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Miranda
"I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom that belongs to me as good belongs to you." Song of Myself, Walt Whitman |
An open letter to my muse and to his enemies (who drove him far away) By Eileen M. Ciesla An artist, a poet, or a musician needs a muse. Something to stir the soul, charge the heart, electrify the brain. The muse takes many forms. One may be moved by an abstract virtue, by a sense of spirituality, by God, or by physical beauty, the clarity contained in a particular soul. Rarely is the muse within the poet's reach or possession. An artist may capture the muse eternally in marble, but only ephemerally in his mortal hands. A poet uses all of his energies in striving to know the muse but then it may elude him in the end. The artistic manifestation of his passions is a timeless tribute to the source of his inspiration. And thus, the muse is idealized, romanticized, and immortalized in the eye of its beholder. There is nothing shameful in having a spiritual or a living muse. But, today we would rather refer to the first as being too religious, and the latter as 'being obsessed', for which a business card might be subtlety slipped into the hand of the afflicted, offering group counseling, or emotional therapy. The well-meaning do not realize that this alternatively ennobling and baffling affliction is the force that has a hand stringing together words that sing across time, or painting the eyes of a woman which peer into our minds, as we search her quizzical gaze. Mysteriously, making us feel more alive long after she (and the hand that painted her) has died. The words of contemporary authors and the brush strokes (and dung projectiles) of our newest artists do not indicate much in the way of spirituality, longing, loss, passion or redemption. They indicate isolation, anger, fear, and hatred. As I study the enemy from the other end of this cultural battlefield, I confess to feeling sympathy for the soldiers in the army of empty art. They are writers and artists, like me. I recognize a damaged brand of humanity beneath their terrible and heavy armor. From whence do we derive inspiration in an age where inspiration must first be pre-approved and is then doled-out and monitored by a politically correct thought police? And if it should not serve its purpose and actually cause a soul to fly, the resulting poetry and art is ridiculed, deconstructed and pscyhoanlayzed by a stream of arm-chair sexologists posing as academics. Or it is simply ignored. What is left in this gutted pile of ethereal fancies and tangible agonies? Nothing. Remember, those of you who sing in chorus with me, these fallen writers and artists were born with human hearts, but have suffered wounded psyches. They are the crippled slaves of the evil that they serve. I posit that they derive their anger from one source: the communal muse which serves the NEA-endowed artists and tenured professors of literary theory. This creature is a demonic, envy-filled gargoyle who embodies all of the wounded psyche's nightmares, rages and insecurities. The gargoyle perches itself on the shoulders of these artists. And a critical eye can see its claws digging into its fleshy roost. It is a source of pain for the writer, a chain around the spirit of the artist. From that pain comes the urge to express, to shout, to scream. Words pour forth and canvases are filled. Lacking mental or spiritual strength, clarity of vision, the desire, the objectivity, the writer cannot rid himself of the concrete demon. It whispers melodious vulgarities and sears hypnotic and terrible images onto the suggestible, searching soul. Thus, the soul that drove God away, the brain that closed itself to rational thought, the heart that closed itself to love, is an attractive nesting ground for the iron clawed gargoyle. Take heed fellow artists, these winged monsters are real. (I myself have felt it approach and study me. I have seen him circling above me, like a vulture, waiting for my weakened self to finally collapse and surrender to the desert of thought and spirit, waiting to feed on a sickly heart. In return, he might offer me fortune in the form of a column in Talk magazine, or fame as a script-writer for Ally McBeal. ) The artists and writers who follow the false muse may suffer a physical change in appearance. Their shoulders slope from depression, their spines bend from the weight of too many merciless visions, and their smiles are contorted by the bitterness of spending so many moments among the pitiless furies. They are divining rods for the Underworld . As part of this cruel agreement, they are rewarded in this life with money, critical acclaim and popular adoration. They are declared infallible. To criticize them is to commit a form of ideological heresy and to be excommunicated from the Church of Postmodern Culture. A few resist the temptation to fall into that soul-slumber, and manage to fight off the circling demons. That is only one-half of the battle. The real task is to fill the void with the stuff that makes the soul sing. But who among us seeks a serious dialogue with the cosmos? Who among us is permitted the indulgence of allowing the heart to leap upon seeing his eyes? Who among us allows the heart to do its natural work and weaken the knee, or display a blush upon the cheek? Who among us is brave enough to ask these questions when the audience only cackles in return, or replies clinically about the healthiness of unleashing the whore in every woman's heart? What happens to the heart when the whore is set free? It is necessarily locked away, a devil's bargain cut in the basement of the conscience. Who among us has studied the faces of the young subway commuter or of a college student only to see the sour expression of disappointment. Who can see the absence of that curious, fresh glow of youth, replaced with the smirk of toughness, the scars of a promiscuous puberty, wrought deeply enough to banish wonder from the eye? What man is brave enough to trespass, and find the trigger of a young woman's smile when she is clothed in the iridescent and transparent garments of overpriced 5th Avenue tramp-chic? And why risk trespassing if he is only likely to be shot down by obscene daggers of accusation. Who among us is bold enough to be a poet, when the conversation consists of language so colorful that it blackens the very atmosphere? I write this to tell you that my own battle is only half won. I have sent the demons packing, taken a quieter route to learn my craft. But my own muse has left the City and has become a recluse as of late. I have worked hard at locating him. Last reports indicate that he has built himself a beautiful home in the fertile grounds of New York State, where he lives with his expanisve book collection on a functioning but modest farm, all while operating a successful Internet business. He is a civilized outdoorsman, a gentleman farmer, a Renaissance man with a Cavalier wink in his eye. He walks with a strong stride, and offers an honest smile. He possesses a clarity of mind and a goodness of spirit. He is my own salvaged John the Savage living in the wilderness with the Complete Works of Shakespeare and The Bible. Stop snickering, skeptics. I hear you giggling and grumbling...."Ah, the girl has now entered that tragic phase of womanhood...the last rose of summer. She's starting to keep pulp novels next to her bed, talks earnestly to her cats, bakes oatmeal cookies on Friday night, and has become active in Church fundraisers. Find yourself a little fun, before its too late." To you I say: A pox on your street-smart, salon.com cynicism, your vulgar parables on the infinite sexual variety to be found in the trendiest nightclubs, and the latest, greatest breakthroughs in birth control! I have lived more, and felt more in my poetry than you have in your entire strobe-lit, bar-clinging, latexted lives! I prefer the ether of a muse, to the flesh of a sexual opportunist: a latter-day Lothario, emasculated by the ennui of his all-too-willing conquests. But if I could only call John the Savage forth from that ether! He was driven away by my own ambivalence, my growing belief that there was nothing left to be written. And that there was no reason left to read Immortal words and to sing their Beauty. But after many hours of reflection and introspection, after finding sanctuary on this literary ship, I have found the energy to finally cast away those dark thoughts. God would not have given me a brain nor a soul, if He had intended it lay dormant in the closet of my own fears and weaknesses. He would not have given me the capacity to see these truths, if he had not wanted me to speak them So I say to the soldiers in the army of empty art, and to the commanding generals handing out Ph.Ds and art grants to the lackeys of our official culture: though my muse has gone underground and these times are hostile to these thoughts, I am determined to bring him back, to revive his spirit and to celebrate to him, to celebrate life, to celebrate my spirit and the God that gave me one, and to share the thoughts that you would willfully purge from your glossy magazines, antiseptic humanities journals and sound-bitten airwaves. As Whitman, "I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume For every atom that belongs to me as good belongs to you" I invite you to defect and abandon your doomed campaign to replace the foundations of our civilization with the whims of literary criticism, and the repetitive, hollow echo of politically correct opinion. I invite you to challenge yourself. Write something true. Say the word 'eternal' until it finds its way into your subconscience, until it revives your muse and sets your spirit free.
For information on submissions, please contact Eileen M. Ciesla. We also invite you to visit her website: Femme Soul. |