I didn't publish anything in this blog during most of
August. New ideas simply weren't coming to mind. You must know the feeling: you think until your head aches,
and come up empty—the Muse has
disappeared. Despite being a
rationalist, I cannot help believing in her existence; haven't I indeed
dedicated my blog to her in its subtitle, Musings? I wait impatiently to
feel her presence, and panic when I don't.
That rationalist in me keeps on saying, "Nonsense! Don't
be so romantic," insisting that my "Muse" is just a small fold
of brain tissue, the anterior superior temporal gyrus (aSTG), which I wrote about in May. It functions
subconsciously, apparently by obsessively searching for important but hidden
relationships among the myriad fragments of data stored in the brain. Images from fMRI machines show that it
becomes especially active (finding a relationship?) a few seconds before a
conscious insight, an Aha! moment. It seems to be most active when one is
relaxed, possibly daydreaming, as was Archimedes in his bathtub.
I do in fact find my musing most lively during that
daydreaming half-hour or so before I am fully awake in the morning. That is when my brain has started to
return control to my pre-frontal cortex, the center of analytical thinking,
which acts as a sanity check, an inhibitor of our most outrageous thoughts, a
site of our conscience—a
Jiminy Cricket who goes to sleep when we do, allowing the rest of our brain to
run amok with phantasmagoria. The
half-awake arousal period is when Jiminy is drowsy too, so our thoughts flit
back and forth with no apparent sense of order, yet not at the level of
phantasms. Inspiration is then in
attendance, apparently guided by the aSTG. "Sleeping on a problem" has yielded fruit.
These are fascinating scientific perceptions, but
insufficient to capture the sheer marvel of inspiration. The romantic in me responds derisively
to the rationalist: "You would expound on the diffraction of red light
around the earth's limb to explain the awe I feel on viewing a gorgeous
sunset!" I throw my lot in
with my romantic self and with the ancients, who saw the Muse's presence as a
link to the wisdom of the gods, and who thanked Helios for sunsets. Communing with the goddess is what
musing is truly about, not the random firings of neurons. As Hesiod said almost three millennia
ago, "Happy is the man whom the Muses love: sweet speech flows from his
mouth."
Still, trysting with a goddess can be a love-hate
relationship. A goddess, yes, but
also an unfaithful tormentress. Here's
what others have said:
“But
the fact is, she won't be summoned. She alights when it damn well pleases
her. She falls in love with one
artist, then deserts him for another. She's a real bitch!” Erica
Jong
"I would especially
like to recourt the Muse of poetry, who ran off with the mailman four years
ago, and drops me only a scribbled postcard from time to time." John Updike
I too have harbored such resentment. When she vanished last August, I
angrily wrote to her—she who traditionally listens more to poets than to
writers of prose—in the only sort of rhyme I can handle, especially in her
absence:
Oh! Muse, why
didst thou desert me?
I so need thee to
alert me
In
my waking dreams
To
splendid new themes.
How wouldst thou
feel if thou wert me?
Art thou Erato or
Clio?
I know not. O Sole Mio!
Whichever
thou art
Please
mend my sore heart,
And revitalize my
brio!
Wait! I have to
end with a threat.
Know thou, if my
plea is not met,
Thine
ears I'll assail
With
more doggerel
Than thou, my
Divine, hast heard yet.
An offer thou
canst not refuse!
Be quite sure,
Olympian Muse:
I
can deftly kick
Out
more limerick
Should I decide thee
to abuse!
Fearing, I suppose, my spewing out more such claptrap, the
Muse returned. Just the same, I
realized I'd offended her, and became more anxious than before. I'm increasingly at her mercy, more
tormented by her infidelities. She
drives me so crazy that today, when she has distanced herself again, I am
trumpeting my anger to the world at large.
Whatever am I doing?
Publicly offending a mortal woman is more than any man should dare, but a
goddess? Maybe I've really done it
this time!
No! Spurned
lover that I am, I'll stand my ground.
I only wish I'd had the courage to make my limerick bawdy, as this anonymous
one advises:
The limerick packs laughs
anatomical
In space that is quite economical.
But
the good ones I've seen
So
seldom are clean
And the clean ones so seldom
are comical.
I guess I'm insane enough to insult the Muse, not so
insane as to insult her obscenely.
Last
August, I conjectured that the Muse was merely on summer holiday. That seemed to be the case, for she
returned in September. Maybe she
is on winter holiday this time, and will return in January despite my
impudence. Zeus! if ever a father
has influenced a daughter, intercede for me with yours!