Musing over Muse
I was talking to a friend the other day about the muse. How it sometimes seems to be evasive. Yet sometimes it hits like a lightbulb going off in my head. The muse is that "Aha!" moment when inspiration for an idea, a story a piece of art, even a business, hits someone, seemingly out of the blue.
Muse, according the dictionary is a noun describing a person, or an imaginary being or force that gives someone ideas and helps them to write, paint, or make music.
Muse is described in ancient Greek and Roman stories as one of the nine goddesses who were believed to give encouragement in different areas of literature, art, and music.
And we authors tend to believe that we created the story, that in some mysterious way the ideas and the character came together and we wrote the story.
But perhaps the ancient greek stories have more truth than we realise. The nine Muses, although some say they was only three, were said to be the daughters of Zeus, the god of thunder, and Mnemosyne the goddess of memory. The Muses were personifications of knowledge and the arts, especially poetry, literature, dance and music. What if these were more than mere personifications? What if the Muse was something real?
It has always been a mystery to me as from where my ideas have come from. I often say, when asked, It came from above, or, I downloaded it. Sometimes I might add, "from the Divine." And sometimes it does feel that way.
No matter which artist or creator you speak to, they will all most likely tell you something similar, that they feel the idea was given to them, that inspiration came from somewhere outside of them.
I have read of other studies which suggest that whenever anyone has a thought, that that thought came from outside of the thinker. Some have managed to measure a brainwave registering a thought just milliseconds before the subject actually has the thought.
Does that sound weird? It is. Some say that we live in a Matrix, similar to that of the movie by that name. Everything we experience is a simulation. If that is so, then could not also our thoughts be part of that simulation?
Brain-shaking ideas. What do you think? Where do artists get their ideas from?