I've been wondering that for awhile, and I finally had to get it out in the open. The question was becoming stale in my mind. I'm pretty sure that I'll have to invent a word for a male muse. This is a perfect example of cross-sexism in our culture: women can only be inspiration, and men can only be inspired. Interesting idea, but I'm probably just paranoid.
Moving from muses to music isn't too much of a stretch. I'm always wondering where artists find their inspiration, especially those artists who see something exceptional in the mundane. Sometimes you really have to reach to understand an obscure lyric, but other times the reference falls right in your lap, and you can shout "I UNDERSTAND!!". A little dramatic, I know, but I definitely think those words when a particularly puzzling lyric falls into place in my mind.
For example, I'm almost always confused by Moldy Peaches lyrics and The Decemberists' songs are just a little obscure for my mind (although, very catchy), but I can feel an Elliott Smith song and Iron & Wine lyrics just make sense to me. I'm sure this feeling is different for every music-lover, which is why people have such varied tastes in music. Which brings it all back to inspiration, doesn't it? Different things inspire different people, because humanity's varied experiences make completely varied ways of understanding our world. I'm inspired to view the world at a different angle through music, if I can find something in the music that applies to me. In this way, I think music can be just as enlightening as great stories and poetry, but only as enlightening as the active participant (the listener) will allow based on his/her experiences.
My ideas are a little jumbled at this time, but my basic point is that inspiration occurs on multiple levels, and is really more like a game of tag than a game of solitaire. Inspiration is bounced between the people who place themselves in the line of ideas. If you expose yourself to everything from smooth jazz to back metal, then you're placing yourself in the path of many ideas. People who expose themselves to different types of music, are opening themselves to a variety of thoughts. Some of these ideas will inspire you to take action, to apply a new principle to your life, while other ideas will not jell with your current experiences or make sense to you in your life's context. Anyone who takes part in this inspiration exchange is an artist of life.
I've come to the conclusion that there doesn't need to be a word for a male muse. Muses come in all shapes and sizes, colors and sexes, and are not necessarily human. The word muse has transformed over time to mean inspiration, and inspiration obviously doesn't have to be female. An artist, someone who is open to inspiration, can find genius in a peanut-butter sandwhich. The active participant can hear (see, read) this peanut-butter sandwhich in the context of their life, and then allow their experiences and their inspiration to form into new ideas. Mmmmmm, I'm hungry.
2 comments:
I found myself pondering similar ideas that lead me to catch sight of your words
Maybe I can be of some help here, especially since I receive a lot of insights from your post. I've been thinking around those topics for several years now, and came to a very similar view as yours - a questioning eventually brought me to this post.
I believe that it's important to make the distinction between inspiration and aspiration. Typically, a muse is inspiration for a male artist and the "male equivalent of the muse" is aspiration for a female artist. I do not find the right word here to describe the "male equivalent of the muse", a dancer's choreographer would be a good example.
Now it might sound that I'm making a pointless distinction, but I do not think so: I believe there is a difference between inspiration & aspiration and that, typically, a relationship of a male to its muse is not symmetrical: the man is inspired, the women is aspired - two different feelings (now that does not mean a man cannot be aspired too, but it's not what happens in a typical male artist-muse relationship).
So I do believe that strictly speaking, there is no male equivalent of a muse: the artist aspires the muse. Did women gave a name for this ? We'd be mistaking to use the same word because aspiration & inspiration are not the same thing.
I do not know about the works you're talking about, so I won't comment, but I recognize myself very much in your description of an artist of life: expose myself, get what it makes ; that bit was enlightening to me !
And finally, I believe the best male artist-female artist relationship is one that gets me free. One muse gets me captive where another is a way to a endlessly creative spirit: expose myself, getting more free ?
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