I’m going to haunt my ghost!
The Muse is behind everything. It inspires writing and painting and sculpting and all manner of art. It also inspires any engineering concept, mathematical principle…everything.
And nobody knows what it is.
Well, I do. So let me elucidate.
A human being is an ‘I am.’ It is spirit that motivates flesh.
A human being is not his houses and cars, his clothes, even his flesh. Those are just ‘trappings,’ and I choose that word deliberately.
Joe Blow, when he is ‘Little Joey,’ demonstrates this free, bubbly, wonderful spirit.
As life goes on, all the slings and arrows, Little Joey becomes staunch, solid Joe. Older and he becomes Joseph, an elder man with wisdom. Maybe.
This progression is the spirit being hidden, until, old age, when the human being enters second childhood. His body is breaking down and the spirit is revealed once again in its childlike, joyous form.
All the trappings are being thrown off and the ‘I am’ is once again manifest.
Which brings us to The Muse.
A human being is spirit, and that spirit is driven to create. The trick is to get rid of the surface trappings, to ignore filters installed for whatever reason, and to manifest that spirit.
If a writer can ignore the distractions of the mundane world–it would not be amiss to say the secular world–he can tap into that spirit.
If a fellow is particularly driven, and he can assume that drive by forcing himself, he can ignore the distractions and find himself.
To a writer, and the few other people tapping into there own spirit, it feels like that source of inspiration is outside of themselves, like a ghostly being sitting on his shoulder and whispering inspired words into his psyche.
Thus, the inner spirit becomes as if outer, and the artist has tapped into The Muse.
But The Muse is just himself uncovered.
To the degree that a fellow ignores worldly distractions and lets that ghostly whispering have sway, to that degree he is inspired by The Muse.
Some people are born manic in their ability to focus on one thing.
Some people can develop that maniacy by learning to ignore distractions.
Some people are nothing but distraction, and they provide a world of random chattering nonsense, all designed to distract.
It’s a matter of discipline, but even in this there is vast misunderstanding.
Most people, when they think of discipline, equate it with somebody standing over them with a whip. Which sort of explains all sado-masochism, as that discipline is somebody asking somebody else to beat their flesh until the spirit is revealed.
But real discipline is when somebody loves to do something so much he deliberately ignores distraction and throws himself into an activity until only he (her) is left, sans flesh, sans consideration for the world.
People who have to make themselves sit in the chair are not artists.
People who can’t stop themselves from sitting in the chair are artists.
