What Came First, the Muse or the Bemused?
I am a real live muse for musicians and technologists. I realize this is a very specific label I am using for myself, but the two weirdly go hand and foot.
It’s like stretching by touching your toes and having your back magically pop and blissfully crack. I write terrible poetry, although I have been published before. If I told you my real name, you would never ever find it. My poetry is stuck stapled together in a few Southern California college libraries.
I use people to be my muses too. One time I asked a boy if he would be my muse, but unlike so many others, he was smart and ran far far away from me. He admitted years later that he would and still could not emotionally handle being anyone’s muse.
I wasn’t always a muse.I became a muse while in a high school technology class. I was one of two girls in the class and I liked to solder, play computer games through coding, and weld things together wearing a dress and boots. I was very shy and terrible nerdy, so I fit right in with all the boys destined to go to UC Irvine, USC and MIT.
I did things, nerdy things, like play the xylophone, chimes, brake drum, cowbell and every other pit, noise making instrument in the marching band. I didn’t even march. I’m short, chubby, Mexican and Catholic. My nice and innocent personality seemed to attract the same kind of boys — tall, lanky, white and Protestant. Not all were smart, but I kept the ones that were and wrote about them.
They inspired me, they looked at me like someone they will never be, and I looked at them the same way. They wanted me, but I wanted to be them. What came first, the muse or the bemused?
I am much older now, and yes, like the saying goes, so much wiser. I know now that muses are temporary. This could mean a few days to a couple of decades. You can have more than one muse, but I would never suggest it. You can be a muse to more than one person. Right at this moment, I am a muse to three people — my husband, my girlfriend and my lover. Two of them are musicians and one is a technologist.
I am trying to be vague about with whom I muse because, you know, privacy. In less than one year of having all three, one built two computers and processing systems, one wrote five or six amazingly beautiful songs which will be recorded professionally this weekend, and lastly, the other musician created over 20 songs that only need remastering and someone else to do the vocals.
Being a muse to three people is exhausting. Besides my husband, the other two I asked to be my muse basically so that I could write bad poetry. Also, my marriage was going south, so the muses made me happy. I warned the other two that I was married and for them to not fall in love with me. Of course they did, like most others who I have been a muse for in the past.
When you are muse or have others as your muse, there needs to be clear boundaries because you will get to know these people better than they know themselves. You will see things in them that they would never ever dare to see in themselves.
Let me put a warning here. Do not get involved with your muses if you are married! This is a mind fuck that no one ever wants to participate in. It becomes a game where all you end up doing is lying and cheating. There is a line from a song by Lit that I always think of, “You make me come. You make me complete. You make me completely miserable.”
As a muse, my only job is to be an enabler of your ego. Most muses have an ego too. This is why having or being a muse is only temporary. It should only be temporary. Imagine someone inflating your ego for 20 years. I’ve seen it and I am living it.
Derived from the depths of creativity, artists will create some of the most beautiful music, paintings, photography, film that you will ever experience. But at what cost? Insanity perhaps? Excruciating pain? Loneliness?
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RLM is a mixer and producer. She has worked with a few hundred actors and musicians. RLM is as curious about muses as she is one. She hopes to one day have such an understanding of the LGBTQ community that she can write and produce her own film. She is an advocate of women’s rights and a supporter of BLM. She has been asked by many to get married, but she is already married. She has been offered cars, trips, money and houses for her inspiration. She is a Southern California native, and likes short walks along the sidewalk next to the beach. She is in the process of writing a series of children’s books, and continues on with her bad poetry.