Scotland, if you want to know, but don’t call. I’ll come back when I’m ready.” And the door slammed shut.So, that’s where inspiration goes when you can’t find any. Inspiration has always been an elusive animal for me. I mean, I could sit and write about books or movies or accidents or terrorist attacks just as everyone does, but I would like to write that one really good essay on palimpsests or sub-atomic particles or death in Wordsworth’s poetry. The mundane clouds my imagination with shopping and garbage and lunches and television and a hundred other inconsequential matters to which no one will ever pay any attention. Nor should they. Inspiration is about creativity and originality and beauty and creating a prose that sores without breaking, a prose that enlightens without boring, a prose that elucidates the meaning of life without being either pedantic or soporific. Instead, all I can hear is the bang of that door as my muse flees the scene of the crime. New ideas? Who has new ideas? It isn’t easy to come up with a new idea every day. Inundated by the mundane noise of everyday existence, it is hard to see the beauty in a world that is often overwhelmed by violence, injustice, tragedy, and sadness. How does one see the beauty in the world through all the tears? If my muse would only come back, we might write about the beauty of concentric circles, of prisms and labyrinths, of rainbows and lightening, of starry nights and cool breezes, of rain and puddles and cool water. But it’s hot here and I’m out of ideas. Sweat runs down my neck, my head hurts a little, and I’m frustrated with myself. This urban setting is not particularly conducive to liberating new ideas, setting free the imagination, or dredging the sludge from the subconscious where lots of strange things reside. Maybe I should drink a glass of water? My chair could be more comfortable. Maybe I should write a new treatise on the insanity and violence of modern consumer societies where death is only another movie date away? Naw, not original or imaginative, not pretty, not aesthetic. Nightingales? No, that’s been done, but I could give it a new modern slant and use the nightingale as a metaphor for peace and justice and love–a small noisy bird of no consequence that goes unnoticed by the masses on their way to buy something new. My muse is a wonderful person, but she would think it hokey. Well, she’s gone and told me to work it out, so I’m going to write about nightingales.
On false starts
You ever start to write something, write about four sentences, and realize that what you are writing is complete garbage? When you sat down, you thought you had a thesis, an outline (more or less) of what you wanted to say, and a conclusion. Yet, somewhere between sitting down and an immediate execution of the project, something failed: your train of thought got derailed, you couldn’t find your notes, you started to second guess your thesis, and by the time you wrote the fourth sentence, you didn’t even believe yourself. Now you sit, wondering where your inspiration went, thinking about grabbing a snack, scratching your neck, you sneeze twice, and your muse just leaves the room in disgust. You can hear her turn on the television in the next room to watch the Weather Channel. So you sit and ponder the full moon, wondering if anything they say about the full moon is really true. No, it’s not, because you are a rational empiricist and just because you can see the whole moon doesn’t mean the whole thing isn’t always there. Maybe something to drink would kick-start the writing project? No, you might start writing again, but the project is really dead on arrival. You should stop now while you are ahead. You find your notes, but they seem disconnected. Tomorrow’s shopping list looks a little more logical, and its arguments are certainly more sound that what I was trying to do. I mean, who really cares if pyramids have mystic or magical powers? I’ll just look like a kook if I write that. “Don’t write the thing on pyramids, boring and dumb!” comes the answer from the other room. “And it’s going to snow in Boston. You should come see this!” I wonder where my slippers are, and I realize I know nothing about pyramids, but when has that ever stopped me. Mankind has been building pyramids for several millennium so there must be something to it other than personal aggrandizement or political nationalism, right? I mean, they weren’t just built out of personal caprice and foolishness, were they? I mean, they do follow the rules of form and function, don’t they? “If you write that article on pyramids, I’m staying in here, drinking lots of bourbon and not helping you.” I dump my research notes in the trash, wondering how long before pitchers and catchers arrive at Spring training. Are pyramids anti-aesthetic or super-aesthetic, the perfect minimalist form, designed to last through the ages, tower over the masses, and inspire artists, kings, pharaohs, ministers and tourists from middle America? I don’t know or even why I should care. The writing project has died and shriveled, turned to a fine ash that the wind dispersed before I could give it a second thought. Valentine’s Day is coming up, so I get out the red construction paper and start cutting out hearts.
