What She Does for Us

I am meeting with a new friend, and we are talking about our common Muse.  We are madly, hopelessly, and eternally in love with her.  The both of us.  After we exchange stories, he asks me: “Why do you love her?”

I start googling my own brain for the “obvious” answers, but my dear brother-in-love does not give me a chance to reply.  “She makes me happy, man,” he blurts out like he had been waiting for a chance to say it all his life. “That’s all.  When she’s around, I’m just happy.”

I nod, and we share a good minute of silent agreement.  And then we drink to that.

All the details of what she does for me adds up to that sum:  She makes me happy. It is that simple, and it is that true.  However, a cold bottle of Pepsi makes me happy too.  I cannot put the love of my life on the same ground-level pedestal. 

So now then, since words are my tool, and I am – as I said – madly in love with her, I shall build a shrine for my Muse.  I will tell you, because it is in your interest, why we love her.

She tells the most wonderful stories.  She talks about the world and the many characters in it.  Her world becomes mine.  I hear about people filled with love, hope, pain, dreams.  I hear about sweet grandparents and beautiful sisters and troubled teenagers.  I hear about death, and I hear about lessons learned.  She introduces me to places and situations that I never could have experienced for myself.  In so doing, I become part-owner of these experiences.

“…plain old Jane told a story about a man who was too afraid to fly so he never did land.”

She teaches me to listen.  In fact, most of the time, she only lets me listen.  She cannot be interrupted – if I so much as think about speaking, I will miss the wonderful things I could be hearing.  I do not want to miss a single beat of what she is telling me.

“…And there are voices that want to be heard.  So much to mention, but you can't find the words.”

She makes me feel larger than life.  I listen to her and I am drawn into a bigger universe.  If I listen truthfully, I will feel what she feels, which is what she wants me to feel.  My life is much richer for this immersion.  My life spans time and space.

“Meet me in outer space, I will hold you close if you're afraid of heights.  I need you to see this place.  It might be the only way that I can show you how it feels to be inside of you.”

She is the beat I live by.  Without her I am an ant strayed far far far out of the line, walking sporadically in randomly generated directions.  This series of random actions may move me a mile, or it may move me a grand total of six inches.  Without her I am an aimless wanderer.  She rescues me from this existence.  She calms me, fills me, fuels me.  I find my feet – no, my whole body – volunteering to move to her beat.

“Go on hitch a ride on the back of a butterfly, no better way to fly to get to me.”

She shields me.  In a world constantly disintegrating into chaos, she gives me a line of order to hang on to.  She protects me from all the senseless chatter.  As I walk with her, she takes me to a space where there is only the two of us.  We share each other with no other.  The time we spend together stands still.

I cannot be overcome with the weight of the world when my only duty in these moments is to be with her.  She lets me in, a guest in her magical bubble, and lets me be held by her.

“This time, when kindness falls like rain, it washes me away…”

This is what she does for me.  This is how she makes me happy.  Now look closely at my shrine, because it is yours.  All that she does for me, she does for you as well.  Put on your headphones, and let her love you.

“Softly, deftly, music shall caress you.  Hear it, feel it, secretly possess you.”

My Muse is Music, and all she ever asks me to do is to receive her, except I never listen well enough.  I get it in my head that I am going to return the favor.  I want her to receive me.  I want to give her all of me.  I try to sing over her voice.

“I wish I was the souvenir you kept your house key on.  I wish I was the pedal brake that you depended on.  I wish I was the verb 'to trust' and never let you down.”

My Muse is Music - my flawed emotional human ego wants nothing more than to hold her and never let go - but she does not belong to me.  She is everything to me, but I cannot be anything to her.  She will not let me secretly possess her.

She leaves because she is not mine.  As her voice fades, I feel the pain of the inevitable end.  I cry “Wait, WAIT!”  …and I am suddenly alone.  I am at the very opposite of ease.  I love her because when she is here, I am happy.  But what happens to me when she is not here?

“Will it be the end, or is (s)he still ascending?  But if (s)he’s all you say, would (s)he fly from heaven to this world again?”

Swords of panic dangle over me.  I know that even the best songs ever created will come to an end, but I harbour a hope that some songs play forever.  …Or maybe I don’t need her.  Maybe she was never good for me anyway.

“We don’t have to be friends, let’s pretend to be enemies.  Yeah, whatever makes you happy…”

My muse is Music, and she now leaves me alone.  In my reckless passion for her I speak too soon and too much.  I let her song pass me by.  I punctured her magical bubble with the very swords of panic that I tried to leap away from, and now the din of the outside world finds us.  It drowns out her beauty, so she flees.  This silence is her parting gift, and it is what I deserve. 

“I will go in this way and find my own way out.  I won't tell you to stay, but I'm coming to much more Me...”

She does this for me.  To let me breathe.  To give me an interlude so that I might hear my Self.  This is supposed to be good for me, but all I hear from my Self is a plea:

Dear Muse, please don’t wait too long to come back.  I suffer this lonely silence so that I might hear you again.  So I can be with you.  When you return, I promise only to listen, and to laugh, or to weep.  I promise to speak no more, except to say “Thank you” for the inspiration.  And, “I’m sorry” for trying to possess you.  And “I love you.”

“I wish I was a radio song, the one that you turned up.”

Ah, when I am ready to listen, there she is.  She teaches me Faith.