Courting the Muse
One of my recent artworks is entitled Courting the Muse, and I’d like to take a moment to dive deeper into the meaning behind this title.
As human beings, we have the unique ability among living creatures to create beauty. In fact, you could argue that it is the one thing we have to give to the world that we didn’t receive directly from the Creator. Rather, we work with the Creator to bring into being something entirely new. Our creative energy can be seen as a relationship between ourselves and an unseen force. We can call this unseen force by many names, including the Great Mystery, God, the Unseen, etc. I sometimes refer to it as the Muse. This force can work through us in a myriad of ways, primarily by bringing inspiration. Have you ever had a spark of inspiration that seemed to come from a mysterious coincidence? That is the Muse giving us a nudge. We can ignore those sparks, as many people do. Or we can nurture an interior state of being that promotes being open to these mysterious pathways of inspiration and creative guidance. Doing that puts us in the position of being in a relationship with a higher power that fuels and dances with our creative practice.
Doing this can be compared to having a courtship with someone. It takes presence and openness. You have to show up and treat the person with respect, or else they will lose interest. This ongoing relationship is like a dialogue you tend and nurture, not a transaction or solo scribble.
As Elizabeth Gilbert writes in her amazing book on creativity Big Magic:
“I believe that our planet is inhabited not only by animals and plants and bacteria and viruses, but also by ideas….When an idea thinks it has found somebody…who might be able to bring it into the world, the idea will pay you a visit…But when it finally realizes that you’re oblivious….it will move on to someone else”.
There are many ways to cultivate this relationship with the Muse, and I’m not here to tell you any right or wrong ways. For me, I like to have a special notebook or file on my computer where I jot down or sketch creative ideas that come to me. It feels like a way of catching them before they are lost or forgotten in the daily onslaught of life. I also use it to have a solid place to work out ideas and dialogue about the evolution of creative concepts. And I definitely make a practice of allowing myself to follow random urges or fascinations that often don’t make sense at first but I just “have a feeling” about. In fact, this intuitive “feeling” is a key ingredient in the Muse relationship for me. Sometimes when I’m working in my studio I will directly ask for guidance and listen carefully for what ideas present themselves. The recent piece with the title “Courting the Muse” was directly created in this way and very much felt like a surprise dialogue between the Mystery and myself.
How can we invite the Muse to work through us? How can we open ourselves as creative beings to be a channel for the Divine to work through us, bringing into being ideas and art from the unseen into the manifest world? This is the role I have as an artist and one I take very seriously. I’m committed to an ongoing process of refinement and cultivation of my energy to be a clear and devoted servant to the Great Mystery, who is the ultimate Source of everything, including my art.
In today’s world of a thousand distractions, it is a discipline that is not easy to maintain. I’m constantly reminding myself (and often failing) to resist allowing my energy to get pulled off course by the latest dramas in politics, or on social media, or even in my own little life, and keep returning back to center where there is an infinite sourse of peace and tranquility that comes from this connection with the Divine Source/Muse/God.
One of my favorite poets sums it up like this:
“Art is the conversation between lovers. Art offers an opening for the heart. True art makes the divine silence in the soul break into applause”. — Hafiz
You can also find more of my writings and musings on my Substack.
