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

[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.

[nightengale.livejournal.com]

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. [...] If you want to know how Sanzo keeps me from going postal in traffic, for example, let me know.

OHGOD. LOVE YOU. ^_^ I mean I knew all that already but the way you put it is just so cute. More coherently to the point...

I don't truly see them as solid presences, but I do feel them, and their words and reactions are entirely their own.

Now when you say they're not a solid presence...do you mean you don't imagine them in your mind's eye, or you can't touch them? For me--well, again, I'll explain more in my own post. But I know I explained at least rudimentially to you. More specifically, when you're in Walmart with Naoe, is there a ghost of his image next to you, or only the 'vibe' of him in your mind, or only a mind's-voice echo of his thoughts?

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.

My familiarity with your method of working helps, and I can say the same thing's happened to me several times. I'll get a line and if I can't get even my pocket notebook open fast enough, I'll repeat it over and over in my head till it's stuck there. Once back in my room or a quiet corner, then that's when Jou (leading muse) will come out and help me wrestle the whole concept into a summary and onto paper, to catch it. And nearly every time this happens, this OMGRUSH inspiration, it's because of a song. So what you consider your muse, I label my sometimes-inspiration. Very intriguing.

just when I didn't know where to go Sanzo strolled up and dropped the ending in my lap

And *that* would be the sentence that started me talking to WL and Karot and started this whole idea. Good job, you. Good job, Sanzo. XD It's out of character for your muses Visitors though and I mentioned that to WL: that normally yours obey the laws of physics.

Talk to me a little about that: to my understanding they don't often pop in and out like that, instead using doors and chairs. Am I right in that assumption? Anything else that comes to mind on that topic?

And, do the characters ever latch onto songs, or do *you* have to pique to a song to make something happen? Has a character ever suggested a song to you?

[sorchafyre.livejournal.com]

::Shakespearean sigh:: Aye, me. As if I wasn't wordy enough the first time around... ::laughs::

[i]Now when you say they're not a solid presence...do you mean you don't imagine them in your mind's eye, or you can't touch them?[/i]

I don't have a 'ghost of their image', as in I don't visualize them, however it's like talking to someone in the back seat when you're looking out the window, you don't need to see them to know they are there. I can feel them, and hear their comments in the way you 'hear' a line from a movie when you remember it.

[i]It's out of character for your muses Visitors though and I mentioned that to WL: that normally yours obey the laws of physics.[/i]

::intrigued:: Now there's something I'd never thought about before. They do 'obey the laws of physics', as much as they do in their original cannon. ::thinking more:: No, I take that back. For example, I've never seen any of the X-guys do one of their trademark flying-leap-balance-on-tall-object moves, though that's decidedly cannon. Heck, they can't go ten pages without SOMEONE doing something picturesquely arcane, though when they're with me it doesn't happen. ::laughs:: Wish it would, I could use a good Wind Master in heavy traffic.

As to the using doors bit, that's not really true. They are suddenly just 'there', though once they are the rules kick in and they have to lounge in a chair, or stand against a wall, and they can't look out a window I don't have. So in this instance Sanzo walking in was the exception rather than the rule. And by 'dropping the ending in my lap'... here's what happened. Since the story was from Gojyo's POV, we got just so far and then, with me distantly wondering how this could possibly end but not being really stuck yet, Sanzo (yes, walked in) and looked at me (::wincing, wondering how he did that without being visualized but he DID, I swear::) and suddenly I knew what he was thinking and what his motivations were for acting the way he did. That, without ever breaking Gojyo's POV, gave me the ending, dialog included, in one breathtaking moment of epiphany. So sort of yeah, dropped it in my lap, because it came all at once, not line by line, just... there, though he didn't put it in my head. ::frustrated sigh:: I'm making no sense at all.

I"ll address the music issue tomorrow when I've had some sleep, since that will certainly be a topic worthy of it's own thread, and likely horribly long besides. Coherency is a fading dream at this point.