Last night, I worked until 3:00 AM, the kind of work that just won’t let you go. It grabbed on to my heart and squeezed.
My muse is not kind. When she finds me, she infects me with a fever. (“And the only cure is more cowbell.”) “Enthusiasm” means “infected with the god.” My muse is heat and sweat and fever. She is beautiful and cruel. Cruel because she must be. Beautiful because of what she brings.
The muse depicted in the statue for the Origins Award is Calliope, the muse of epic poetry. She is not my muse. Mine is Polyhymnia: the muse of sacred poetry and geometry. The muse of elegance and eloquence. She is also the muse of secret knowledge, often shown with her finger to her lips, and the muse of agriculture, the farmer’s muse, working in the hot sun, using math and knowledge to bring life up from the lifeless soil.
She is cruel, but she must be. I’m a lazy writer. I cannot be made to write for the pleasure of it because I find no pleasure in writing. Only frustration. Thus, she finds my heart and squeezes it and will not let go until she is finished with me. She found me last night. And when she was finished with me, it was 3:00 AM and I hadn’t had a breath in five hours.
The rage of Pindar filled the sounding air,
As Polyhymnia tried her skill divine;
The shaggy lion roused him from his lair,
And bade his blood-stained eyes in fury shine;
The famished eagle poised his waving wings,
Whetting his thirsty beak–while murder rose,
With hand that grasps a dirk, with eye that glows
from An Ode To Music, by James G. Percival