Does it seem that your inspirations and ideas come out of nowhere?
Perchance they are the invitation from your Muse.
Muses can be a bit flighty, air-headed and flippant; and they will take you, their charge, on amazing journeys.
As a creator your job is to go along for the ride as often as you can, and take plenty of notes, because amazing connections are made on such travels.
In a former life I was a master lace maker.
One day while demonstrating my art in a nature center, I noticed a man watching me intently from across the room.
He stared for quite some time and while it wasn’t uncommon for men to admire my lace work, his intense attention rattled me.
Finally, after several hours, he came up to me and said that he’d been observing my work closely, because he was realizing something quite bizarre.
He was a computer engineer. Keep in mind that this was back in the days when our current technology was in its infancy and, he was involved in designing the great grandparents of your computer. Things were bigger then, and had many more wires than current models, and they all needed to find their confusing connections.
He said that he always thought he got his engineering skills from the men in his family, also engineers. Currently, he needed to solve a design problem, and he had come to this exposition to get away and clear his head in nature for a while. He felt (his muse invited) that a walk in the woods would help him think better, and the exhibits would be a good distraction.
A muse possesses magical powers.
He explained that after watching me create my “eloquent lace”, working one thread into all the patterns, making the right connections where needed, threading, weaving, knotting, all the while, seeing the finished form in my mind, he realized that his gifts came from the women in his family.
He recognized that his inspiration for his elaborate computer designs were inspired by sitting at the knee of his grandmothers and mother, watching those women manipulating threads while working on their stitchery projects – and this inspiration happened when he was a child.
Invited by his muse to solve his engineering problem through the magical trance of watching me work my lace, he was brought back to the place of his original inspiration. That’s when he first saw how the guts of a computer could thread their way into the mysteriously engineered machines of today.
On a sunny fall afternoon in the great room of a nature center, his muse called him to an opportunity to understand his core inspirations and solve his engineering problems. His answers did not come from other engineers, but rather from another seemingly unrelated place at an earlier time of his life. Only a muse can take you on such a journey! To find your inspiration always accept your invitation to follow your Muse.
Sandy Nelson is a contributing blogger for JenningsWire.
