From “The Discipline of Inspiration: The Mysterious Encounter with God at the Heart of Creativity” by Carey Wallace
A muse may strike us as a more comfortable figure than a god.
We might shy away from the spiritual realm because we’re afraid of what we’ll discover there, because we’ve been abused by religious authority, or because we don’t want to face the claims a god might make on us.
And why would an artist like Picasso, with a highly developed concept of a creative spirit, and a lifetime of successful negotiation with it, need to appeal to a god rather than a muse?
But taking refuge in the idea of a muse may simply trade one collection of powerful anxieties for another.
The instant we accept the existence of a muse, we must either wade into or ignore a host of profound questions about the nature and boundaries of the spiritual realm where the muse operates.
Are we a tool of inspiration, a child, a partner, a friend?
Does inspiration care for us, or is it willing to destroy us in pursuit of its own ends.?
And what about the messages it transmits? These shapes, melodies, images, gestures: what are they for? Are they meant to shed light or deceive us, to distract us from the truth or point us to it, to lead us astray or bring us home?
Over years of work, we may become familiar with inspiration – or even expert in our negotiations with it.
But history is not a promise.
Even the most disciplined artists in the world are still subject to inspiration’s fits: ideas that arrive, unbidden but insistent, even when an artist is outside the studio or away from the desk.
And the unpredictable intrusions of inspiration are a minor annoyance compared to the almost unnamable terror that, since we have no control of inspiration, not contact with it, it might abandon us without warning or explanation at any time.
This fear is amplified by the sense that we do not act alone in creation, and by the alienation we feel when we return to our best work.
We can’t believe we made that.
So how can we know if we’ll ever be able to again?