I like having a secret crush on someone. It gives me fuel for visualization and floods me with endorphins, without the aggravation of interaction or feedback.   I see them as a muse and use the energy to fuel my passion for whatever projects I am involved in.  I find a muse is a powerful catalyst to my creativity.  Even more so if they don’t know they’re my muse.  Sometimes more so if they think they are, yet aren’t quite sure.  There’s such power in keeping it to myself, but also fun in the playful interaction with them when we both know we’re doing it.  I find it crucial to my creativity to have a muse, although it’s only every few years that someone comes along that really stokes my fire.  I mean, I have a lot of creative friends and they ALL inspire me but every so often one flame flares higher than the rest and the creative juices begin to flow.  What brews up can be very powerful and transformative.   

A friend wrote about it years ago and he said it so well,  I won’t even try to steal or paraphrase.  He said:  ”Having a muse is a beautiful thing, they fill you with the utmost joy as well as the utmost sadness. Thinking of them relieves stress, makes you feel warm inside and fuels your passions, good or bad.  Sounds the same as a ‘crush’ doesn’t it, but having a muse is something different.

In the Trubadour tradition, circa 12th Century, love was something to be committed to from a distance, letting your imagination soar with possibilities, hopes, dreams, all the while the object of your affection was held at arms’ length or longer as not to destroy the illusion.  In ancient Greece, the 9 Muses were water nymphs that inspired those who heard them sing or saw them at play. Of course, if you got too close they might inspire something terrible, as it wasn’t their job to determine what came out of you, but rather that it just came out.  Such is the nature of muses.

A muse sets you on fire, makes your mind swim with words, pours heavenly energy into your body. You could go for a run, completely tire yourself out, but thinking of your muse you’re topped up again. Sure, your body may feel tired, but your mind is still alive, still burning with thoughts. Motivation as a concept almost dissipates. You stop worrying about motivation when you have a muse because you are filled with it. The outpouring becomes unstoppable. You may fill up notebooks with bad poetry, crazy story ideas, thoughts and dreams that may sound like complete gibberish or worse, sociopathic, but at least you’re expressing yourself.

All the while your muse goes about their lives, flitting into yours every once in a while to give your soul a kick in the butt and get you out of your ruts. Such is the nature of muses. They come and go, but you miss them from the moment they step out the door, their last smile searing into your mind.

I had a major muse during my early 20′s.  She was great and completely unlike me, which is probably why she intrigued me so. But did she light a fire in me. Woah!   I have BOOKS filled with words that came out of me when I thought of her.  Just having her close filled my mind to capacity, and I let it out.   We never descended into a relationship, never kissed with our lips.  Partly from fear, partly from the fact that I didn’t want to take her off the pedestal. She was perfect, as long as I kept her perfect.  She is still in my life, but she no longer stokes the fire as once she did. Over the years we’ve have become the best of friends.

I had another muse a few years ago, which then turned into some kind of pseudo-relationship which then fell apart. She was a good muse for a time, but man, did she screw my mind. She became real, too real, and my illusions were shattered.  Such is the nature of reality.

I have had a couple of muse-like stirrings since then, but nothing worthy of making me pick up my pen and spew my feelings out on paper. Or shaking me out of my habits, out of my ruts. They aren’t powerful enough, or maybe I’m not making them powerful enough.  As a consequence, all my feelings are still inside, so I kind of feel sorry for my next muse. She is in danger of drowning.  Such is the nature of muses.”
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