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wirelessI don't understand the concept of muses.
Maybe I should clarify that sentence. I don't understand the concept of having people living in your head that isn't technically termed as clinical schizophrenia. If you are hearing voices then perhaps you need to seek out some kind of medical treatment. For example, anti-psychotics. Or alcohol. I hear alcohol works.
In all seriousness, if you strip the concept of a muse all the way back to the original trappings (which seem to have originated in the latter half of the second century AD according to everything I've read today), there were three goddesses (all of Greek origin, naturally) who formed the "preconditions of poetic art" by representing song or voice, practice or occasion and memory. Even when you add in the rest of the recognised muses (and get literature and dance and even astronomy dumped into the creative vortex), their function in society was originally simply to inspire. They were the embodiment of each of these aspects of art and together they were there to fuel the artist.
However, you'll notice that even in The Odyssey, the mentions of muses are incredibly vague. They didn't have recognisable personalities. Classic authors mention them in poems and novels as pleas to inspire them. For example, we can take a quote from Canto II of The Inferno by Dante Alighieri:
Dante isn't asking a person by name to tell him what to do, he's calling to Mnēmē (muse of memory) to help him. It's the difference between appealing to a higher power and sitting down and being like, "So. Mnēmē. Listen. There's this paragraph that I'm totally finding epic fail on. Give us a hand, eh?"
I don't claim to know exactly where the modern concept of muses came from. I'm not sure exactly when people started to give their muses names and then give them the credit for their ideas. I'm not even really sure when the concept of muse shifted from being a sort of vague invocation of the power of inspiration and into a physical, concrete little person who apparently has their own free will about what they do in the story that's being written. It would be like Shakespeare deciding that Puck was real and deciding that he looked like Mickey Rooney 326 years before Mickey Rooney's mother's mother's mother's (ad nauseum) was even a twinkle in his farther's father's father's eye. Or something.
I am violently uncomfortable with the concept of muses in the modern context. I hate the implication that I'm supposed to treat my original characters as fixed concepts which I can't change to suit myself regardless of the original requirements of the novel outline. I find the idea of characters having genuine free will disturbing. It really is tantamount to saying, "I didn't come up with this story, don't credit me. Credit Gordon Gordons who lives in my head!" Uhm. No.
To put it all in context, I do believe that when an author conceives of a character, certain things are absolute and true the moment that the idea for that character takes root in the author's mind. I believe that there are some things that an author cannot change. For example, one of my characters for Project Revelation was born in the 1940s. I cannot change the fact that the war had a genuine impact on his life and that what he went through during the war shaped his sensibilities. I cannot change his opinion about some modern ideas. I can't really fiddle too much with a personality based on survival or getting the best out of every day or knowing that the next time you step into action could be your last. Those are fundamentals of the character.
But I dreamt up that character. I took a face, a time period, a background and an occupation and I cobbled together an individual who acted according to all of those factors. He "walked into my head fully formed" but that doesn't mean that up until that point he lived in some mythic bank of muses having dinner with Hamlet until someone needed him and it doesn't mean he spent time playing darts with Watson until someone decided to re-bastardise the world of Sherlock Holmes and Watson had to go change into a pair of stockings and suspenders for their Victorian brothel story. It means that one day I was sitting down and something inspired me, caught my eye and planted the seed of an idea that grew like an unruly weed.
He lives in my head. A similar character might very well live in someone else's head. He is my intellectual property. Using phrases like "he complained until I did X" is funny and to most people this would indicate that a character's personality leant me to change the direction of a scene that I had very much intended to go in the other direction. It does not literally mean that my character sat down next to me, put his chin on my desk and asked me why I was writing him that way instead of the way that he was clearly meant to be written.
The concept of "muse" means "to inspire" (the literal translation means, in essence, "men" and "to think"). That essentially means that the Blitz in London during the war could be my muse just as easily as the summer weather (ha, what summer weather? It's Scotland) could be my muse. A 1920s train could by my muse. A feather boa could be my muse.
Cheese could be my muse.
The concept of "muse" is not a fixed concept. It's as fluid as the process of writing a novel.
In conclusion: If it's in your head, it's your artistic property. It isn't a cosmic creation, it isn't an invisible being with free will.
Your cheese does not have free will!
(Note: Guys, I'm really sorry about the amount of mistakes I've been editing out of this for the past hour. It was written at work and I didn't have the ability to save it on the hard-drive to proof-read at a quieter time.)
Maybe I should clarify that sentence. I don't understand the concept of having people living in your head that isn't technically termed as clinical schizophrenia. If you are hearing voices then perhaps you need to seek out some kind of medical treatment. For example, anti-psychotics. Or alcohol. I hear alcohol works.
In all seriousness, if you strip the concept of a muse all the way back to the original trappings (which seem to have originated in the latter half of the second century AD according to everything I've read today), there were three goddesses (all of Greek origin, naturally) who formed the "preconditions of poetic art" by representing song or voice, practice or occasion and memory. Even when you add in the rest of the recognised muses (and get literature and dance and even astronomy dumped into the creative vortex), their function in society was originally simply to inspire. They were the embodiment of each of these aspects of art and together they were there to fuel the artist.
However, you'll notice that even in The Odyssey, the mentions of muses are incredibly vague. They didn't have recognisable personalities. Classic authors mention them in poems and novels as pleas to inspire them. For example, we can take a quote from Canto II of The Inferno by Dante Alighieri:
O Muses, O high genius, aid me now!
O memory that engraved the things I saw,
Here shall your worth be manifest to all!
Dante isn't asking a person by name to tell him what to do, he's calling to Mnēmē (muse of memory) to help him. It's the difference between appealing to a higher power and sitting down and being like, "So. Mnēmē. Listen. There's this paragraph that I'm totally finding epic fail on. Give us a hand, eh?"
I don't claim to know exactly where the modern concept of muses came from. I'm not sure exactly when people started to give their muses names and then give them the credit for their ideas. I'm not even really sure when the concept of muse shifted from being a sort of vague invocation of the power of inspiration and into a physical, concrete little person who apparently has their own free will about what they do in the story that's being written. It would be like Shakespeare deciding that Puck was real and deciding that he looked like Mickey Rooney 326 years before Mickey Rooney's mother's mother's mother's (ad nauseum) was even a twinkle in his farther's father's father's eye. Or something.
I am violently uncomfortable with the concept of muses in the modern context. I hate the implication that I'm supposed to treat my original characters as fixed concepts which I can't change to suit myself regardless of the original requirements of the novel outline. I find the idea of characters having genuine free will disturbing. It really is tantamount to saying, "I didn't come up with this story, don't credit me. Credit Gordon Gordons who lives in my head!" Uhm. No.
To put it all in context, I do believe that when an author conceives of a character, certain things are absolute and true the moment that the idea for that character takes root in the author's mind. I believe that there are some things that an author cannot change. For example, one of my characters for Project Revelation was born in the 1940s. I cannot change the fact that the war had a genuine impact on his life and that what he went through during the war shaped his sensibilities. I cannot change his opinion about some modern ideas. I can't really fiddle too much with a personality based on survival or getting the best out of every day or knowing that the next time you step into action could be your last. Those are fundamentals of the character.
But I dreamt up that character. I took a face, a time period, a background and an occupation and I cobbled together an individual who acted according to all of those factors. He "walked into my head fully formed" but that doesn't mean that up until that point he lived in some mythic bank of muses having dinner with Hamlet until someone needed him and it doesn't mean he spent time playing darts with Watson until someone decided to re-bastardise the world of Sherlock Holmes and Watson had to go change into a pair of stockings and suspenders for their Victorian brothel story. It means that one day I was sitting down and something inspired me, caught my eye and planted the seed of an idea that grew like an unruly weed.
He lives in my head. A similar character might very well live in someone else's head. He is my intellectual property. Using phrases like "he complained until I did X" is funny and to most people this would indicate that a character's personality leant me to change the direction of a scene that I had very much intended to go in the other direction. It does not literally mean that my character sat down next to me, put his chin on my desk and asked me why I was writing him that way instead of the way that he was clearly meant to be written.
The concept of "muse" means "to inspire" (the literal translation means, in essence, "men" and "to think"). That essentially means that the Blitz in London during the war could be my muse just as easily as the summer weather (ha, what summer weather? It's Scotland) could be my muse. A 1920s train could by my muse. A feather boa could be my muse.
Cheese could be my muse.
The concept of "muse" is not a fixed concept. It's as fluid as the process of writing a novel.
In conclusion: If it's in your head, it's your artistic property. It isn't a cosmic creation, it isn't an invisible being with free will.
Your cheese does not have free will!
(Note: Guys, I'm really sorry about the amount of mistakes I've been editing out of this for the past hour. It was written at work and I didn't have the ability to save it on the hard-drive to proof-read at a quieter time.)
