 
 The MuseThe Dark Side of the Museby Jack McGeehin
 
    
    	This is a forum on muses, so I'll tell you about mine, 
    although it won't be what you expect.  You see, my muse and I 
    don't exactly get along. We coexist, that's all. They say you can 
    pick your friends, but you can't pick your family.  Same goes for 
    a muse; you don't get to choose. I certainly wouldn't pick my muse 
    as a friend.  I'd more likely pick him out of a police lineup.  
    "That's him," I'd say, "he's the one that's been tormenting me all 
    these years.  Hang the rapscallion."
         It's nothing new that people anthropomorphize their muses, as 
    if the original nine sister goddesses of Greek mythology still 
    roam the earth, endowing all they touch with creativity and joyous 
    inspiration.  My muse is not a beautiful Greek goddess, but a fat 
    balding behemoth with the likeness of Raymond Burr, who plops 
    himself down on the easy chair near where I write, and munches 
    noisily (he's always eating) on some greasy stinking food mass.  
    Basically, he just sits there, consuming, until such time as he 
    sees fit to contribute a good joke or reset the plot of my story.  
    And then he's gone, leaving me to the details, but not before 
    heading downstairs to the kitchen and helping himself to whatever 
    looks good.
         That's my muse.  I'd gladly trade him for a new one, but a 
    muse is not transferable. I imagine there is but one central 
    clearinghouse for muses, and you get what's available when you 
    enter this world (most of the truly outstanding muses having been 
    taken long ago by the many great artists, philosophers and world 
    leaders who came before us).  It's downright disheartening to know 
    that my muse came off the same assembly line as Pee Wee Herman's 
    muse and Rush Limbaugh's muse, but I try not to think about that 
    very much.
    	Having said all this, I ought to point out that my muse and I 
    have collaborated on some decent writing to date.  We can work 
    together; the difficult part is getting my muse to show up. What 
    frequently happens is I sit and agonize over a story for a lengthy 
    period of time, dancing all around the prose that would make the 
    piece literature, but never quite hitting the mark. Just about the 
    time I'm ready to save to disk, pop a beer, and drop out in front 
    of a situation comedy on TV, in walks the muse -- the man with the 
    ideas. Sometimes we hash it out; other times I just tell him to 
    take a hike.  "I'm too tired," I'll say.  Of course, he gets mad 
    and then gets even by pulling the same routine on the next day and 
    the next, arriving too late to be of any real help.  This is in 
    fact what constitutes writer's block: a burnt out writer and a 
    pissed off muse.
    	What I should do when my muse goes AWOL like this is canvass 
    the restaurants in my neighborhood.  I'm sure I'd find him -- 
    probably at one of those all you can eat seafood houses.  How 
    satisfying it would be to walk in unannounced on him for a change, 
    and watch as he wolfs down the last morsels on his third plate of 
    shrimp scampi. I'd love nothing more than to slip his waitress a 
    fiver to cut off the crustacean supply line until he forks over 
    what I desperately need: ideas, words, jokes.
    	Realistically, though, the only way I know to keep my muse on 
    the job is writing: writing every day and for hours at a time. 
    Banging away at a story like this, I can even do okay without my 
    muse (which irritates the hell out of him, I can tell you).  Like 
    some kind of miscreant Santa Claus, he knows when I've been 
    working hard and he can't stay away.  Whenever I start making 
    headway with a story, he'll sidle in, a big glass jar of pickled 
    sausages under his arm, and say, "What kind of trash you writing 
    now?" I'll remind him that he needs to insert the present form of 
    the verb Be into that sentence, "What kind of trash *are* you 
    writing now?".  (Nothing gets my muse angrier than having his 
    grammar corrected.)  He looks over my shoulder, dribbling pickle 
    juice onto my back, and tells me that what I've written is "crap!"  
    After a heated exchange rich in profanity, my muse rolls up his 
    adipose-laden sleeves, and we get down to some serious writing.
    	Generally, this collaboration bears fruit in that the final 
    product is better than anything I would have come up with alone.  
    It's still not great literature but, heck, this isn't Hemingway's 
    muse I'm working with.  The important thing is that I'm happy with 
    the outcome of my stories.  I think my muse is, too; although, I 
    can't quite figure what he gains from the process -- other than 
    the ego gratification that comes with "saving the day" every time 
    he walks into a room.
    	I suppose if there's a lesson to be learned here, it is this: 
    Don't trust your muse to be around when you need him.  Start 
    without him if you must.  He'll show up eventually, and when he 
    does, don't ask where he's been all this time.  Just put him to 
    work and milk him for all he's worth.  Quite frankly, there's no 
    telling when you'll see your muse again.          
    	
    
   [Author's note:  My muse contributed to the writing of this piece. 
   He showed up late one evening, added a few funny lines, took out 
   some dialog that he thought reflected poorly on his image, and 
   then headed off to Popeye's for some chicken.  Typical.]

                                   -end-
                       Copyright (c) 1993 Jack McGeehin
                                   
