CREATIVE PROCESS
Our Latter Day Muse …
Diaphanous Deities Aside
So, of course, all creatives are touched by divine intervention and their euphoric, symphonic Muse flows through their bodies like a molten stream of consciousness …
And then there are the rest of us.
Those of us who have to work at it.
Yes, us.
Artists and poets of the Romantic era were enslaved by their Muse. To be so enslaved (or obsessed?) kind of made their creative lives easier …
Pre-Raphaelite painter, Rossetti, felt his destiny was defined by the very existence of his copper-haired Muse, Elizabeth Siddal.
Graves, giddy-eyed, portrays his aesthetic as a woman with ‘rowan berry lips’ and ‘hair curled, honey-coloured to white hips’.
The ‘ideals’ of the Romantics were taken from those nine (or so) Greek Muses (of the veiled variety) who once personified art in its many forms.
The Romantics were associated with (1) yearnings of the quivering kind and (2) definitely of the unrequited kind.
Are the classic ideals of the Muse still with us? Are they the only fickle strumpets to inspire endless streams of procumbent passion?
Hmmmm.
Cut to our latter-day Muse.
She, he, or they have taken a shift in semantics away from the diaphanous sort.
Our latter-day Muse has shed their coy and scented ways in favour of ocean drilling, cage fighting, or yielding log-severing (preferably not leg-severing) chainsaws.
No yearnings here, get over yourselves.
Our latter-day Muse can be influenced by those we long for … but we’re not dependent on it.
Our latter-day Muse embodies all sources of inspiration, art, myths, memories, photographs, clouds, the moon, the stars, the cat, or the contents of our back pockets.
It’s about having the power to sit back and visualise virtually anything, anything at all to give our Muse their legs.
If we want to entertain, inform, or even impact the lives of our audience we have to make our musings ‘happen‘. For something to ‘happen’ it needs a coherent shape or form.
Goodbye, diaphanous ladies. We loved you.
Suit up. Our latter-day Muse is fueled, primed, and ready.
© 2024 Susi Moore. All Rights Reserved.
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