The Muse Gone Corrupt
This Essay is Part II of two part series on Artist-Muse Relationship. Read the Part I “More than a Muse” by clicking here.
Let there be Muse, and there will be Art. That may all be there to Art, who knows? Maybe the Muse knows.
An artist puts insurmountable faith in his Muse to guide him through the dark hallows of life to create a piece of Art which embodies both a longing and a hope. What is the foundation of his faith in his Muse? Artist’s Muse, Artist’s Art, Artist decides.
All Art resting on the foundation of the Muse, may very well be under jeopardy if the Muse is corrupt. What is corrupt, how to define corrupt? Only the Artist who has the ability to seek a Muse reserves the authority to define a Muse gone corrupt. Artist’s Muse, Artist’s Art, Artist decides.
The major question that arises if simply stated is this – Does an Art hatched from a Muse, who now has gone corrupt signify that the Art has gone corrupt as well? This dilemma is worth losing the sleep for.
For all the people in the world, the Muse can be anyone, the enchantress, the whack, the me-lady, the all giver, the lost cause, the hope, the illusion, the god. But it is often the God only who goes silent. And the questions arise. The Artist climbs the edge of disillusionment, ready to take a fall or a leap of faith.
The best Art rests on the pillars of truth and nakedness of life through the eyes of the Artist. Truth, for that matter is fragile and intangible. Yet, every Artist does his best to portray a sense of oneness with his perceived truth. No Artist of any self-respect must derail from portraying the truth in his Art.
The Muse, thus, is life. For the Artist the nakedness of the Muse becomes the nakedness of life. The truth of the Muse becomes the truth of life. Overwhelming, imbalanced, and unfathomable this idea is of the Muse shadowing the Artist’s heart and hence his Art. But that is how it works. That is how it is supposed to work, no other way; else the Muse was farce since the beginning. The Muse reflects the Artist’s state of heart. The Muse embodies the viscosity of Artist’s life. The Muse becomes the Art then.
There are two tenures related to the Muse. First, the duration for which the Muse is able to hold on the Artist’s heart. Second, the duration for which the Artist is able to hold on to the Muse. And these two tenures do not run parallel. Both in the end are crushing and leave an impact louder than thud of a suicide. Every Artist knows that his life depends on one thing – his Art. The muse, however short be the either tenure, very well defines the Art in a larger respect. The longevity of either of these tenures implies the state of contentment that the Artist resides in.
As long as the Artist, by firmly caressing the cheek of the Muse, goes on to create Art he feels he is touched by truth and something more divine that daily life can barely offer. His Muse is both a respite from the daily life and a daily life as well. Helpless haze befalls over the Artist. He lets himself flow, sometimes for the sake of his Art and sometimes for the sake of his heart. The worth of the Muse forms the crux of his Art.
Dismantling this crux and hammering it will always force a whiplash within the Artist and his subsequent Art.
The question, although, is what leads to dismantling of this crux.
The more the Muse is explored in and brought out, the more are the chances of disillusionment. The persona within the Artist’s heart of the Muse may very well be an exaggeration, or perfection, or simply a connection to his own soul. Yet this persona can be deceiving as well. And if it indeed turns out to be deceitful, the disillusionment is bound to occur. What of Art then? Was the Art then a deceit as well? This is the question.
The Art which was to be the epitome of truth, all a fallacy? From the corners of the Artist’s eyes the Muse was the harbinger of his life’s truth. But when the Muse no more retains that pedestal, what of the truth of Artist’s life? What of the truth of his Art?
The Muse charms and hurts. That is not the problem here. The underbelly of the problem is the Muse not being able to hold onto her own value system. In the Artist’s heart, the Muse holds a place because her characteristic traits, and these very traits define the Muse, and the Artist’s Art thenceforth. The eruption of all doubts starts when the Muse doesn’t stick to those very innate characteristic traits which once were the reflection of her nakedness, her truth. What if, for all the while, the persona of the Muse that resided in Artist’s heart was simply his own creation and the muse doesn’t embody what she once used to?
In a peculiar case of Muse gone corrupt, the Artist takes a tough call of letting go of the Muse. Closure from the muse is non-existent if not impossible because the Art shall always remind the Artist of the Muse. But must the Artist also let go of his Art when he lets go a corrupt Muse? Because after all, in rich trueness the Muse indeed, eventually, turned out to be corrupt. And its direct implification is that indeed, eventually, the Muse infused Art will turn out to be corrupt as well. Because the Muse was not true to herself; thus, how can Muse infused Art remain true to itself? The Muse and Art should, ideally, always be in unison. Muse being defunct must, ideally, always mean the Art too is defunct. What of that Art then? Should it be let go? Should it be preserved to never look at again?
To be understood is this – the Art is all emotion. These emotions are the ones which the Artist holds closer than the people around him. These emotions are what he stands for. He gives the key to these emotions to the Muse to portray them through his Art. And yet again he holds his Art closer than the people around him. The Art is his emotional support system. And the Muse forms a crucial pillar of this emotional support system. The horror of realizing that this crucial pillar of strength was a mere illusion must shatter the whole emotional support system, the whole of emotions, and the whole of Art.
Instead of grieving the Artist seeks refuge in re-establishing that crucial pillar via a new Muse. And the cycle of creation starts again. Mantling and dismantling of this emotional support system is an on-going life long process for any Artist. This is true and shall always remain so. But what of the Art which remains after dismantling that support system? Should that Art not also be dismantled as its creation was sketched on a false belief of a Muse which now is nowhere to be found? In practice if the Artist really follows truth and dismantles his Art as soon as he dismantles the illusion of Muse, there will be no Art left. The artist shall have no oeuvre. To remain truthful and honest to both his heart and craft the Artist must, for every reason, let go of his Art along with the Muse that inspired it. Not so easy, is it?
Dwelling deep down to the emotions which actually resulted in creation of the Art must give a few hints to why an Artist can never let go of his Art. The emotions erupted though the Muse, and portrayed through the Art, are actually the emotions of the Artist himself, and not that of the Muse. Letting go of the Art may mean letting go of his own emotions. Also in a sense creating Art is a way to let go of emotions. Art, then, in retrospect becomes a relic, full of emotions – a relic which the artist preserves. When the Muse is let gone, the relic remains and with that remains all the emotions that the Artist once attached to the Muse, but these are his emotions nevertheless. The only doubt is whether these emotions are falsified, as they were a by-product of a Muse (now corrupt), and suchly similar is the case for the relic – the relic is full of illusion. All this leads to an even bigger question: Is all Art an Illusion?
There is no reason that can actually satisfy why the Art is worthwhile if the Muse in the end didn’t turn out to be worthwhile. Art is not some lesson to be learned from. Art is life. And for the Artist, Muse is life. Desertion of the Muse means desertion of life. Desertion of life means desertion of Art. But barely an Artist deserts his Art which he crafted with his blood. Is the debt of creating Art worth more than the falsified truth that inspired its creation? Or Letting go of the Art is a case of ‘loss aversion’ while letting go of the muse is simply a case of letting people go. Realizing that for an Artist the Art comes first and people second, it is understandable while letting go of people is an easier process in comparison to letting go of his Art.
Art equals Love. The mass majority of people, accounting to a state of normalcy and devoid of Art, usually cling to Love. For them love is in direct relation to people. For an Artist love is in direct relation to his Art. Old adage states, “Letting go of first true love is the most difficult.” For an Artist all his Art is his first true love. In that regard an Artist never moves on from his first love for whole of his life. Moving on from his First true love – Art, would mean abandoning Art and finding something else or finding people. But if an Artist is successfully able to let go of his first true love – Art, then perhaps what all will be left of his existence will simply be crumbles of misery and tragedy. Any Artist’s first love will always be his Art. However illusionistic that love be, the Artist can never let go of any true piece of his Art.
The Muse doesn’t equal Art. Simply because Art for an Artist will always remain his first true love. An Artist, encompassing all his sorrow might be willing to let go of the Muse but he may never be able to let go of his Art. And this not letting go will corrupt his Art, but of this corruption only the Artist is aware about. Guilt must then preside over his heart which will forever remind him of the ill fated tragedy of his Art, the Art he created in the illusion and romanticism of the Muse. With guilt the Artist must live and perhaps this guilt is to be endured. This guilt becomes the price the Artist must pay for not letting go of his Art made corrupt by a Muse gone corrupt.
