MELANIE DOCTORS

Along with the well-fed illusion that we are incomplete without a significant someone, is the concept that creative endeavors are melt-in-the-mouth whirls of complete brilliance, easy to come by, and even easier to shape into something of commercially epic proportions. I hate to be the one to break it to you, oh-innocent grasshopper but The Muse is a shady, shape-shifting, smooth-talking, faux silk-clad lady of infinite personalities. If she didn’t have several lifetimes of the ultimate ad campaign, she’d be locked up for good. Think Napoleon on Elba Island.

The idea that creatives are starving creatures, devouring any spark of potential is a dismal place to live. And yet, how often do the keepers of the not-so-mundane give up the keys to the kingdom in favor of the mercurial and downright narcissist otherwise known as The Muse?

 More times than I’ve had coffee. I keep vampire hours. You do the math.

So where do ideas come from? Everywhere and everyone and everything in the soup pot of the fertile and questioning mind. Simmering, simmering, simmering. Until a tendril of fragrant steam demands attention, and then it’s all hands on deck to conjure forth what might be good enough to consume straight from the pot. The Muse will invariably show up at this point, a pristine white apron for effect, a snarky smile on her invisible lips, along with the claim that she sprinkled in the herb du jour. Liar. Palazzo pants are on fire. She did nothing of the sort and Miss. M is a dangerous foe to court.

Can you say the excuse of the century? The basis of imposter syndrome? Of course, you can. Instead of luring the deceptive one with promises of firstborn children or avocado toast topped with a jammy egg, imagine that words are within, ready and willing – waiting only for the trust that the creative gently accepts as a given.

Without the aid of an avocado and the transference of any of my children, I’ve tapped into the moments that make up our days, the ones waiting in the wings of our conscience, ready to enthusiastically swoop onto the stage of a blank page. I’ve seen the contents of a vision board, crafted years before the final The End spring to life, like magic with shimmering glitter and repurposed images of a magazine long gone past its supposed useful life.

What finds its way into the soup? The five-year-old wishing for a real genie. The college boy with wind-swept hair who held a hand in the dark and ran before the sun claimed another day. The bottle of a precious vintage corked, recorked, and eventually decanted to an indifferent drain because no one came to drink it. The creative, with words or instruments, paints or chalk is like a master chef. The ingredients matter: The source is the subtle difference. The art is in the hard-won technique of craft. The time to honestly, without ego hone the work. Something The Muse has no interest in.  

As Equal will never be sugar, an idea, however brilliant in the moment, will never be more than a spark to something else. It’s the something else that matters. The something else, simmering, sometimes boiling for years until it’s worthy of dining upon.