My muses were once models of perfection I could never hope to attain. But, of course, they were only as I wished to perceive them and not truly as they were. They weren’t so much objects of my own romantic desire, but rather various aspects of the object of desire I longed to be. Now, my muses are a collection of tortured souls for which I try to concoct soothing remedies if not hopeful for eventual cures of some degree.
This all sounds unhappy, but in the end, these sorts of muses are more alike than they first appear. Of course, appearances often deceive, but only if you’re looking from the incorrect perspective. After all, it’s our own perspective that makes each of us unique and often frustratingly so.
It pains me now that so many muses that I once considered to be important influences on my artistry turned out to be horribly flawed in some way, whether it be a certain kind of single mindedness that spawned both creative genius and a sort of twisted morality simultaneously and now it’s impossible to reconcile one from the other. Others were geniuses of what seemed to be the innocent sort, until you recognized that the colorful parts you enjoyed were but a veil for twisted desires and distractions from the reality of the tortured and sick creature that created them as some sort of camouflage to conceal acts of pure conceited evil. I’m not hiding anything that I’d consider evil within myself, but I have stared evil directly in the face more often than I’d care to share. Indeed, the line between evil and genius is much thinner and far less straight than people care to admit.
For too long I’ve been given notes both bitter and sweet with which to compose my life’s soundtrack. The melodies and lyrics alike which have blossomed from them have grown more discordant with time. Once I was considered a budding poet, but I rapidly decreased to a brooding one. Then, I reemerged with a mixed bag of verses, many of which sounded more hopeful, but others that fell completely flat. The reality is likely more positive than I’d admit, but the more I reflect on my verses, the more I don’t like what I see in them.
Perhaps that is why I have abandoned so many of my writings; it’s not what they are but rather what they represent, my own discontent with many aspects of myself. Perhaps it is the constant truth of being an artist, a curse to remain ever unsatisfied with one’s own work and contributions to a society that rarely has a true appreciation for the art.
Too often I awake in the middle of the night or too early in the morning, with a dry mouth and a muddled mixture of fragmented memories, faded dreamstates, disjointed song lyrics and melodies, and more regrets than I care to count. Perhaps this is my version of what many artists of the written word refer to as the writer’s brain. My particular breed is immensely frustrating to me, but it’s what I have to work with nonetheless.
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