ON FINDING THE MUSE

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Being a writer is riveting. Simple as that. I find nothing more enthralling than people who can sit down and imagine worlds that do not exist and create people that do not exist and paint them as if they were real. For me, such boundless imagination is riveting! The fact that you can look at a flower's colourful tapestry and create poems and stories about love and peace and whatnot-all from looking at something as infinitesimal as a flower's tapestry-is riveting!

The first time I wrote a story was the first time I found love. It was the first time I reached out to a part of me that I never thought existed. Today, as I glance through my maiden story, I find a lot of cracks and fissures which were not perceptible at the time of my coining those words. Nonetheless, it didn't take the joy and shine away from it. I had made the improbable transit from being an ardent reader to finding a muse and putting it into words! I had become a writer!

I remember beaming from ear to ear, showing my story to anoyne who cared to have a peep, explaining to them how I found the inspiration for the story. Every attempt to describe how I felt at the time has proven futile at best, and that is because there really aren't any words to describe, that moment you glance at your work and hear a voice deep inside of you sing your name and congratulate you on a good work done( it doesn't matter how terribly you may find the work). The feeling is surreal, it's indescribably emotional too as you are bathed in an air that is foreign and pleasant at the same time.

For me, it was the moment that set me apart from my friends. In my head, I heard the silent tickling that I was different, uniquely made. And why not? If I could look at the sky and create an entirely knew world, wouldn't that project me to a pedestal markedly different from that of the ordinary man?

What followed was a sputtering flow of poems and stories. Instead of honing my craft, taking my time to learn and nurture the art the way it should have been, I followed the overbearing need to write something as soon as an idea popped into my head or a story or a poem unfurled itself through a word or a picture or anything at all. It is safe to say that my muse, my inspiration, was blossoming like a new-found love.
And as with a new-found love, the challenge comes when the fieriness of the love goes dim or dissipates and one is burdened with trying to revive that fire. Eventually the blustery flow of my muse, dissipated into steady spits that had to be romanced and flirted with, before an idea could be born--the real challenge had reared its ugly head.

What I find now, is that, I have lost my muse, the inesplicable voice that boomed from the indescribable beyond of my cognitive self and gave me ideas for my stories and poems has ceased talking. Now I find that I reach so deep into myself so that I can find a story or a poem. It is complemented by an unfamiliar sense of vaguery, a sort of blankness in myself that makes me feel as though writing a story or a poem is a task or a duty or a burden. But, the craft is best enjoyed when it doesn't feel like someone is holding a gun to your head!

And so when I put my fingers on the keyboard, they are jittery and sweaty and cannot find the right keys to strike. When I pick up the pen, it feels too heavy and the ink doesn't flow anymore--I find a hollering unfamiliarity and virginity that can only be associated with someone who hasn't crafted anything before!
I have been resigned to reading stories over and over, devouring pages upon and pages-awash with selfishness-as I will my muse to arise from within another writer's words. I feel the misery and the frustration of not blossoming anymore; of shrugging when a friend asks of my recent write-ups; of shying away from writers' groups so that I wouldn't face the humiliation of being unable to write anymore. None-the-less, there is joy in belonging in a clique of my peers, even though, for now, I have lost that voice.

Sometimes I hear that voice, thin and strangulated, like a person gripped at the throat. Those are the times I am able to sit down and write a page or a half of it, and then feel the now-familiar sense of emptiness and tiredness.

Through the "muse drought," I have learnt a thing or two. I have learnt to not force my art, to not force that voice, to keep a steady hand on the tiller. I have learnt-and rather contradictorily- that by learning my craft, the range of my muse and the cracks and fissures that beholden it, I can be a better writer.
The muse doesn't come by chance anymore, I have to feed it as a parent may feed their children. By so doing I can embrace the vastness of my muse and its boundlessness-I may find the joy in writing again!
Now as I trudge the ragged paths of rekindling the voice, my ears are splayed like the wings of an aeroplane, and my eyss are as wide as those of a toddler on psychostimulants. I am reaching for that elusive voice again; I am looking for the beauty in the flower's tapestry; I am looking for the story in that man's stare; I am looking for an explanation to the bruises and melancholy on that woman's face; I am searching for the poem in that girl's protruding belly.
I am searching, earnestly, toward reclaiming my muse.

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Khojo ©

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