To Muse or Not to Muse: What Was the Question?
We interrupt our usual satirical narrative with some musings (heh) on the habit of art.
I recently completed a written work and also a musical composition. Both very different and intended for much different audiences. Both have been well-enough received by their prospective niche audiences that I consider them successful for my purpose which includes, but is not limited to, providing mutual entertainment, enjoyment, and engagement with something made-up that adds a little spice to this life.
Inspiration? Sure, but what are we talking about when we talk about inspiration? The typical, somewhat vague idea is that some mysterious energy or force in the universe provides the artist with some sort of notion or conceit and, thus, the artist becomes a sort of cosmic interlocutor between the audience and the Transcendent. This makes sense historically. Art, as both a natural talent and learned craft, is religion before religion became religion, and there is a reason why art and religion are so closely linked throughout time. Both are an attempt to make sense of that which is beyond making complete sense of because we simply lack knowledge. We don’t know what we don’t know. So our minds stepped up to fill in the blanks using what we have: imagination. At some point in the early Twentieth Century, we realized that this is what we were doing, so art became self-referential and religion became less and less relevant.
If, at this point, I’ve offended you as an artist, a transcendentalist, or a religious person, put some band-aids on your nipples and come back when you catch your breath. Maybe wear looser underwear.
My argument is that art is best understood as pragmatic work people do to satisfy our constantly blooming impulse to find the big picture. All art is ultimately a story just as religion is a story. Just as we think in stories and are taught with stories. I have friends who think in terms of muses and what not. I respect and, in some cases, love these people and am not necessarily shitting on their approach. But it’s never worked for me like that. My ideas and visions arise out of the habit of writing, reading, composing, and listening. If another person is directly involved, it is because I notice a unique word combination, turn of phrase, sound, etc.. A guy who makes a table looks over his work and sees a better way to brace the top to prevent cracking from expansion and contraction. A guy who makes a sandwich adds pesto to mayo and gives it a fancy name. Why isn’t that art? And if it is, if everything is art, nothing is art.
You see? We spend as much time on the story of a thing as we do the thing itself.
Rather than thinking of inspiration as something the artist receives, perhaps it’s better to understand it as something the artist does. Much like God breathing life into a ball of mud in the Garden of Eden, the artist—be he a composer, novelist, painter, sculptor—takes fairly common, universal materials or concepts and tweaks them in a new way, breathes new life into them. Perhaps instead of seeing these acts as the result of some transcendent force or being bestowing talent on mere mortals, it’s more accurate to see them as human capabilities we use to imaginatively reference a transcendent force or being.
One thing I’m sure of in my experience: art is the result of vision (a particular kind of imagination) and persistence that verges on obsession. As a nineteen year old, I almost failed out of college because I practiced guitar 8 hours a day instead of going to class.
Why are some people creative and some not? Who knows. Why do some excel at architecture and others at building things? Can’t tell you. Why can some savants pick up an instrument and excel in minutes or hours when it takes others months and years? Great question.
I’m not saying there is no mystery. Perhaps at the root of this mystery there are gods and angels, a transcendent mind, collective unconscious, and muses. Or perhaps there is simply the human mind doing what it does best: having solved all of the basic problems of existence, it works at the only interesting problem left: amusing itself while filling in blanks.
Yes, this is Donut Theory.