Finding My Muse - Deep Thoughts About The Source of Inspiration

This month's blog post is brought to you by my muse. Merrium-Webster dictionary defines muse as 1) any of the nine sister goddesses in Greek mythology presiding over song and poetry and the arts and sciences and 2) a source of inspiration. Having thought long and hard on this lately, I beg to differ.

As a songwriter, there are generally two ways a new song comes.  The first is the tried and true process of having an idea and developing it over many iterations until it feels good and works in performances.  This is a very intentional and fairly structured process; even goal oriented if you need a song for particular situations or to serve a particular purpose.  That’s probably how 95% of songwriting occurs.  The second way that songs come are born is what most songwriters call “the muse”.  For me, that means an entire new song comes out of the blue with no preconceived thought or planning on my part and I scramble to capture the melody and lyrics before they go away.  It’s there a fleeting instant and gone the next.  It’s a bit like automatic writing or some kind of telepathy.

My wife Denise once asked me how I write songs.  My response frustrated her.  I told her “I don’t know, I just open the window, they fly in and I try to catch them with the song net”.  That’s as close as I can come to describing the process and it’s completely useless to anyone trying to figure how songwriting works.  There aren’t really any rules, other than try to be ready when the muse is, and know that you probably won’t get any advance notice.  They just show up.

So what exactly is this muse thing in reality and how do you get it to show up more often?  That has been on my mind since my muse last showed up two weeks ago.  To set the stage, my most recent song was completely out of my normal groove in terms of subject matter, melody and how it's sung.  It’s not me at all.  It’s way different and was not planned in any way shape or form.  It just happened late one afternoon and lasted about 15 or 20 minutes.  I was lucky - I had the net ready when it flew in the window.  It wasn’t a fully finished song, but probably 90% complete.

To understand what happened, I go back to a place long ago and far away - McComb, Illinois.  It was there that I was a student at Western Illinois University back in the mid 70’s.  I majored in Psychology, only because they wouldn’t let me major in fishing or goofing off (my real skills in life).  Psych was fun, and only a little harder than Underwater Basket Weaving, so it fit my objectives for not requiring a major investment of time or brain cells.  I got along well with the faculty, most of whom were long haired hippies who stuck around college long enough to get their PhD’s. They taught me all the basics, like the difference between the conscious and subconscious mind. It was also where I met and became friends with one of my mentors, Dr. Jim Garrett.

Jim was a renowned author and practitioner of hypnotherapy.  Not the kind where you make people do stupid things like crow like a rooster at unexpected times, but the real kind that is used in treatment of all sorts of addictions, depression and other mood disorders.  He taught me (and a lot of others) the basic techniques from breathing and relaxation to focusing in on the subject's subconscious mind, where most of these issues reside.  I worked with him as an assistant until I graduated.  We did seminars on behavior modification like quitting smoking and weight loss.  We also did some really cool things like age regressions and even past life regressions (topics for another blog post).

What does all that have to do with songwriting and a muse?  Here’s the connection.  Our subconscious is like a Hoover vacuum cleaner, taking in tons of information and stimuli, far more than we need to actually navigate through a day or situation. The conscious state of mind is much more focused on things that really matter, like danger or, if you are younger, people of the opposite sex who get your engine running.  The subconscious rarely ever shows itself in your waking hours, but does reveal itself in dreams.  It’s where deep seated values and concerns live.  It’s also where creativity seems to spring from.  Things like art, music and writing… songwriting in this case, which often seems to be intrinsically related to the subconscious mind. 

To take the idea a step further, I’ve often thought I have about 10,000 songs in my head (my subconscious mind) that I just haven’t gotten around to writing yet.  The trick is to figure out how to get them from my subconscious mind to my conscious mind, so I can capture them with my song net.  In thinking this over the past few weeks, I realized that visits from my muse seem to occur only when my mind isn’t all cluttered up with the normal stuff of everyday living - when I’m relaxed and my mind is drifting in an almost dream-like state.  With that realization, I’m beginning to think that relaxation techniques such as the ones I learned as a Psych major, could be the ticket to getting a few more of those 10,000 songs out of my subconscious mind and onto the stage at some future performance.  Time will tell.

Are you a songwriter or poet?  What are your thoughts about how this muse stuff works?  Let me know in the comments below.  To me, it’s an interesting topic that deserves a lot more consideration and discussion than it typically gets in songwriting forums.