The Pain That Passes Between Writer And Muse

The problem with being some sort of a writer is that inspiration is scarce, and sometimes unavailable. Can I write without it? Yes. But would I like to write without it? No. I wouldn’t. The concept of muses comes into play, here. I’ve been thinking a lot about muses, these past few days. A lot of poetry has been exchanged, and a lot of things I wrote about disappointed me. I’ve been thinking of why I write, what I write. And, what I realized, startled me.

The concept of a muse has always made me wary. To use your creative energy as a ray of light that goes through another person as a prism, only to be shattered into colors you couldn’t produce yourself, alone, is a beautiful concept. However, the beauty of this very concept is underlined by a pressing truth. Focusing your creative energy around another person is welcoming them into your most sacrosanct space, and handing them the ability to encroach it as they wish.

This is the very reason the idea of a muse has never appealed to me. It’s the very reason I’ve always drawn from the lives of others, like a parasite, of sorts. It’s far easier, that way. To be a mere storyteller, than to actually create tales worth telling. My stories are interesting, no doubt, but I hold onto them. Cherish them, because I’m afraid they’ll dissipate if I write them down. My memories are like a little locket I wear all the time, nestled against my heart. No one can see it, and very few know about it, but it’s a little secret that prickles my skin and reminds me of its existence on occasion.

I started letting muses in, slowly. Eventually. I had to, didn’t I? When so many beautiful souls exist around you, and draw you in at every step, writing them, and the memories you create with them, is but inevitable. After resisting the allure of a muse for so, so long, giving in felt good. Writing was easy, because I knew who I was writing to. For once, what I wrote held some context and capacity behind it. It was a comfortable time.

However, my fear of muses crystallized.

The allure of a muse lies in the fact that it leaves. It’s a flutter in a relatively peaceful existence that creates multiple ripples.

A writer grasps, claws at a muse because of the simple knowledge of the fact that time is limited. In that tiny frame of chronology, you want to try and capture every facet you see. Every facet you feel, because you’re afraid you’ll never feel a ripple as astonishing as that one ever again. You never quite end up capturing what you want to, though. Simply because what you want to capture isn’t what the muse makes you feel.

You want the muse, itself.

But a muse, by its very virtue, leaves, and that’s what happened again.

It’s horrible, knowing I can’t write about what’s not mine anymore. Knowing how, what I did write, is suddenly without context. It leaves me bereft, because the writer, the woman, and the lover in me, are all intertwined. I let someone become my muse, and I don’t know if that was the wisest decision I ever made.
But it was one that made me extremely happy, when the happiness lasted.