10/07/03’s illustrious band:

The Idea

Brought to you by my literary hero, James Lileks (www.lileks.com).

The Idea. Everyone has had an Idea. It’s the eureka, the light bulb, the aha moment, the problem-solving notion that occurs to you while you’re brushing your teeth. You’ve been fretting for weeks about what to get Aunt Mabel for Christmas, or you can’t figure out why the computer keeps crashing. Suddenly you have the Idea! It’s obvious, it’s perfect, and you’re good to go. You can relax.

Artists’ lives revolve around Ideas. We sit and wait for the Idea to arrive the way expectant parents wait for the stork. It could be a word, a color, a shape, a sound, a sweep of the arm, a punchline, anything. Anything! As long as it comes and fills the terrifying blank canvas.

The Muse, the Idea delivery girl, can be either stingy or generous, but you never know which it’s to be until you sit down to work. Some days she drops off a bulk shipment and you use up a whole pad of Post-It notes cataloging them. And some days, or weeks, or months, she doesn’t come by at all. The blank canvas, fed on nothingness, swells bit by bit until it blots everything else from sight, even jams the window through which the muse usually enters. Then you’re blocked. Blocked artists are obliged to hide in coffee houses, muttering into newspapers and hoping the Muse slips something under the door while they’re out.

How we court the Muse! We lay out treasures for her like cookies for Santa: the fresh pen, the sable brushes, the cup of fragrant tea. We perform the rituals: log in, stretch out, play scales, take breaths. We observe the superstitions: light a candle, turn off the phone, tilt the lucky hat just so. If we do everything just so and the Muse is pleased, the Idea arrives. Relief! The most difficult aspect of creation is over.

And then it’s time to get down to work.

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