The seduction of the muse: Creative Climax, Artistic Orgasm and the Line between Genius and Madness!

“They” say there is a fine line between genius and madness within the minds of creatives and artists. I say they’ve never felt the muse come to them, press up against them in a moment of mundane meandering and whisper gently in their ear, with a breath of inspiration that circles the auricle like a warm, wet tongue around the targus; plunging a lyric, melody, picture, cure, invention or string of words deep into their soul. Their heart’s have never quickened, veins engorged, blood flowed fast with images streaming, arousing a swirling build-up of ideas, inspiration, and creative desire simply because of a thought. They have never had an idea tease them like a sensual dancer on stage or invade their mind like a scent of fragrance and pheromones that is everywhere and all consuming. They’ve never grabbed the face of an idea, pressed up into it, desperately almost ferociously, needing, wanting, begging for the rapture that will come.

They don’t even realize the whisper or the frenzy of the initial inspiration is only the beginning! Fantasy foreplay, build-up, tension, singular focus on but one thing... Creation. A song, a perfectly lighted picture, an invention or story. These things that are not, with intimate connection and communion with the muse… become. That which was not, takes shape. The face of David, hewn from rock. The beloved Lenore’s raven given but one word, “nevermore.” The first shot of electricity through tungsten filament igniting a lust for containable light. What was not, like the tension between lovers builds into something bigger than either of them alone.

Creative juices flow, sounds blend, lyrics form, colors and shapes appear on canvas. Genius moments, like the cadence of lovemaking, come again and again and everything else is lost to the lovers, the Creative and the Muse. Passion, pleasure, desire and need, pushing, pulling, panting to a climax. A finished thought, a successful trial, a wave crashing up and out, and again it comes up and out in shutters of victory. Groans of pleasure, sighs of release, sweaty exhaustion. Ultimate satisfaction!

But… sometimes… “they” never know what torture it is to be wrapped up in the body of an idea that will not give over. It is maddening to pour all the thought, feeling and emotion inside into a thing that will not come! The artist or inventor learns the favorite points to test, taste, touch and tease. The creative senses when pressure needs to be applied and when only a breath to the neck or tongue gently brushing the lips of the lyric will do. Yet when rhythm and flow take over, climax still will not come. It’s a frenzy to make it happen, this thing that refuses to culminate. It is humiliation at the admission that it would not come. Not this time. And the muse, once so tightly entwined, fades away. And the creative, once so highly aroused, hangs head in frustration.

And the desire will come again. And the creation will be worth the climax or the risk of utter failure.  

“They” must understand it is impossible to stop. Because when it does come, it is genius! “They” must know that when it doesn’t… it’s always… almost… there, this thing that is not. This gift to the world itself, it is waiting and it will come.

Then the world, the real world, pulls at the Creative, this odd, strange, eccentric, uncommon, quite unorthodox soul. But the creative knows the creation is for the world. It is legacy, protégé, a gift to humanity. We must be mad in order to share beauty or innovation with a world of ordinary people. The creative soul must be free to embrace the muse. And yet must, or at least should, return, even if only momentarily to what is real.

It is genius. It is madness. It is obsession. It is the essence of a creative. We are souls caught up in our passions and the world is better for our madness, even if sometimes our own souls are not.