Genius is not that you are smarter than everyone else.
It is that you are ready to receive the inspiration.
- - - Albert Einstein
For an artist, feeling inspired is a high like no other. Your paintbrush skims across the canvas seemingly by itself. You hear the music inside your head before you open your mouth to sing. You feel the dance steps enlivening your muscles before you start to move. Your fingers fly across the keyboard like they have a mind of their own.
In the acclaimed 1984 movie, Amadeus, composer Antonio Salieri described his view of Mozart’s genius:
Astounding! It was actually, it was beyond belief. {His scores} showed no corrections of any kind. Not one. He had simply written down music already finished in his head! Page after page of it, as if he were just taking dictation. And music, finished as no music is ever finished. Displace one note and there would be diminishment. Displace one phrase and the structure would fall. It was clear to me that the sound I had heard in the Archbishop's palace had been no accident. Here again was the very voice of God! I was staring through the cage of those meticulous ink-strokes at an absolute beauty.
In that movie, when the curtain fell on one of Mozart’s operas, Emperor Joseph the 2nd, told Mozart, “I liked it but there were too many notes.”
Mozart replied, “There are just as many notes, Majesty, as are required. Neither more nor less.” He apparently did what Salieri said. He saw the musical score in his head and simply copied down the notes.
There was only one Mozart. The rest of us are chasing inspiration, so when we get a visitation, it feels like a rare and divine gift. When you sit down to write with inspiration fueling your expression, all you have to do is let go, let it flow, and see what shows up on the page.
Being uninspired, a far more common occurrence, feels like a gray cloud is hovering. Your mind is jumbled and unfocused, skipping from thought to thought like an Orangutan, jumping from one tree branch to the next, never resting or alighting anywhere. Writing anything decent feels so remote, you decide your scribbles read like a first grader reporting to the class what you did last summer. You can't win. Sticking with your work feels foolish and walking away feels cowardly.
The solution to this dilemma is straightforward. Just keep doing what you're doing. Thomas Edison said that genius is five percent inspiration and ninety percent perspiration. If you keep at it long enough, you’ll eventually break through the perspiration and find the inspiration underneath it, right where it always was.
The late Poet Laureate, Maya Angelou, said:
What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks “the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat.” And it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I’m writing, I write. And then it’s as if the muse is convinced that I’m serious and says, “Okay. Okay. I’ll come.”
Inspiration is widely known as “the muse,” an invisible benevolent encouraging genius, often referred to as female, who gladdens you with beauty, kindness, expanded vision, easy focus, and boundless energy. The antidote and the polar opposite of the inner critic, the muse is what we thirst for, a long lost lover, but chasing her is pointless because she only shows up when she’s good and ready and not a moment before. In fact, the more you chase her, the more she hides. She’s a demanding master, sneaky like a cat on the prowl, acting like she would prefer to have nothing to do with you. You just can't hold a cat in your lap when she doesn't want to be there.
I was getting ready to leave my house one afternoon when I realized I hadn’t seen my cat for a few hours. There are coyotes in the canyon where I live, a cat is a tasty hors d’ouvre, and I was afraid she got outside. I hurried from room to room, checking all her favorite hiding places, but no matter how many times I called her name, she was a no-show. When I walked into the spare bedroom as a last resort and peered behind the curtains, there she was, staring up at me, grooming her luxurious tail, wondering what on earth I was on about.
Just like mu cat, when you’ve been writing for what feels like forever, searching everywhere for the muse, there’s no way to know if she’ll pay you a visit or when. Like a snobby socialite, she arrives fashionably late to the festivities and she doesn't say good-bye when she leaves. But when you find a way to romance her without smothering or being demanding, when you let go and resign yourself to writing without her, don't be surprised if she sidles up, rubs against your legs, and bestows upon you breathtaking pathways to your soul’s expression. I always seem to write better with a snoozing cat in my lap.
Writing without the muse takes resolve, mental discipline, and a willingness to do your work in a dense and formless way. It feels like you threw a party and the birthday girl didn’t show up. What do you do? You enjoy the party anyway. You make conversation, you have a glass of wine and a bite to eat, and then, when you look up, there she is. That’s how inspiration rolls, so don't be fooled by appearances. The muse is always testing you, arriving and leaving for no apparent reason.
I see writing as a practice. I do it every day. Inspiration is a gift. It comes and goes as it pleases. Nothing is permanent in this life so we have to learn how to let go and tackle what’s in front of us, no matter how we feel about it. A friend of mine was staying in an ashram in India when she received a call from San Francisco that a family member had died. Before she headed back to the states for the funeral, she asked her guru, “Will you miss me?”
He smiled warmly and said, “When you are here, I celebrate your presence. When you are gone, I celebrate your absence.”
It doesn't get much clearer than that. He was referring to impermanence, the fact that we have no control over anything so we might as well accept exactly what is happening with a good attitude. Does the following horror story sound familiar?
It’s 3 AM and the muse wakes you up, flitting and tripping around your brain, hinting at the fabulous stories she’ll tell you if you’ll just get up and write. You groan, turn over, and try to fall back to sleep, but the muse will not be ignored. You turn on the light, open your laptop, and boot up. Your heart races with anticipation. You place your fingers on the keyboard, you wait for a pulse of energy to run through you, and then . . . nothing. Your hands are still. The muse has retreated faster than you could get to the blank page. She tempted you, she disappeared, and you have no idea why or where she went.
The next morning, when you go to the computer, you start out a little disgruntled. You had a great idea, now it’s gone, and you can't possibly write a word. You feel like someone jilted you at the altar. But you sit there, randomly tapping the keys until you notice you’ve been writing for fifteen minutes. The page is filling up. The muse arrived when you weren’t looking, you remembered your idea, you got a second wind and you're up and running.