« It isn’t easy. Nobody has ever done it consistently. Those who try hardest, scare it off into the woods. Those who turn their backs and saunter along, whistling softly between their teeth, hear it treading quietly behind them, lured by a carefully acquired disdain.
We are of course speaking of The Muse. »
« It is my contention that in order to Keep a Muse, you must first offer food. How can you feed something that isn’t yet there is a little hard to explain. But we live surrounded by paradoxes. One more shouldn’t hurt us.
The fact is simple enough. Through a lifetime, by ingesting food and water, we build cells, we grow, we become larger and more substantial. (…)
Similarly, in a lifetime, we stuff ourselves with sounds, sights, smells, tastes and textures of people, animals, landscapes, events large or small. We stuff ourselves with these impressions and experiences and our reaction to them. (…)
These are the stuffs, the foods, on which The Muse grows. »
« Ours is a culture and a time immensely rich in trash as it is in treasures. Sometimes it is a little hard to tell the trash from the treasure, so we hold back, afraid to declare ourselves. But since we are out to give ourselves texture, to collect truths on many levels, and in many ways, to test ourselves against life, and the truths of others, offered us in comic strips, TV shows, books, magazines, newspapers, plays and films, we should not fear to be seen in strange companies. »
« What is the pattern that holds all this together? If I have fed my Muse on equal parts of trash and treasure, how have I come out at the farther end of life with what some people take to be acceptable stories?
I believe one thing holds it all together. Everything I’ve ever done was done with excitement, because I wanted to do it, because I loved doing it. The greatest man in the world for me, one day, was Lon Chaney, was Orson Welles in Citizen Kane, was Laurence Olivier in Richard III. The men change, but one thing remains always the same: the fever, the ardor, the delight. Because I wanted to do, I did. Where I wanted to feed, I fed. »
« To feed your Muse, then, you should always have been hungry about life since you were a child. If not, it is a little late to start. Better late than never, of course. Do you feel up to it?
It means you must take long walks at night around your city or town, or walks in the country by day. And long walks, at any time, through bookstores and libraries. (…)
Look at yourself then. Consider everything you have fed yourself over the years. Was it a banquet or a starvation diet? »
« The first movie star I remember is Lon Chaney.
The first drawing I made was a skeleton.
The first awe I remember having was of the stars on a summer night in Illinois.
The first stories I read were science-fiction stories in Amazing.
The first time I ever went away from home was to go to New York and see the World of the Future enclosed in the Perisphere and shadowed by the Trylon.
My first decision about a career was at eleven, to be a magician and to travel the world with my illusions.
My second decision was at twelve when I got a toy typewriter for Christmas.
And I decided to become a writer. »
« I have written about the Lon Chaney-and-the-skeleton-people for Weird Tales.
I have written about Illinois and its wilderness in my Dandelion Wine novel.
I have written about those stars over Illinois, to which a new generation is going.
I have made worlds of the future on paper, much like that world I saw in New York at the Fair as a boy.
And I have decided, very late in the day, that I never gave up my first dream.
I am, like it or not, some sort of magician after all, half-brother to Houdini, rabbit-son of Blackstone, born in the cinema light of an old theatre. »
« In sum, I am a piebald offspring of our mass-moved, mass-entertained, alone-in-a-New-Year’s-crowd-age.
It is a great age to live in and, if need be, die in and for. Any magician worth his salt would tell you the same. »
Zen in the Art of Writin 1961
hélène muron 