There's a Phil Collins song... "In The Air Tonight." It has an ominous ring to it, haunting and slow and it builds. It builds to a shout with a pummeling drum beat that is unmistakably recognizable. I freaking love that song! It embodies things that, as a writer, I relate to. It is a mirror to my relationship with my Muse, my genius, my daemon. This song...when it plays and my heart quickens, this is how I know something big is about to come at me, come out of me, burst through me. It's overwhelming and filled with emotion. It screams and cries and curses as it wheedles its way from my belly to my pounding heart, up my constricted throat and into my brain like a deadly parasite, a fevered disease of the mind. It takes me over. It refuses to allow me to sleep, to clean, to chore. It consumes me. If I let it, it will scare the shit out of me before it winds its way out onto the page of my computer screen through my fingers. My digits struggle to keep up, spelling be damned, grammar goes to hell and I know that something is demanding to be heard. My throat constricts, tears threaten to fall and I am obsessed.
I feel her today, my stiletto clad Muse. She is frustrated, hair askew, one heel broken and the other missing, mascara in black streaks under both eyes. There are stains on her french cuffed shirt and it hangs open at a dangerous angle, buttons dangling on tenuous threads, stolen glances of torn black lace. Her stockings are full of runs and there is a gaping hole in one thigh. She is drunk and unruly, straining against the unseen bouncer of my rationale, spitting obscenities at me over his burly shoulder. She melts into a puddle of frustrated tears and lands herself in a heap on the floor. Only when I consent to sit at the keyboard, Phil blaring in my ears, body rocking to the heavy beat of drums, does she gather herself up and sit across from me. She has poured herself another glass of something dark and peaty, I dare not ask what. She isn't constrained by social norms, she could give a shit less. She wipes at the black smudges on her cheeks and dares me to listen. Cue Adele and "Hello..."
Music between us eases the tension and I am writing. I am writing what ever she sloshes forth, slurring her words from a lipstick stained mouth. She is scattered and haphazard and I am grateful. Whatever she needs, whenever she needs it, I am committed. I will respond. Is it a short story? A novel idea? A blog post? I don't know until I sit down and open the spigot. Sometimes it comes at a trickle and I can wrap my head around it. Sometimes it is a fire hydrant and I am left with nothing to do but dance in the drenching fallout, soaked to the bone and gloriously spent.
I could fight this interaction. I could reason it away and go about the laundry and the dishes and the everydayness of my life. But because I am a writer, because I have embraced the desire to be one of the ink stained, the other-worldly, the creators and artists, I welcome it. I cuddle it close, this porcupine of emotions, and I listen. When it shouts and when it whispers, I listen. If I am lucky, someday when the stars align, I will have written it down in such a way that it cannot be ignored and you will be introduced to the joy I know on an intimate basis. She is, after all, a very real part of me and she only wants to be heard.
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