RE: muses

[permetaform]

th_nightengale mentioned muse-independant v. muse-dependant creation of artwork, and wondered about the possible demographics of creators who might or might not work with a muse.

[Poll #480760]
Personally, I work independant of a muse but keep on hearing about them occasionally in that other people use them. musesfool helped me clarify the idea of a muse in that the way I'm addressing them here is specifically as a separate individual entity.

If you do work with a muse, what form do they take and/or look like? Do you know what they look like? Do they change depending on your project?

Also, could this be at all culturally motivated? ie. more of an emphasis from western cultures who have a tradition (from the Greeks) of muses? OR could it be more prominent from cultures who do not like to accept the idea that inspiration/creativitiy/intelligence comes from oneself? (versus a higher being? or an alternate being?)

[edit] This also brings up interesting issues around sources of inspiration, and faith; can/should/could inspiration be attributed to outside sources? Common western psychological thought is that outside voices are simply hallucinations. But other lines of argument argue that creativity is simply a perception of more levels of possibility than those that occur in our current realm of existence...

[interesting threads]
- here (started by karose)
- here (started by sorchafyre)
- here (started by karotsamused)
- here (started by ranalore)
- here (started by aliaswestgate)
- here (started by billradish)
- here (started by th_nightengale)

[interesting followup post]
Muses and Friends - a poll and some discussion about a possible link between muses and the use of imaginary friends

[NOTE] The purpose of this post is to present a friendly forum for discussion. Please keep the discussion friendly and open? Concern is valid, so is criticism; but please keep an open mind. ::hugs flist:: Cool beans?

Comments

[elvaron.livejournal.com]

Hrm. I get random flashes of inspiration -- images, themes, phrases -- that I eventually wrestle down and turn into a larger work. There are times where I can sit down and write 10,000 words over two days, and there are times when it's a chore just to get out 500. I have no idea if this is Musery at work, since there is no proof whatsoever that there's another being poking around in my head. I was under the impression that that's what people say when they talk about muses (although KA's Cassandra does seem to be something else altogether)... so could it simply be individual interpretation?

[musesfool.livejournal.com]

How are you defining 'muse?'

Because I don't have one/believe in them, though I may use the concept to talk about the process of writing when it feels like it's so effortless it's passing through me instead of being created by me.

The characters themselves are muses, in the sense that I 'hear' them having conversations or telling stories in my head, when what I'm really hearing is myself telling myself stories...

So for me 'muse' is a good term for that sort of almost non-consensual creativity, where the story takes over and I keep writing until it stops.

[weyrlady.livejournal.com]

I've always been curious about the people who describe their muses as independent beings, and even give talk about names and personalities. I've never had one even during my most creative periods.

[wildelamassu.livejournal.com]

I don't even think I understand the "muse" concept--i.e., the independent being who informs one's creative work. I can 'hear' the characters when I write, yes, but they don't exist separately for me.

[lapillus]

Out of my various bits of fannish creation I've twice had muses. Once Krycek (I still don't know why he wanted a sonnet), and once Methos, blowing soap bubbles. It was VERY odd and generally I'm quite content to be left with less personified creativity.

[karose.livejournal.com]

Er. Well. Since someone already mentioned my case here...

I believe that I work at the behest of a muse. Not only is she there, but she has the whip and cattle prod and gives very, shall we say, persuasive arguments for me to write whatever she likes.

I wouldn't call it the result of cultural forces, and if that's the case then it's just more of my muse's irony. My understanding of muses stems mostly from what popular culture has to say, and mine certainly isn't an incredibly beautiful woman lounging in red silks on my bed. My girlfriend says she has a pair of muses, has had them for a while and seems convinced of their existence, but the fact that she, and in fact, a lot of girls in our mutual circles, seemed to have them prompted me to the conviction that a muse was the last thing I ever wanted. If they were real, I thought, then muses were rare, and everyone and their sister toting one was a step away from selling the things in jars at Hot Topic.

And then came Cassandra.

Now, I've had it described to me that Cassandra was 1) a result of brain damage (I have unexplainable amnesia, so the notion doesn't seem too far left field), 2) a split personality in the form of auditory hallucinations, or 3) a split personality with imagined auditory hallucinations that I thought up to help corroborate my own story.

Since it's the trend of today's culture to declare ourselves mentally unstable, I tend to the view that I'm satisfactorily sane, but I also acknowledge that this isn't a professional diagnosis, so if Cassandra's just something in my own head, it would make fair enough sense. One friend even reasoned that even if she was a split personality, she seemed to be doing me more good than harm, so there was little danger in encouraging her.

There's the thing. Cassandra doesn't feel like an extension of my own mind, because she offers up ideas far beyond my own ability to design. The K.A. without Cassandra is a very scarily bad, FFN-styled thing. It's ever so fortunate most of those old stories aren't available online these days.

Although, it could be argued that's self-depreciation, like some you mentioned above, motivated by a culture that finds it irrational/conceited to suggest inspiration comes from oneself. We could go on about my personal insecurities only making that all more likely. Even still, as I've said, I was never prone to believe in muses until I started getting this one's voice in my head. Totally sober, level, and far too much of an atheist to acknowledge a god or demon. Anyway, she's yet to tell me to make sinners repent or burn down the churches. Just wants me to write a Broadway musical someday. Which may be just as bad.

In the end: for me, the object of what my muse is is immaterial. I prefer to treat her as an outside entity (insofar as a voice by your ear/in your head is an outside entity), but even if she is just the product of my own brain, I think she's good for me. I don't feel I'd be the writer I am otherwise, if for no other reason than self motivation-- After all, caught between listening to myself and listening to someone else, I'm more prone for the latter, so it's my belief in Cassandra that's resulted in a lot of work getting written.

^^; For what any of that is worth. Sorry for rambling.

[climb-on.livejournal.com]

...less of a muse and more of a persistant naggy mental twitch and crazy urge to sit my ass down in front of the computer/a pad of paper and draw until it gets out.

Whatever it is, it won't let me concentrate until I get IT out.

...it always comes during exam time, too. Gargh.

[linzeestyle.livejournal.com]

What would you define "muse" as? If you mean in the sense of my having little sprites physically flitting above my head, then no. But if you mean in the more abstract term - a source of inspiration that seems to come from elsewhere - then yes.

I'm very much at the mercy of a "muse," or outside source of inspiration, when it comes to fancreatives - hell, any creatives. There are times when I'm constantly turning out things, sometimes at a rate of multiple collages or such a day, and there are times - days, weeks, months sometimes - where I cannot do anything. These streaks are very often motivated by some outside thing - i.e., I'm in one right now (though not fannishly; my SV muse is quite gone) that was very much brought on by Rob Thomas' new CD, so in that case I suppose my muse looks a lot like Rob - but it's a mental thing; I don't *actually* get little people dancing around my head. If anything I'm rather fascinated by this; are there people who refer to muses and genuinely mean they're "visited" by something? I'll admit it'd never occured to me that anyone referencing a "muse" was thinking in that manner.

Linzee

[ficangel.livejournal.com]

Not a 'muse' in the way that I think it's defined here, because I've never gotten the feeling of any anthropomorphized, independent being, even in my very most creative periods. Sometimes I do hear voices, though (fun and frisky way to find kindred spirits and frighten away all the rest-talk about writing and be sure to mention that little detail), or see certain scenes playing as movies in my head. When those moments come it's a persistent itch of getitoutgetitoutgetitout that will. Not. Go Away. until I comply, but I've never gotten the feeling of divine inspiration, of anything happening outside of me.

And then there are the periods when I'm working on long, long fics over a series of months when writing is a pleasant sort of distraction, but the urgency isn't there any more, or at least can be turned on and off at will. Defense mechanism; I can turn it off or I can go from pleasantly eccentric into the real crazy that sings sonnets to stars.

[sorchafyre.livejournal.com]

Here's the weird deal. The answer is no to the original 'muse' question as you meant it, as when I'm writing a story I don't hear it dictated or the like, it's on the order of, as mentioned above, the story using me to tell itself. Almost always I have to 'percolate' the story elsewhere (usually while driving) and get bits and pieces, phrases and lines that meld into something else when I sit down to type and I sometimes don't even know where it's going until it's gotten there.

What I *do* have is the characters, as separate entities outside myself, interacting with me in random situations. Gojyo sticks his feet out the window while I drive and makes comments on all the girls we pass. Naoe gives me his opinion of the shoppers in a tedious line at Walmart. Eclipse distracts me by whispering the spells he'd like to unleash when I get an unusually idiotic call at work. Don't get me wrong, I don't truly see them as solid presences, but I do feel them, and their words and reactions are entirely their own. If you want to know how Sanzo keeps me from going postal in traffic, for example, let me know. This truly isn't as psychotic as it sounds. So in that sense, I have to say they're entities separate from me, and by interacting with them I can write them when the time comes. Fiction by way of Stanislavsky as it were.

What I do claim is what I view as my true muse. Music.

Music, as an entity and force outside myself, draws a certain scene or detail or... *something* from within and the story elements sort of fall into place around it. It evokes a mood within me that matches the mood the story intends to evoke, and puts me into that 'trance', for lack of a better word, where the story flows through and out of me. So in that sense, yes, I have a muse, though not a personified one.

That being said, I will own to the fact that it was only a few days ago I said something like "Gojyo insisted I write this story, and I had the opening bits, then I realized it wasn't over, he made me think about the next morning, and just when I didn't know where to go Sanzo strolled up and dropped the ending in my lap." Which is true in a more metaphorical sense than a literal one but still. In an 'Ben Kenobi' sense it was true, as I didn't think "How would he react here" but simply his line existed in my head as soon as I needed it, without my conscious effort.

::shrugs:: Somehow I think I've not answered the question, and run in a purely egotistical direction. I'll be fascinated to see the continuance of this.

[scarletseraph.livejournal.com]

When I first started role-playing - which is where a very great deal of my creative energy goes - I was under the assumption that any character I created would thereby have to be a part of self rather than its own individual being, since I created it.

What I found out was that even if I came up with an original concept, quite often, I would...lack control over how it took shape. There have been many times I've wanted to make a new character, either for playing or writing, and had them go in such a radically different direction that I couldn't do anything with them at all. A few of them, I was able to adjust to working with in the 'new' form. I've also had characters whose desires would run more-or-less parallel to my own for ages, only to end up at odds with them over a sudden single decision. (In one case, it did immense damage - she took her leave of me, and most of my creativity and caring - about anything - with it. No matter what I did or how I tried to make it up to her, she wouldn't come back, and it was months, maybe even years, before I was really able to fill the void and start over again - and the 'replacement' was never actually expected or intended to be that. At least not to the extent she ended up being.)

There have been a few times I've said, "Okay, I'd like to fill a particular niche; universe, what have you got for me?" and had someone or something show up, tell me its name, and get to work. There have been times - too many to count - that I'll be thinking of someone who ought rightly to live in my head, and felt a physical presence - usually behind me, standing or lying against my back. Looking over my shoulder. I get 'feelings' more often than I get words - senses of "Yes, that's right," or, "No, that's wrong," and when there are words, they're...internal but seperate. I hear them inside my head, but they don't come from me.

It's more-or-less the same with fanworks as it is original creations. I'll get a sudden spark of understanding for a character, and have to go somewhere with it. If I don't, it won't leave me alone, and once I do - it's usually gone, at least for a while. Some of them drop in and out. Some of them only visit once.

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

I answered yes, but the fact of the matter is that I'm very much like musesfool in my conception of a muse. I use the term to refer to various characters, aka "My Sanzomuse is not being forthcoming on the smut" or "My Schuldigmuse is a RAT BASTARD." This is not to say I honestly believe independent personages have taken up residence in my brain. What it means is that some part of my brain has "tagged" this character as being inspirational, and when I'm inclined to write, I allow those parts of my brain to interact with my main brain, and with each other, much in the way actors interact with each other and their director.

I am telling myself stories, and I'm doing all the voices. When I really click, what you call "in the Zone," I'm doing the voices really, really well. I'm doing them well to the point that my main brain might come up with an idea that's not "in character," and the part of my brain that "tagged" that character will "tell" me that the idea doesn't work. I suspect that's what mistressrenet means by veto power.

[aliaswestgate.livejournal.com]

I call the 'voices' of the characters muses. I think they are the result of a lot of analysis, and a eureka!moment of my mind. Expressed for me in the voice of whomever i'm writing at the time. I literally hear what the they say. It seems insane, but i'm also very audio focused. I sometimes get images, but not always.

Most often i hear a sentence, or a train of thought from one of them. Be it Kougaiji, Nii Jienyi, Hakkai or any other of my constant subjects. *grins* Considering i specialize in 1st pov, that inner dialogue is essential! After that it's the compulsion to get it done. I've always refered to that as the itch, which drives me to distraction. I wouldn't trade that or the voices themselves for the world. So much joy simply to write it, and write it well.

[tiggymalvern.livejournal.com]

My muse is my subconscious, basically. Very few of my plots have ever come from rational thought; I wake up from sleep and they're there, demanding I write them. If I'm stuck on a plot point or a section of dialogue, racking my brain over it almost never solves it. I just leave it on idle and at some point over the next few days or weeks I'll wake up and I'll have it. Usually at 5am, and then I have to get up and write it down before I can go back to sleep!

It's a blessing, in that there's no deliberate effort involved, and a curse in that I can't easily make myself sit down and write. I have to wait for it to happen, which is why I turn out on average a fic every 3 months. And not very long fics at that ::sigh::. I'd give a great deal to be able to write faster, but when I do try to work with this stuff consciously I'm lucky to get 500 decent words out of a day.

[broken--bird.livejournal.com]

I don't have a "muse," by definition. my muse is a part of me--originally me, but somehow, eventually, deviated from her roots and became a little voice in her own right; she does not inspire me so much as challenge me and my ideas, telling me how much they suck. she's my conscience and she's the voice that answers when everything and everyone else is silent. she doesn't rightly live in my head; she rents a small niche and pops in every now and then for tea.

inspiration is mostly my own fault. it comes easily and unannounced like air; she oversees the process of giving it form. she is consistency.
and she is roommates with kami-sama, who is the only other to take residence in the right hemisphere of my brain. I don't know how he got there. he likes the tea.

and occasionally, I casually state things like: "oh, dear. it appears hakkai and kami-sama are having a bit of another quarrel." it does not mean hakkai is, necessarily, a muse; he has simply crossed paths with one of my own, or crossed paths with me.


in regards to my two muses: one is a part of me--always has been, always will be. the other stumbled in entirely on accident. the two of them are separate entities. the one--she who is named neo--who is a part of me is a part of me the way age-old comrades are linked, trusting and complementing, not "friends". she is a person in her own right, weaving in and out of me as randomly as my thoughts.
kami-sama is separate altogether, someone I've not yet learned to trust entirely but there nevertheless, smirking snidely at me from across the room, eyes gleaming in that way of his. usually, while he's watching (in that way of his), the point of my pencil tends to break or drag, regardless of whether or not the thing is sharpened, or my pen develops a leak.


(this is all very crazy. it's the black tea, I assure you.)

(it's also a question I've never bothered to address. discussion is yummy for my tummy... ...erm, brain.)

[yukie1013.livejournal.com]

I...well, I get so close to some characters that it's as if they move into my head and poik me.

I know their voices are extensions of my own imagination/creative wellspring, but it's nice to be able to CONVERSE with your characters. (Yes, I do.)

Sometimes they get so real and clear I wonder if they're a part of me at all.

And then I realise that the human mind is an amazing thing. Who's to say I'm not allowed to have people in the condos of my mind?

That being said, I wish Nii would stop using up all the cups for coffee, and would like t thank Sanzo for smoking by windows.

*cough*

It may seem peculiar I suppose, to have 'muses' as voices of my own well of eee. But it means I'm never lonely.

I just have to deal with occasional distractions once in a while. XD

[luminosity]

I find the idea of muses very entertaining, and suzecarol made her bones in Highlander fandom with her very loquacious Methos muse. I, however, think that whatever's coming out of me creatively is coming out of me, and I'm not channeling another entity. Of course, I'm large; I contain multitudes. :)

I think there may be peripheral cultural awareness of Greek mythology Muses, but I can count on one hand the people that I know who can name all nine (and what they represent).

[hannahrorlove.livejournal.com]

My father does not believe in writer's block. And I quote:

The phrase was only developed in 1950, and it comes from the idea that there's a single source of energy for writing. The source of this energy is unconscious, and that neurosis can seriously inhibit it. And this view is not false, but rather very incomplete, and that writing is a kind of work not so different from other kinds of work. But you don't hear of cook's block and a runner's block is something that gets them started, not stops them.

This is my view as well. I know I do not have a block preventing me from writing a scene; I know that I simply do not know how to fit the words together to make it. This usually happens when I have two noncongruent scenes in my head that I can easily visualize, but most often comes when the story is simply not working. When the latter case occurs, I realize I have to start over, sometimes from the past few lines, sometimes from scratch.

I have heard many fanwriters speak about "muses," but have never understood them. I have heard professional writers say that sometimes their characters give them more material than they first envisioned. There is likely some overlap in these sources of inspiration, but I do not understand why writers of fanfiction seek to have a specific name for their sources.

Perhaps this would be clearer to me if this type of 'muse' was given a clearer definition. I have gotten the sense that they are a combination of non-conscious sources (such as dreams) and tools (such as notebooks). If someone wrote up a clear definition, then perhaps I could talk about them with less ignorance. As it is, I cannot, so by writing this I feel like I am walking in a dark room: there are objects I can see, but not with any clarity.

I said "no" because I do not know if I have a 'muse' or not. For what it is worth, I tend to verbally play-act the characters I write. That is, I pace around my dorm room, making odd gestures, and just talk to myself, sometimes switching position when the speaking character changes. This might not work for everyone, but it has served me well enough, and I will continue to do this until it stops being worthwhile to me. Or until I get a roommate (thank God for singles).

Incidentally, Neil Gaiman has finally answered the question, "Where do you get your ideas?"

[lierdumoa.livejournal.com]

I seem to get a ton of ideas on my own. Though I suppose I could say my muse is Vidbrain and Vidbrain is a crazy bitch and she inflicts her crazy bitchness on me constantly, even as I sleep. Really, I just wish I had a muse to do the legwork. Except that wouldn't be a muse so much as a minion.

But then, that just goes in with my plan to make a DN music video and become hugely famous in the amv fandom. Lots of potential minions there, and I'll possibly get some of the presents they give out to vca winners and maybe inspire other amv'ers to make vids with narrative, and get strange comments like, "hey its like cool that ur music videos all have like a point...u no?!" or at the very least make them all want to buy Flash MX (but not 2004, for lo, it is the devil, and Premiere Pro naught but the devil's concubine) so they can all animate shit by hand, but not as elegantly as me because I did it first and I did it best and I win at life.

::long gasping inhale::

MUAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!



Why yes, I was talking to boniblithe yesterday. Why do you ask?

possibly the most-out-there muses so far?

[nightengale.livejournal.com]

Heh, finally I'm done commenting on people's comments, for now, and am gonna sit down to type out my own views on this. And I apologize in advance, Perma, this is gonna go way over the character limit. kintail and karose and broken__bird are going to be the three who see the most similarity in what I say, I think, at least based on thier comments so far. Anyone else who sees similarity, tell me: I'm really interested to discover how many of us are visualizers to the degree I am. This is my question, after all, and I'm gonna put everything out for you, and I'm not gonna hedge. And no, I'm not afraid of being labeled - it's happened before. ::shrugs good-naturedly::

Oh, and I answered #3 to the poll. Speaking broadly, I can't write fandom without muses, but I can write original with or without them. Prose I do better when I have my main muse Jou helping me; poetry, I can (of necessity, 'cause he's pissy) write on my own or with Seto's help.

Here's how I describe, or if you will, relate to, my muses. First off, they're all anthropomorphized--well, all of them except for the panda, and Panda's just...well, a panda. Which is a -morphization of a type, just not humanoid, I guess. ^_^;; I see them all in the manner you would see someone out of the corner of your eyes, something between a mirage and a ghost. And they're always hanging around me, whether or not I'm writing, whether or not I'm in my room. Not all of them all the time, for the most part: some of them will wander off, but I'm rarely without one of them in the vicinity. Several times I've felt the presence of my lead muse Jou when I needed a bit of support, in crisis, though at those times I usually am not paying nearly any attention to him, instead to the crisis, and thus I very rarely visualize/can see them at those times. They tend to watch what I'm doing, especially my computer screen, and comment about it. I talk back, of course--there isn't a single person who I don't talk back to in excess. Currently, there's about five of them, depending on how you count.

(frozen comment)

[arboretum]

quite honestly, unless someone's really hearing voices in their head from some entity other than him/herself trying to dictate the flow and shape of a story or piece of artwork... I think the muse business is just a load of bs XD

to me, it seems like a large majority of people who claim to have muses are just being trendy, because dude, wtf, surely 99% of you can't actually be hearing voices and I'm just missing out on it? 8D

that said, when writing, characters do have a tendency to do what they'd like to do, but I would attribute this more to a carefulness in remembering characterization than having an actual Entity representing that character being like... a muse? I dunno. I'm sure museness was great when the ancient greeks did it, especially since they're dead now and all. When the 13 year-old ficcers and roleplayers do it, I'm just kind of ehhhhhhhh. Sometimes it just seems like a convenient excuse to blame crack-headed ideas somewhere else -- and I'm just like, dude, crack is fine. just acknowledge that it's your crack, and not Muse's.

*cough* but maybe I am just missing out on hearing voices. who knows! :D

[billradish.livejournal.com]

I picked the option that works best for me, but it's not accurate. I don't require a muse to create, and in fact most of the time when I'm working with them, it's not about writing, art or even photography. It's not about story, Story or plot. It's about them, how we interact and work, and how their space operates. The closest we get to creation right now is worldbuilding, and trying to piece together the reality of events. I'm still settling in to being a muse-home.

And one of the stories I'm writing is about a world where these muses are given the benefit I generally feel they deserve, and acknowledging them as entirely separate entities from the author.

Does that mean that all creativity stems from the muse? No. Does that mean that those with muses are more creative than those without? No. Does that mean that the muse exists solely to further creativity? Fuck no. That means we have a different system for doing it, and our system is different from every other muse-host's author on top of that. Communication is a bitch, and the concepts you're poking at are not blanket ones.

Call it creative schizophrenia and move on, or identify those who call themselves mused and seek out individuals to babble at you. Your questions will not apply to most in my sphere, and you'll learn more by asking individuals to babble about it, in a venue they're comfortable with.

As for me in particular, I have twenty currently in active residence, with another four at least hovering at the fringes. I'm a bit odd in that I get certain associations very clearly (aqua, turquoise and all varying shades of those colors now fall under Lulia in my head, for they're her favorite shades and it resonates) but don't generally actually see them. What I get instead are touch and texture, and I'll shiver when they're cold, or trip when I get down off a stool while someone taller is up in the affecting part of the brain, as the mental perception is that my legs are currently much longer. They are themselves, not truly changeable (though some will take on roles for other projects, when they feel like it) to the same degree that we are not.

And this? Is not something I'm generally comfortable with talking about in public. If I don't answer any replying comments, this is likely why.

[nike-victory.livejournal.com]

Hi. I'm here from metafandom.

I have a muse. Correction. I have a *lot* of muses. In my experience, people with muses seem to either have one muse that changes as they need it to or they have a bunch of muses, each one of which represents a certain specific character (i.e. Obi-Wan or Harry Potter) or a character type (i.e. the brooding hero, the smart-ass, or the kick-ass female). I'm one of the poor smucks that has a muse per character. Not every character I've ever written has a muse, but every muse I have represents a certain character. It's gotten to the point where I can actually claim to have a main muse, who is main because he interacts with me more often than any of the others.

So what makes them muses? For me, it's when this character I'm telling stories about interacts with me in my head. I'm aware that they're part of me, but at the same time, it is very much like interacting with someone outside of myself. There's the "I wouldn't do that" veto power, definitely, but there's also lines of dialogue that seem to float out of nowhere and somehow I just know who said it because the dialogue sounds like something that character/muse would say. My muses also tend to respond visually to auditory cues. Yes, this means I can describe what they look like and what I saw, but I wouldn't say they're hallucinations as much as daydreams that strike unexpectedly and can repeat in the right conditions. There's too much of a surreal, misty quality to them and I'm always aware that what I'm seeing isn't actually happening to me. For example, I was standing in line at a Subway once and the song "What Is Love?" came on. Immediately I received the very odd visual of four of my muses headbanging to it. The sandwich artists apparently thought I was odd because to an outsider, I had a blank look to my eyes while looking very much like I was trying not to laugh, but I was also very much aware of where I was, moved with the line, and was able to place my order and pay.

I wouldn't call muses an external force. They're more of an internal force that you can't entirely control, like your subconscious. I like my muses and would never get rid of them. Although it is somewhat disconcerting when one of them starts singing...