Stealing From Our Muses

I was lingering over lunch here at my desk (which is a short story in its own right) and I got to thinking about the stories we tell as we go through life. I was thinking about that point where our lives intersect with other people’s lives and inspiration flares.

There are two types of inspiration that happen at that intersection.

First, there is purely imaginative inspiration. Purely imaginative inspiration happens when something about the event or person fires a spark and your imagination creates another tale, completely removed from the current tale, based on the most tenuous of sparks. An example of this type of inspiration would be walking down the street and seeing a stranger almost stumble on the curb, which leads your imagination into a tale about a person who stumbles on the curb and pitches headlong into an alternate universe where no one believes them when they tell the tale.

Second, there is what I could call “imaginative imitation” inspiration. This takes the form of the classic “inspired by true events”, where you are sitting at lunch with a friend and they tell you the tale of the time they went to visit their aunt and their aunt’s cat attacked them without warning, sending them screaming from the house, with a tabby in hot pursuit. A simple change of name and perhaps place and a tale is born.

My question, my contemplation, involves the second type of tale. The first type is pretty clearing our imagination at work, weaving imaginary threads together to create something out of almost nothing. In those cases, I think it is pretty clear that the tale belongs to the first person to tell it.

But, what about the second type? Who does the tale rightfully belong too? The person writing the story about the cat attack or the person who initially told the story about the cat attack, or both?

What about the other areas of inspiration in our life? Who does inspiration belong to? Who should get credit? Who is the creator? Who is the imitator? At which point does imitation become imaginative theft?

As usual, I don’t have any answers, save to say that as a creative person I am often uncomfortably telling tales that do not belong to me, especially when the tale is very close to the true event. Part of this train of thought is something that T.R. inspired in me, and that is a sort of question at well. At what point are we stealing from our muses?

Observations: Writing In The Void

I've mentioned a couple of times that I am encountering some basic writers block. It is not that I am not writing. It is more that I am not satisfied with what I have been writing, either in terms of quantity or quality. I had mentioned it the other night in my circle of friends. I had said that felt like I was trying to write out of a void. What I meant was that I was sitting down to write, but when I reached into myself to find the story or tale I wanted to tell, I was reaching into a void. The will is there. The time is there. The words are there. The form that those words must take is not. One of them suggested that rather than trying to write OUT of the void, I try writing IN the void. So this is a run at that.

Imagine a formless place…

Inside of it dwell the many parts of our imagination. All of the things we know. All of the things we've experienced. All of the things we've found in the sensual world. They all reside in there. Periodically, a force moves through the void. This force is the will, it is spirit of the imagination. It may be a single muse. It may be many small muses working in concert. They reach into the formless place, they find the things that are stored there, and they start the process of stringing them together. Through the process of creativity they bring the forms of narrative together into poetry and prose.

A thousand, ten thousand, maybe more stories are formed and shaped and queued up to be released into the waking world through the creative power of writing. It is an inexhaustible well of inspiration. We may periodically reach in and pull something out. We may periodically find that the muses have done a very complete job of assembling the objects of our imagination into a cohesive architecture. We may struggle to write a simple sentence, a single paragraph, the most basic of narratives. We may find that the muses have delivered to us splendid garments of whole cloth, entire wardrobes of imagination. It is from this formless place, from this well of imagination, that all of the stories we have told and will tell spring.

If you find yourself temporarily bereft of a coherent narrative, if you find that the stories or poems are not quite there, just relax. Form always flows out of formlessness. The well of the imagination is never empty. Sometimes, what we simply need to do, is find our way into that well and then, simply, sit. Sit and let the strange muses and the ordinary muses do their work. Trust that they are actively assembling something magnificent. Trust that they are building vast cathedrals of splendid materials.

We are simply human. We all go through life together, we all share a common path, we all know the same richness and depth and breadth of life. Our senses each day fill to the brim with the threads of life, awaiting the simple or complex weaves that pull them together. There is stillness inside the void. Rather than struggle against it, simply relax, take a deep breath, and let the muses do their work.

Daily Life: Lost Muse

Did you ever have something you were going to write get away by talking about it? It has happened to me. I will be wandering through the day the idea for a piece of writing will start germinating inside of me. I will watch the tender shoots press up through the earth and reach toward the sun. Then, I will talk about it - I might mention it in conversation, I might explain the idea to a friend, I might write about it in a note or a text or an email and suddenly - its gone. It was an idea that was expressed too early and got away. I am sure some excellent pieces have simply gotten away from me over the years.