Speak Stiltedly and Wear a Yellow Shirt

I promised several entries ago to discuss the line between muse and man, and it’s high time to whip out Origins and get to it. So, with malice toward none; with charity for all; more on the muse:

Some moderns write without benefit of muse. For example, I’ve never felt that the muse was involved in writing non-fiction, not even when a column of mine all comes together in an unexpected way. Perhaps it is the lifetime of use that blinds me to the muse in such situations, but, there being no general talk of a muse for non-fiction, I’ll assume not. So writing without the muse is possible.

Once upon a time, some muses wrote without the man. To Plato, for example, complete possession by the muse was the sine qua non of artistic merit:

… all good poets, epic as well as lyric, composed their beautiful poems not by art, but because they are inspired and possessed … there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses and the mind is no longer in him.

(All quotes are taken from Jaynes’ book, including the ellipses.) Art in this context means artifice - that is, craft or talent as opposed to inspiration or the muse. Jaynes claims that the muse’s possessiveness in Plato’s day was her last hurrah, yet he goes on to give more recent examples of the muse in action. Milton took dictation from his Celestial Patroness, and even Shelley risked the wrath of fellow poets with blanket statements like the following:

A man cannot say, “I will compose poetry.” The greatest poet even cannot say it; for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness … and the conscious portions of our natures are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure.

Ellipsis again thanks to Jaynes, but I’ve found the original on-line: A Defense of Poetry by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The quote above starts at section 284, but the whole thing looks so interesting that I’ll put off any more muse musing until I’ve read it through.

find your element at mutedfaith.com.

Go figure.

I’ve always wanted minions. Lori seems displeased with her alleged role as Sockpuppet to the Queen, but I wonder if she’s really the sole target of the most recent bout of unreason. After all, there was a plural in there. (Not that I’ve read the original - I’m taking my libel filtered through Lori’s blog these days. If I want crap from strangers, I can get it by answering the help line at work. I don’t need it on my free time, or in my blog.)

I suspect the Unknown Minion - that is, some fan I don’t know who’s snuck into the source blog’s comments to defend me. Maybe she’s young and still thinks she can save fandom from itself. To the Unknown Minion, thank you, but I think it’s well past time to walk away. How about sending me some nice fanmail instead? Don’t worry if you’ve sent some before - if double-jeopardy feedback is good enough for ASC, it’s good enough for me.

I stumbled across this quote while doing research on newsgroups for an article. While it’s not appropriate for the article, it seems quite timely for the blog.

A story of life in the real world

I ran into someone on the way to the bus stop this morning. Let’s call her Dr. Deb, because that was her name. We sat together on the bus and chatted about our weekends. Dr. Deb and her boyfriend had gone on a Quest for Piglets in western Massachusetts. (I’m not making this up - he’s into pigs.) It seems there were no piglets, because the pigs still don’t know what season it is. If it’s spring, what happened to winter?

Dr. Deb also mentioned that she’d read 120 pages of a Catherine Asaro novel I’d lent her, and I told her I’d just reread The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Did Dr. Deb react by saying, “You only mention that in order to prove that you’re better than everyone else on the bus”? No, dear reader, she didn’t. She said, “What does ‘bicameral’ mean?” You see, Dr. Deb is my friend. She knows that if I bring something up, it’s because I find it an interesting topic of conversation. My friends give me the benefit of the doubt.

So I told her, “two-chambered.” Did she accuse me of hobbling the English language with my etymological definitions of words? No. Strangely enough, Dr. Deb was interested in discussing left and right hemispheres, not in psychoanalyzing me. The thirty other people on the bus were not my friends, yet none of them started their own conversations about how full of myself I must be to talk about other people’s brains that way. Bostonians have other things on their minds at 8:30 in the morning. Some of them were even reading thick books, but that’s considered normal here. I saw someone reading The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind on the T a few weeks back - that’s probably what got me thinking about it again after nine years. But back to today:

It is highly unlikely that some random med student on his way to Longwood overheard Dr. Deb and felt that her words oppressed him in his day-to-day use of his left hemisphere - but of course, anything’s possible. If he did, I hope he was relieved when she got off the bus. I stayed on to the T stop at the end of the line, and when I got on the subway, funny, but the other passengers failed to crowd around me. I was just another commuter headed inbound.

But then, I never claimed to be anything else.

I was supposed to get something else done tonight, but the muse (whose taste is far from the best in certain areas) started thinking about this filk on the T and wouldn’t let go until I typed it up for her. I hope that since I indulged her tonight, she’ll write something useful for me tomorrow.

Filk:      It’s My Blog
Original:  It’s My Turn (Diana Ross)

I can’t cover up opinions
In the name of blog
Or keep my peace
In jetc that was easy

And if thinking for myself
Is what I’m guilty of
Go on and disagree
I’ll still be me

It’s my blog
To see what I can see
I hope you’ll understand
This blog’s just for me

Because it’s my blog
With no apologies
I won’t tone down the truth
I’ll never try to please

For here it’s my blog
Yes I do have all the answers
Before I blogged, I took my share of stances
Ain’t no use of mailing lists
Where everyone’s the same

No, it’s not disdain
For I don’t know you from Adam
And I’ll tell you so
Here in my Dear Sir or Madam

It’s my blog
With no room for replies
I’ve never seen my fic
Through someone else’s eyes

And here it’s my blog
To try and have my say
And if the muse is blocked
At least I’ve blogged today

It’s my blog
Yes, it’s my blog
Ain’t no use of mailing lists
Where everyone’s the same

No, it’s not disdain
For I don’t know you from Adam
And I’ll tell you so
Here in my Dear Sir or Madam

It’s my blog
To see what I can see
I hope you’ll understand
This blog’s just for me

Because it’s my blog
To rant and say “my eye!”
I sure do like to see
That Lori’s stopping by

Because it’s my blog
It’s my blog

It’s my blog
For fanfic and for “fun”
Trying to work out
The thoughts of number one

Yes here it’s my blog
To reach and touch the muse
No one’s gonna say
That I was not amused

It’s my blog
Yes, it’s my blog
It’s my blog
It’s my blog
It’s my blog

In the spirit of being More Like Lori, I edited an entry in the accidental muse war. I did that for myself, because defending myself in my blog, which is what I was doing, was exactly what I stated at the outstart that I didn’t want to have to do. I’m not going to do it now, either, but I did classify this entry Jemima, so I will say something about me. Take it as an open letter to the easily offended.

I accept that other people are not like me. When I write about my own opinions, or my own muse, I am not thereby saying that anyone else is inferior or a bad writer. Unless you can actually quote me saying so, that’s just an assumption on your part. The number of people who make the same baseless assumption is not my concern - I’m a logician, and only logical argument interests me.

The other deep secret of Jemima is that I don’t give a flying fig. Smut does not interest me. Angst does not interest me. The museless, qua museless, do not interest me. Do not mistake me for someone who cares. Specifically, I don’t care whether I’m a better or a worse writer than anyone else.

I get the feeling sometimes that the people who think I’m full of myself (taking that statement at face value, rather than as an observation of my general disinterest) are young people who are blogging, and perhaps writing, for more social reasons than I am. I don’t use fanfic or my blog or my opinions to prove my self-worth, either to myself or to others. I’ve accomplished enough in my life not to need the muse or anything else to bolster my ego. If I read fanfic, it’s because I find it interesting, and if I write down my opinions, it’s because I find them, and the process of formulating them, interesting.

Believe me, it has nothing whatsoever to do with you.

When I was younger and smarter, I
Just Said No To Blogback. Today it’s
time to say no again. The commenting thing was an interesting experiment,
but one that’s not working out. Thank you to the many positive commenters, and
to the few unsatisfied commenters, no hard feelings.

This is not a debate; this is my blog. If you want to debate,
bring it up in zendom or send me email. I have nothing against debate, but it’s
not the purpose of my blog. My blog is my opinions, all the time. Say whatever
you want in your own blogs - have a ball. If I find something interesting,
I may address it here. Or not.

Ok, here you go, an actual scientific theory of the muse, taken from The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind:

According to Jaynes, there are two halves to the human mind, the conscious half, and what I’ll call the non-conscious half. (Subconscious and unconscious are used, and we don’t want any of their unfortunate connotations confusing us, anyway.) In general, you think of yourself as the conscious half, because it is logically impossible to be conscious of any of your non-conscious processes.

You may be aware that something mysterious is going on over there on the right side (usually) of your brain, from other clues, and the truth is, consciousness really doesn’t take up that much of your mental time. Most thinking and processing goes on non-consciously. Jaynes gives some nice examples:

I’ve had this experience myself in mathematics, which is, perhaps, why I recognize it so readily when writing fiction. (My muse is fondest of the Bed and the Bath, though she’s been known to act up on public transportation as well.) Jaynes explains how a certain amount of preparation goes into the process - setting up or contemplating the problem, then putting it aside, after which (one hopes) comes the flash of insight, and finally, the logical justification.

So, without getting into the more debated areas of Jaynes’ theory, we can establish certain facts about the muse. Because the muse is a non-conscious process, it cannot be controlled by the conscious mind, that is, by the writer herself. The muse’s process of creation can be neither “fun” nor painful, because the conscious writer, the only party involved who can feel amusement or pain, is involved in the act of creation purely as a spectator.

Of course, the muse can cause the writer no end of frustration when absent, and when present, can give the writer a feeling of transcendence. The point here is that any conscious writing, whether fun or sweat-and-blood painful, is not from the muse. The muse is, by definion, a non-conscious process. Just as you cannot have fun or feel pain while you are sound asleep, you cannot have fun or feel pain while the muse is producing. As Lori has noted, she may leave you quite a mess to clean up, but editing is not a muse process - it’s the logical justification at the end.

Another point to note about the muse so far is that what she writes is not necessarily better than what some other, conscious writer writes. She is, of course, generally accepted to be smarter than her own writer - she has the best bits of your brain in her non-conscious hands, so of course she’s going to show you up big-time.

Matters are a bit more complicated than this; it can be hard to separate the muse from the man. To do so, we’ll need more theory from Julian Jaynes. Join us next time on Mutual of Jemima’s Wild Fandom…

I had the unusual experience of receiving two feedbacks in two days. Even more unusual, they were both wrong. Do you ever get the wrong feedback? Yes, both people had read something by me, but it wasn’t quite what I’d written - not unlike the unintentional muse war, I suppose.

One person complained that If Ayn Rand Wrote ST:VOY was an absurd misrepresentation of Rand’s views. (That this was a complaint, rather than praise, became clear later in the missive.) Now, whether you think Rand would eliminate the Borg as an evil menace to the galaxy probably depends on whether you think Janeway ought to have done so. This is a familiar question of fanon, usually seen in after-the-fact regrets on Janeway’s part that she let the big one get away. At least, I think it is - it’s certainly a point I’ve hit on more than once, even reusing my favorite line, “The Borg are not a genus.”

So, we can assume this reader was unfamiliar with the Voyager fanon, promise him a fuller disclaimer for parody, and leave it at that. Well, there’s still the question of whether negative feedback goes in my fanmail folder or not. I don’t think I’ve gotten any before. I think I’ll take the ASC Awards approach - any old feedback in a storm.

The second piece of feedback, however, represents a more serious and more frequent misunderstanding. This isn’t the first time Yesterday, When I was Borg has been praised as a parody. I doubt this is an issue of misunderstanding filk itself - filk is not parody [except for legal, disclaimer purposes], and none of my other filks, if they get feedback at all, get feedback praising them qua parody. No, this one is also an issue of the Borg and fanon. “Yesterday” is a tragic filk about Seven’s separation from the Collective. It’s not whiny, as Seven’s number in “Filk of La Mancha” has been accused of being. “Yesterday” deals, in a remote, filky way, with the question of whether it was moral to remove Seven from the Collective - a question Chakotay also half-asked in Scorpion or the Gift.

Few stories deal with the moral issues of Collectivization, but I still consider it a legitimate question of fanon and therefore assume that the people who see parody in my tragedies are just not up on fanon. I think it’s about time I posted Thrive to ASC, just to see if I get similar reactions over the Borg bits. Meg’s Refugee Camp Voyager novel is a good place to see Borg issues and is a great read all around.