Apollo: Daphne, no! No! And by Jovenian, why a tree?
Daphne: Oh, I think you know, poet god. I think you know…
Because from a tree comes a big, fat block. Looks like even Apollo had issues with writer’s block. Sure, if you want to get literal, you could say that Daphne wasn’t a Muse and she was definitely blocking something else, but read the subtext of the myth and you might find that Classical writers probably suffered as much as the rest of us.
In fact, our universal personification of inspiration as a beautiful thing is probably way, way off.
Stephen King says the Muse is a basement and cellar kind of guy—a paunchy, hairy, cigar-smoking fairy as opposed to these goddesses on Mt. Aeolus that doled out creativity to men like Homer and Sophocles and Aristophanes.
You mean the Master of Horror was behind THIS? Hell, makes sense…
Poets have been romanticizing this process for as long as it’s been going on, and it’s all bulls—. I don’t believe in Deus Ex Machina, or Divine Inspiration, or any of that.
Stephen King is the only one telling the truth. The Muse is not a classical goddess. The Muse is not a shoulder fairy with pompoms and leg warmers, a benevolent spirit doing cartwheels and heel kicks on your scapula, shouting, W-R-I-T-E! Write! Write!
The truth is the Muse is a real douche bag. And if you want to get anything out of him, you have to close pin his wings together and beat him with a tack hammer.
My Muse looks like a miniaturized version of Fontaine from Bioshock. He gets around on a pair of thin, greasy wings that look like a gene-spliced job. Splicer. He’s always just out of reach, calling me boyo and threatening to deny me Rapture if I don’t feed him[1].
Oh, what I’m going to put you through today for revealing my existence to the world, boyo. Did you actually feel like getting your 3,000 words? Now there are nothing but bunnies in your head. Happy, cutesy bunnies. Enjoy that.
Would you kindly eat this entire Dominoes pizza and side of butter? It’s unsalted. Enjoy that.
Sometimes the son of a b—- makes me do household chores, update my hygiene, pay the bills. Inspiration isn’t cheap, and he gets his due first.
Would you kindly clean the oven? Would you kindly take the car in for an oil change? Would you kindly give this donut some face time? No, the other one. Bearclaw. That’s it.
This is why artists, real artists, are either drug addicts or insane.
I should say something inspirational here, but then I’d be lying too. This isn’t about inspiration. This is a knock-down, drag-out fight between the splicer and me. This is the part where I chase the blinking cursor till my fingers pound like pneumatic pistons and my vision blurs. This is the part where I get the Muse to say, Would you kindly finish your novel and take what’s yours?
[1] Fontaine is the villain in the critically acclaimed Sci-Fi shooter Bioshock, which takes place during the Cold War in a Neo-Atlantis called Rapture. “Splicer” is a reference to the game’s genetically altered humans. Fontaine was able to control the protagonist by using the phrase, “Would you kindly…?”
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