Story Frame 13 – Muse Complex

After the split, both of us were now on our own in terms of child support and dealing with the costs of maintaining modest but separate residences. While it was more peaceful, it was even more difficult to make ends meet.

It would have been easier if either of us had parents nearby who could help. But I didn’t have the kind of mother who embraced being a grandmother, at least not in person. In theory she was, but it was always on her own terms. She was the kind of grandmother who, not long after Zoë was born, decided to move more than a thousand miles away and open an art gallery in Florida with my sister. She visited a couple of times each year while Steve and I were still married, and twice paid for us to stay in a timeshare near the beach, as long as it wasn’t in her house, and as long as we got ourselves there. Which we did, making the long, monotonous 28-hour round trip drive from Alexandria to Sarasota because we couldn’t afford to fly, distracting the kids by having them count the more than one hundred ‘South of the Border signs’ in each direction.

My father lived and worked in California and was more interested in children once they reached the age where they could discuss ideas. Steve’s parents had tragically died in their twenties when Steve was just a child himself.

By this time, Zoë and Leif were both were in elementary school so at least childcare was no longer an issue. Fortunately, there were times when I could work from home, times when I could bring them to work with me, and times when they were with Steve. But it was still a juggling act.

I was lucky to have a job and a boss who permitted me to work flexible hours and work from home. I worked at the workshop during school hours, but if someone was home sick, Steve and I tried our best to work flexibly around that, too. Somehow, all of us managed to muddle through until Zoë and Leif were old enough to be on their own at home.

In the midst of it all, I realized I was beginning to have a bit of a crush on Martin. It was hard not to, given the amount of time we spent together and how enamored I was with the craft of documentary filmmaking. But did I like him, I asked myself, or was it the job I liked? 

Separating a man from the work he did, or the art he created, was a recurring dilemma for me. I’d made up a little heart test I would try to remember to ask myself in situations like this: would I still be attracted to a particular guy if what he did for a living was pump gas? The answer was always, of course, probably not. It was their dreams and visions that I was swept up in, their story. It was watching someone in the process of creating something that appealed to me. They were inextricably bound together, which tended to make things complicated.

Because they were artists of some sort, the men I found appealing and captivating rarely had a lot of money, so at least I could reassure myself I wasn’t a gold digger. Unfortunately, I was never clever enough to fall for guys with money, and definitely never the guys in suits. I was a dreamer, not a digger.

I was pondering this one day while mowing the grass in front of my little house. (I get that from my father who said he always had his best problem-solving thoughts while mowing the lawn or doing jigsaw puzzles.) I have a degree in psychology and found the idea of human inspiration intriguing. What was it about the muses?

In the following days and months, I spent the time I had to myself researching and reading about muses, both those in the shadows as well as those well known. One of my favorites was Laura Riding, the ‘eerily brilliant poet’ who lived with her lover and writing companion, Robert Graves. They also lived with Graves’ wife and Riding’s partner in a rather strange ménage a quatre. This unusual domestic situation gradually fostered intense rivalries among the four until Laura, in a melodramatic attempt at suicide, threw herself from a fourth-floor window. Within seconds, Graves sprang after her from a window on the third. Amazingly, they both survived. Despite nearly destroying one another, it was during their fourteen years of writing together that they both produced their most notable work. Each was a muse to the other. Creative and empathetic, their companionship resulted in writings that likely would not have happened but for their influence upon one another.

I wanted that kind of relationship. Mind you – I did not envision either Martin or myself jumping from windows to impress each other. What appealed to me was the idea of two creative individuals, not only bringing out the best in one another, but in the process taking their storytelling art to an even higher level, a level that would likely have not been possible were it not for the influence of the other.

I turned my research, ideas and writing into a draft manuscript entitled, The Muse Paradigm: Passionate Encounters in the Creative Process – a behind-the-scenes examination of the paradigm of the muse, the human sources of inspiration, both male and female, in the lives of artists.

These would not be studio wenches with vain hopes of parasitic glamour. Those I chose to profile were intelligent provocateurs – quite often equal in talent, if not in recognition. The intention of my book was to weave together a colorful tapestry of some of creativity’s most defining moments in the lives of painters, sculptors, writers, musicians, poets, thinkers, scientists, explorers and theologians. The book would highlight the personal relationships that have aroused and excited profound creative impulses with anecdotes illuminating how and why these relationships came to be, what sustained or broke them, and the ways in which society and culture have been altered or changed as a result of these creative partnerings.

While I was fascinated by the concept of the muse, I did not have a muse complex myself. I had an artist complex, I was fascinated by and loved being around artists. But not because I wanted to be their inspiration. No, I wanted to be the artist.

But lacking confidence in myself, I thought if I wasn’t the artist, I could at least be very close to the artist. Or write about them. And perhaps that would be enough to scratch that itch.

It never was, though. In time, I would learn to be both my own artist and muse, but that was still a few years away. With documentary filmmaking, however, I had at last found a foothold of my own in the storytelling world.

Coming Next: Story Frame 14 – Thomas Jefferson & Nick Nolte Take Me to Disney World