Museness

Is it possible for one person to have too many Muses to count? I say hmmm… hold that thought.

In my 40 years of songwriting and recording work, I follow the muse – whatever-wherever-whenever-whoever it may be at the time.  I don’t question it, challenge it, or ask for explanation.  I don’t always know where It will lead, but I do know from whence it came.

When I am asked to tell the story of my songwriting lyrics – they are all stories, you know – I tend to wax poetic on the topic of inspiration.  It is my life’s observation that:

1.         Inspiration comes easier than many think; and,

2.         A muse isn’t just a someone.  it can certainly be a something, somewhere and somehow!

Let us consider the expanse of it all, amuse, amusing and amusement. Before you become unamused, I will “muse” on.

As I was following my muse (at the time), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – someone, in Salzburg – somewhere – tempting me to finish lyrics I had been holding out for arriving as a lightning bolt of brilliance across a table napkin at my local coffee spot (did I mention holding out for 6 years), the influence was clear – to be touched so deeply by something that it moves you to completeness.

So why then do we sit and wait on it, that spark of inspiration, the call of our Muse?  And yes, I am looking in a mirror as I ask.  Maybe it is because too many of us choose to “wax poetic”, avoiding instead of just taking the direct way to it.  I have read every creativity guide written between 1975 through 2025 (projecting my future reading list) and the one big take-away, actually the only singular take-away, is that each of us has many muses, all waiting to be fully realized as inspiration.

Now, may I take you on a brief guided “muse” tour?  Great!  Well then, here we go.

Look up, look down and all round beside you – too easy to pleasey?  That is the point.  Your muse is right in front of you.  The people, your surroundings, the earth and sky and all that they can allow or create in your life.  They are waiting for you to recognize as a source of inspiration – their “Museness”.

I watch in wonder at my Granddaughters discovering “museness” in all of the Disney princesses that have come into being in their short lifetimes.  For me it was Dorothy, Cowardly Lion, Tinman, and my favorite, Scarecrow, from The Wizard of Oz.  They were my very first “character” type muses, as with so many of my generation, in ways I can’t even fully express, can’t even wax on!  Although I do know that I have been chasing those 4 around in absorbed inspiration for a very long time!

That thought you were holding, or not, the one about “too many muses”, is clearly, to me, a matter of awareness and a desire to be “mused”!  Look that Something, Somewhere, Somehow, and the “easiest of pleasiest” Someone, straight on and recognize the “Museness” in front of you.

Next question – what’re you gonna do with it?

Hmmmm … hold that thought!