I am one of those creative people who needs to be inspired to create. Most often I am inspired by a muse.

The dictionary defines a muse as "the power regarded as inspiring a poet, artist, thinker, or the like."

Historically in mythology a Muse is one of the 9 daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne who each preside over some form of art: Calliope (epic poetry), Clio (history), Erato (lyric poetry), Euterpe (music), Melpomene (tragedy), Polyhymnia (religious music), Terpsichore (dance), Thalia (comedy), and Urania (astronomy).

Roman statue of Erato, 2nd century AD.
The muse is depicted playing
the kithara or lyre.

Erato and I are very good friends.

I know a lot of artists. We tend to be drawn to each other, we find solace in the misery of our fellow artists. Its cliche, the tortured artist, but its a cliche for a reason. Art is a very emotional thing. I have found that the stronger the emotion the stronger the art.

That being said, there is a very fine line between being inspired by emotion and being stymied by it. Look at the dates on my poetry blog archives. Between 2013 and 2017 nothing was posted. I was in a very deep dark depression and trying hard to keep my head above water. I produced NOTHING. I was working hard on finding myself again after having lost my sense of identity. 2017 was transformative. I spent the entire year in a very frustrated place. I hated where I was.

I was determined to get back to being creative because I remember being happy when being creative. So I vowed to do a little something every day in 2018. I started bullet journaling and doing a different creative challenge every day. In January it was a photo a day. In February it was InCoWriMo (Correspondence writing). March has been a list prompt every day.

Each of those worked to help stir my pot of creative juices, but it took a catalyst to make the pot boil over. My catalyst was a muse in the shape of a person. Another artist. Another tortured soul looking for some relief from the pressure that unfulfilled art builds up inside of you. I've known him for about 3 years now but we just recently connected on a more personal level.

Hearing his story and bouncing ideas around together was the very thing I needed to get back on the bandwagon. My muse doesn't directly inspire everything I do (though certainly you can find a piece of him in everything). For me its more like his presence inspires me to want to write more. I write for me (and honestly for him too because he is super talented and I look up to him as an artist and I want to impress him). I am sure there are some budding astrophysicists out there publishing papers in the hopes that Neil Degrasse Tyson reads it and makes a comment on it. He's my NDT.

In essence my muse gives me the gentle nudge I need to get my work out. Sometimes its a thing he says, sometimes its a thing he does. SOMETIMES I don't even realize he inspired it until I have it written down and I'm all like... "oh yeah.. he's all over this". Sometimes its not even about him at all.

I don't know how other people get their ideas for their art. Mine all come from my life. I have millions of ideas but they never make it to paper. With a little help from my muse some of it makes out into the world.

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References: http://www.dictionary.com/browse/muse; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erato;