In lack of a muse

I guess we all have muses-anything that will inspire us to create ideas, dreams, prose,verse, furniture, and almost anything else under the sun which is as good old Plato would refer to as something "twice removed from reality." A few days ago I asked Venkat (my colleague/friend and someone gifted with the exquisite ability to translate the most mundane thoughts into beautiful woven prose/verse. Read his blog here) why wasn't he writing. "I need a muse, dude," pat came his reply. For a moment, a while back I was also in search of a muse and while I kept asking friends to throw topics at me to write about (yeah, I know that is not the ideal way always), it struck me suddenly when Preetika asked me to write about anything around me - the pens, bottles, paper cups, a white board etc., to write about the different muses that inspire people from different walks of life.

Let's begin with a workaholic whose muse I presume would be performance, work, achievement, money or maybe none of the any. The workaholic could choose to work also to keep away from home, a nagging wife/husband, or maybe to be close to someone he/she likes in the office. In the same way for some, the comfort of the office in a hot summer night could also be a temporary muse to work. Well that is a good number of muses to begin with.

What would be then the muse of a cobbler or to reduce our set into a more generic term the menial workers who make their living with their day's efforts. I guess, in this case survival is the most potent muse. Self respect will also be a close second since these are people who labour to earn and thankfully do not beg. Ironically, beggars whose muse is to also to survive, seek a completely different medium to do so. Ah! so a common muse could have different sets of inspirations to perform completely different actions. So is Muse relative?

A lover's muse is what I believe is most consistent. Love alone is the muse that will define his/her relationship with the other. And when I refer to love here, it obviously is the genuine kinds and not the fritter of types. When someone is in love you will find reflection of the muse in everything/everywhere that the person does. I can feel it in Venkat's verse, Sameer's attitude, Preetika's rue, Pooja's smses, Simmi's calls and more so in my own response to songs that touch my heart. Sigh! in the last few lines I felt it again.

I should sign off with the writer's muse, who, I agree with many other wise men, is everybody/everything and their individual muse.