Jefblog

The Muse

I have gotten the impression that Hendrix was channeling the muse during his
better moments. Much like Mozart or Van Gogh. My take on that is that all
those people just had it flowing through them and had to get it out as fast
as they could. With Mozart, his prolific output in 30 years contains things
that other composers would die for, just to have written one thing like
that. Mozart seems to have just tossed off some of these complex and sublime
musical phrases. His talent made his life unreal and he could not live a
normal life. It killed him.
I went to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam some years back. In ten years,
Van Gogh just churned out hundreds if not thousands of paintings and
drawings. He was most critical of himself, but almost everything he did has
a transcendent quality to it. It was at the museum that I started to develop
my theory of "channeling" the muse. I was trying to understand him.
In the Van Gogh Museum, the paintings are arranged chronologically, over
four floors. As you go through the paintings, you can correlate his work to
his bouts of madness. When he is okay, his strokes are defined, small,
unhurried and the paintings seem calm. As he starts to go into one of his
bouts, his paintings become more frenzied, strokes are thicker, subject and
feeling of the paintings is haunted or "out of this world". These are
actually some of his most compelling paintings. I also got the impression
that he was driven to get his drawings out. Had to get them out NOW! More
than he could bear, it was just flowing and flowing. Apparently he would
work for days on end without sleep or food. Pretty manic. It seems that he
might have been acutely sensitive visually, almost painfully so.
So, did the muse choose him? What an honor. The price: your sanity, your
life. You will serve the muse and she will reward you. The reward? See
"price" above.
Garcia, Brian Jones, Cobain and others had a similar relationship with her,
in my book. Not that all of them would have put it that way.

That is not to say the muse eats everyone who serves her. McCartney is
spoken to by the muse. Franz Josef Haydn had a long, good life and was a
great composer who influenced everyone and bridged the gap between Baroque
and Classical. Haydn taught both Mozart and Beethoven.

Monet is another painter who the muse touched. He is another relatively calm
artist with a long and somewhat normal life. A long good life, with kids and
marriage and gardens, etc. I am in awe of the channelers, but I would hope
that if the muse ever picks me, she is gentle with me. I'd like to live a
long life. But a creative long life.

Maybe the "muse" is another term for creative energy, the raw stuff of
creation. Maybe some nervous systems can tap into that and put it out in a
modulated way. Maybe other nervous systems are ultra sensitive and
fine-tuned and can pick up on that energy, but it is too much and they
overload eventually. I try to straddle the line between skeptical science
and open-minded mysticism when it comes to understanding Life, the Universe,
and Everything. 8>)
Doug Adams-RIP