Req for recs

[kaberett]

Apparently this week I am pondering the construction of the idea of "muse" instead of working on my transfer report.

In particular I am wondering about how other people have conceptualised their relationships with real flesh-and-blood human beings they consider muses; presence/absence, the form of inspiration, and so on, and so forth. I think there is an essay trying to happen, but in order to tease out the details I rather suspect I need to expose myself to a wider range of viewpoints.

Suggestions and discussion in comments very much appreciated.

eta "museum" is "a seat or shrine of the Muses"!!!!

Comments

[quirkytizzy]

My brain is not braining right now, so are you asking about how people work with other people who are inspiring to them, that help them create or set in motion the wheel of creation??? Because that sounds like a really fascinating thing to explore!

[kaberett]

Yep, pretty much that! As I am kind of unsubtle (or possibly subtle) about (with that one tag), there is definitely a person in my life who I am kind of conceptualising as a muse at the moment, sometimes explicitly, in spite of the fact that I don't write for them and I don't expect them to ever like/appreciate the writing about them. So! I'm still working out the details enough to actually talk about them in public - it's all a bit raw (in both the sense of "unfinished" and that of "vulnerable/sensitive") at the moment, but I'm working on it. :-)

[kate]

Hi - here from my network page.

This reminds me of Stephen King's description of his muse (who is not a live human being) as the guy in the basement with the fairydust (or something close to that - it's from On Writing).

So I have to ask whether you mean someone who inspires you to write/produce art of any sort (i.e. a friend who gives prompts that spark your interest) or someone who inspires you to write/produce art about them (i.e. Chris Evans' physique).

If you mean the first, then I have lots of muses, but I usually have one person at a time in a fandom whose brain just works like mine and sparks lots of writing ideas. I love those fandom friends, they're the best.

The other... I don't have that much. I like characters individually, but mostly it's their relationships with other characters that captures me, so I don't really dwell on individuals so much as how they think about other people. I guess that means I have a gang of muses, usually? But when I'm in a fandom, I flip from character to character, I don't tend to stick with one religiously (though I usually have a few favorites I prefer to write). I know that other people use pics of their favorite characters to get in the mood, or music, sometimes, but that's not my way.

Hope you get lots of answers to this - it's a fascinating subject!

[kaberett]

The handwave I can give without getting too much into the stuff that feels awkward/difficult to talk about in public until I've sorted it out some more goes: there is a particular flesh-and-blood person who just by existing in my life encourages me to look at the world differently/do serious self-reflection/think hard about how I want to communicate, and what I want to communicate about. And so I have recently ended up writing quite a lot of poem "about" them, except it's... in many cases only tangentially about them, or about the idea of them, more than it about them-as-person; and it's work that I don't expect them to ever particularly like or appreciate (one of the many soubriquets I apply to this particular person is My Unpoetical Lover). It's not that we talk about my poetry or art, particularly, but we do have conversations about communication and how I view the world, which tends to Spark Stuff; but most of what I've written about them since mid-January has been completely in the absence of any communication with them.

... erm, that got quite tangled; hopefully it is at this point clear why I am after having a discussion, heh!

Thank you so much for contributing! As and when I've actually sorted my thoughts out and written them up coherently I'll try to remember to chuck a link your way :-)

[kate]

Ah, yes, I totally get what you're talking about. I don't have one of those, never have; I'm not sure I would like one, tbh, I have enough of a hard time dealing with creative endeavors without having them hang on a person. Maybe it's just not in my nature to have a muse of that sort? Hm. That's an excellent question.

There are a lot of people that help with the creative process, though - like I said above, my fandom friends to spark interest, and also my wife, who can listen to me talk about something I'm working on and take it and twist it around until she fixes whatever block I'm having (or helps me fix it myself).

I'm really interested to read your thoughts - I'm going to subscribe just to be sure I don't miss it, if you don't mind.

ETA: Also, I'm not much of a poetry person (lack of education and a bit of pedestrianism), but yours are quite lovely - thank you for the link!

[kaberett]

I've never had one before and I'm kind of baffled that it's happening now, to be honest; I'm much more used to having people I can bounce ideas backwards and forwards with ("playing catch with art", as elisem says), to talk to about what I'm working on and build from there. This feels very different and very weird, which is some of why I want to work it out -- it's... kind of like having an absent-other (see conversation with alexseanchai elsethread) as a focus for solitary work. It's odd.

Subscription very much welcome; delighted to make your acquaintance, and thank you for the kind words about the poetry :-)

[kate]

You're welcome - and I am now even MORE interested to read, because that's how I am - playing catch with art is a brilliant way of capturing it - and I am very interested to read about that other sort of muse.

Also - the whole point of this post! Recs of people who have muses like this, I really only know musicians, and the ones I'd suggest are Brahms and the Schumanns (Clara, but also Robert, I think) and possibly Liszt and Chopin (they were... frenemies?). There are a lot of classical musicians (composers, I mean here) that had muses.

Also, I'm not sure, because (obviously!) this is not my forte, but I believe Pablo Neruda had a muse like this, the person he wrote the 100 love sonnets about? They're some of the poetry that I do like, so I know just the tiniest bit about them.

[kaberett]

Hmm, maybe I should pull the Neruda back off the shelf and reread; I had the impression that they were more a gift than my writing is, but definitely something to ponder!

Thank you for the recs. :-)

[alexseanchai]

My first thought is honestly Katy Perry. "The One That Got Away" lyrics, with embedded Youtube official music video.

My next thought is, I've never applied the label 'muse' to S (you could have guessed that. um, which poem was it I wrote about her where I cite the Muses inspiring her? "Anaktoria"?), but gee, the first thing kate says sounds real familiar... Basically what I do is braindump ideas at her, and occasionally she braindumps back at me, usually (as far as I know) stuff she's hashed out with K beforehand, and we try to provide each other useful feedback. This is occasionally difficult because what I'm braindumping is fic ideas for a canon with which she has zero familiarity. (Also occasionally difficult because she's S and mostly a Church Catholic and not real social-justice-aware, I think I've already had this rant about her at you so I'll refrain from repeating myself.)

[kaberett]

Ani DiFranco: every song has a "you"/a "you" that the singer sings to/and you're it this time/baby, you're it this time

You have told me about S in this respect, yeah; Sonnet came out of me saying, in bed, flippantly, "I'd call you must if it'd make you smile", and the person in question saying "heh, sounds like poetry"; whereupon I went "... I'd have to tweak the meter but good point", and whatever we'd been going to get around to doing was suddenly off the table ;)

(Actually, P!nk does a lot of singing to the absent-you also. Hmm. Hmm. Yes, good, thank you for prompting me to realise that the absent-other is a frequent focal point.)

[alexseanchai]

\o/

also, lovely poem

[quirkytizzy]

I like this. May Sarton, a writer and a poet I love, once said that EVERY poem is a love poem - it's just often the "you" is intangible, or else not directly expressed. But it IS there. Even if it's not a person, it IS something. She also uses the word "love" to mean that incomprehensible, often maddening push-and-pull, the back and forth, the power OF emotion, even if it's not love, but something we are in love WITH. (Such as sorrow, or anger, or the way the tea steams from our cup at breakfast.)

I don't know if I have people muses or character muses. I can't write fiction. I don't have worlds of fantasy or new places in my head. I always write memoir stuff. I guess the closest thing to a person muse I have is other people who write stuff about THEIR lives that makes me want to write about MINE.

[untonuggan]

I think there is a kind of Muse of Knitting? I think you read the post recently whereby I was appeasing a certain tricky knitting project with fandom, in the hopes that it would help with miscrossed cables, etc. (Which it did, somehow, I will not question it.)

Like, there's the knitting muse of Entering a Yarn Store and Touching All The Soft Things.

Or the Muse of Stash Diving.

Or the Muse of Looking at Delightful Patterns.

Or the Muse of Please Let Me Get Gauge.

(I could go on, but you get the gist.)

Basically, there are probably many sub-muses for the entire knitting process. And don't get me started on spinning...

[kaberett]

I did read the post - it was charming and I am so glad it worked.

So... *g*

[untonuggan]

*g*s back

[carmilla]

Off the top of my head: definitely worth looking into Shakespeare's relationship with Henry Wriothesley, Baudelaire's with Jeanne Duval and Truffaut's with Jeanne Moreau.

[kaberett]

Thank you :-)

[thefairymelusine]

Ooh, have been thinking about how to reply, I'd also add Truffaut and Oskar Werner (in terms of long collaboration and inspiration)

Linkspam

[kaberett]

A Muse for the Masses: gender, age and nation in France, fin-de-siecle

Mediating between the muse and the masses: Inspiration and the actualization of creative ideas. (2010)

Muse-based game design (2012)

Inspiration: Core Characteristics, Component Processes, Antecedents, and Function. (2004)

Inspiration as a psychological construct (2003)

Re-Presenting Charles Baudelaire/Re-Presencing Jeanne Duval: Transformations of the Muse in Angela Carter's “Black Venus” (2004)

okay this one I am actually just baffled by - geographers and creative writers collaborating on a paper about creative writing as non-/representational?? O_o

The Muse as Therapist: A New Poetic Paradigm for Psychotherapy

Hybrid Muses and Other Sorts of Romances: feminism working out of postcolonial theory (2007)

From Muse to Poet: Paratextual Practices of Women Poets in Cuba at the End of the Nineteenth Century (2007)

Reading the Paratext in Clandestine Literature: The Case of the Publisher Poulet-Malassis

An historical exploration of creativity research

[silveradept]

Classically speaking, The Muses (with the majuscule) were resposible for the creation of all artistic forms and expressions, and would curry inspiration and favor to heir chosen few, althogh never for long - they are almost always described as fickle entities, prone to abandoment of even their most ardent supporters on a whim. These days, though, in conceptions like Subreality, every writer, whether professionally published or just starting as a fic writer, has their personal muse that studied at the Collegium and was certified as a muse. The aborted arc of 9th Elsewhere (sadly not easily accessible any more) had muses in a prpfessional organization that helped people work things out in their inner psyche so that their creativity would shine through again.

These days, I think inspiration is more like kami - every place and thing has an inspiration (or more) in it, but only those who perform the right rituals will earn the blessing.

[kaberett]

Thank you :-)

[kaberett]

In conversation with TOL, stuff that I want to remember:
1. individual's existence as muse
2. relationship as muse
3. their works as muse (cf Mozart horn concerti, I say, giving a completely different example to the one TOL did)

Phrase: "muse as object". Which -- yes, ties in to the absent-other thing, and also the it's-not-about-the-person-it's-about-the-idea-of-the-person. Hmmm. Lots of chewy thoughts.