I'm not the Immortal Artist. You are




Grey Cross Studios/Immortal Artist Operations

New Orleans

Email: greyacross@aol.com

Saturday, October 24, 2015

Trapped Within a Maelstrom of Muses

On some nights I feel trapped within a maelstrom of muses. I am not sure its something I can ever fully express. Its almost like my mind gets caught in a hurricane of ideas where the mental winds are a gale force and every thought leads to another and another until everything is a blur. Every thought contains within it the seeds of an idea for artistic expression to the point where I literally get lost within it.
I find myself forced to mentally shut it all down or else sleep would never come. And in doing so I feel like I am turning my back on a titanic force that should never be ignored. But I also feel like I can lose myself within it if I am not careful.

Don't get the wrong impression. I am not talking about craziness or mental instability. I am talking about being so caught up in a process that you forget everything else around you to the point of causing yourself eventual physical distress.

But if I don't shut it down, my mind becomes a blur of ideas that is moving so fast that I am eventually unable to see clearly what is moving past me. I sort of think of it like cars moving on a road. When the speed limit is low I can see each car, make out what kind it is, see whose driving it, even make out the details of the license plate. But when the speed limit is faster the details become much harder to grasp. I can make out the colors of each car, but little else as they go flying past me.

I madly try to make out all the details I can before the whole things moves at a pace that is impossible for me to grasp.

This is the creative mind. This is what makes us who we are. We choose to step into that maelstrom in the hopes that the muses will tell us something crucial. But as all muses typically do, they speak in rhymes and half glimpses of the truth rather than just coming right out and saying "do this next".

I find that some are frightened by this. They cannot grasp that it means anything more than mental white noise. Others just ignore it. But the creative mind runs head long into the maelstrom and tries to make sense of those glimpses. The answers are all there, if we can just hold on long enough to find them. But in the end we tire. We are only human. This is our failing and our strength. To move with the muses for only a few moments in time transcends us and forces us to see new things and it reminds us we are only mortal.


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