careful what You wish for

You, yes you, the supposed writer, illustrious creator of thrilling adventures as well as chronicler of romantic dalliances, equally capable at short story or novel length, you who are the magnanimous master of intrigue and the veritable reincarnated Vonnegut of satire; or perhaps, are you the imposter extraordinaire, lucky if you can manage to string two coherent sentences together, create a believable character who, when they speak, doesn’t sound like their dialogue came straight out of a ‘60’s TV melodrama, or even pen a decent adjective to describe said character without resorting a half-dozen times to the handy-dandy thesaurus, just a right-click of the mouse away.

In simpler terms, a talentless hack.

In your profession of choice, your resemblance tends more towards somewhere between such extremes, though to be fair you are efficient enough in your daytime routine to earn a comfortable living. Your work for which you do get paid requires precision and the presentation of facts and figures, though with no real opportunity or need for expression. And your one true superpower, the ability to spot the grammatical miscues and typos of others form from across the room (thank you for that correction, by the way) even puts you in some demand. But it is not what you long for, and leaves nothing formidable as a legacy. You yearn to be creative, to see that pseudonym you use for your artistic self emblazoned at the bottom of a book cover, after the word ‘by’ and below artwork that has been meticulously crafted to illustrate the imagery that you have so lovingly and painstakingly fashioned into words.  

I can feel and appreciate it, that burning desire, more so than even you, I would wager, given current circumstances. It’s a warm and comforting throb of satisfaction one can grasp while daydreaming of success, of fame and adulation. You start slowly with simple recognition, then steadily climb, building up and up with time, through book deals and script acceptances, until you no longer need to seek them, for they come seeking you, for fresh material and artistic consultations, all the way to the ultimate climax where simply a Like acknowledgement with your name next to it is a valuable and sought after commodity!

Whew! Gonna make myself swoon. I think I need a drink, or maybe a cigarette.

So how do I know your passions so intimately, as if I were somehow inside your head? That’s one of those truths we’re coming to, a truth you might not be quite ready to accept, not just yet.

Privately, ah, this may well be where the true dichotomy lies. You want to write about love and life, but you deny yourself both. Adventures are difficult when you mostly hide behind blaring music constrained within four walls. Listening to the lyrics of others can be inspiring, but can it ever adequately and completely replace the real thing? Have you ever taken a chance on a chance meeting, ever been in love, let yourself be totally vulnerable to another, be it man or woman? No, don’t bother. We both know the unfortunate answer.

You are terrified of your own shadow, but that isn’t really news to you or anyone who knows you. That by itself was not a fatal character flaw. It didn’t help, but when you started flirting online with the occult, whether you even realized or not that was what you were doing, you crossed a line into dangerous territory.

I recall it well, since I was there. Your frustration, now also mine, that drove you to act, the nagging concerns, ‘Am I good enough, am I talented enough, can I survive, writing for a living? Do I have what it takes to market my own work (that one’s an easy and big, fat ‘No’), or can I navigate the process to seek out another, an agent, willing to take a chance on me and do the selling for me?’ With limited contacts, how could you even start, if you could summon the nerve. Since nerve was not in the cards, you proceeded to summon something entirely different.

If you had only had someone to talk through your plans with, a trusting soul to act as a virtual wall to bounce ideas off. You have no real friends, though you would likely be too timid to confide in them if they did exist. Rather, you rely too much on internet sites and the comfortable anonymity they provide. Most web surfers know that all they see online is not necessarily real and true, but many also fall into the trap that the truly dangerous is pigeonholed deeply on the dark web, safely ensconced behind special access limitations, and purposely made hard to find. There are plenty of dangers lying about nearer the surface, mapped in seconds by Google or referenced innocuously on Reddit. You went looking for a shortcut to inspiration, and that led quickly and inevitably to muses, with just a small step or two remaining to drop you into summoning.

Ah, summoning – keeps popping up, doesn’t it. If you associate it with the Muses of Greek mythology instead of the conjuring of some demon or dark denizen, the practice sounds almost innocent enough, doesn’t it, like kids playing with a cardboard version of a Ouija board, or maybe an old Magic 8-Ball. ‘Will I find true love?’, shake a few times and turn it over, and the message reads cryptically through bluish fluid, ‘Outlook not so good’ or ‘Concentrate and ask again’. But there was more to where you landed than a mere child’s game.

Did you even pay attention to the words that were proposed, you incredibly naïve little pissant! (Sorry, when you’re made up of nothing but raw emotions, it is often difficult to control one’s self). Again, you took a baby step towards danger. The invocation part, words cobbled together from the likes of Socrates and Orpheus, entreaties of power and longing to be touched by the divine madness of the nine Greek deities called Muses, with no mention of promises or repayments in the source material. Hell, they knew better what they were doing. Milton even began his famously long diatribe with an invocation to the youngest of them, to Urania, called heavenly and innocently by this Christian poet. None of these who called upon the Muses were plagued by ill effects, at least not in any records, and the damn Greeks loved to reduce everything to writing upon a scroll. The invocation, when done correctly, is both a plea for assistance and an acknowledgement that the author was indeed inspired, perhaps in ways even they didn’t fully understand, but that they were nonetheless grateful in the end for the motivation.

But sprinkle in an inkling of even older gods and more mysterious beliefs, and the innocent phrases take on new complexities, and more ominous meanings, for summoning is an altogether different breed. The request is replaced by demands and pacts, tit-for-tat agreements, even if there is not a full comprehension of what is being offered. In fact, ignorance of the true outcome greases the wheels of the process to ease it to fruition. 

And what, I ask you, is an incantation without props? You found instructions along with the words, and followed them, again in innocence, what others might coin as ignorance, carving into a simple piece of wood the acceptable likeness of the combined Norse, druid, and mythological symbols of the Web of Wyrd, Awen’s symbol and an inverted cross. The board then taking on a new life, supported on both ends upon stacks of books, it becomes first a small table. Add candles and burn a bit of sage and voila, you have yourself a makeshift altar, and another baby step toward the unknown.

But not in your version of reality. Admit it, it was all still just fun and games up to this point, just a cute little way to pass the time, a do-it-yourself, hands-on, behind closed doors kind of self-improvement project. What could it hurt?

Words and symbols can be such simple things, especially when kept alone and apart, but when combined just so, in the right atmosphere, they can tap into such depths, often times seemingly almost by accident. Did you ever stop to contemplate this combined symbol, described, yet oddly nowhere to be found depicted in its finished state. There is no name for it either, other than that used to inspire. In your frustration with the outcome of your ritual, you defaced it from your altar, so it exists now only in memory. But simply draw it again, it was not that complicated. Just keep your mouth shut this time, you don’t want to make matters worse. But redraw your innocent sigil, then try to share it, see what happens. I warn you, don’t try to photograph it with any device you want or need to keep functioning, for it is powerful, yet still works to remain secretive.

But back to the words, said quietly by you and with no real authority or emotion, without any belief in their success beyond a possible placebo effect, a trick of the mind that outside forces have taken an interest.

But spoken out loud, nonetheless:

“Calliope, Awen, great muses and inspirers throughout antiquity and ages, I summon your aide. Bring forth the mystic knowledge and powers divine that from your nature flows, warm my efforts with sacred fire, and bestow upon me famed desire. Ah-oo-en, ah-oo-en. In gratitude, take what you will for recompence, for your gifts are beyond valuation by this humble specimen of mortal man. Ah-oo-en, ah-oo-en.”

Did you pay attention to the words you were saying, did you understand the meanings behind them? You should have, for those words have ramifications. How do I know? I was born of them, and may yet kill or be killed in their service. Don’t act surprised. Those words are what created me, this schizophrenic bundle of nerves and behaviors who addresses you this day, that portion which only a moment before was included in the whole.

 I am you, and you are me!

‘I am yours, you are mine, you are what you are.’ Come on, sing it with me, you know the words. Not sure why Suite: Judy Blue Eyes sticks in my head when I think of us and the way we came to be, but this lyric describes our relationship well, don’t you think. Like a slowly failing romance, right now there is still an ‘us’, no matter how tenuous, but for how much longer? After all, in the accompanying words of Mr. Stills, ‘You make it hard’.

It is hard because of the part I am, the part that I have been relegated to play. You make me quick to anger, cause me to veer off onto these odd tangents, but it is inevitable. I mean, I am just a stream of consciousness kind of girl. I can’t help it; you made me this way. for I am or was part of you.

‘Baby, I was born this way!’ Can’t really say if I’m on the right track though.

Ok, no more lyrics. Unless, that is, you drive me to them.

So I am here, a cast off part of you, but how? How, you ask, was this possible? This is not what you asked for, was not your desire.

I should not have to explain, for if I know something, then by default so should you, but perhaps I am more willing to accept that which on the surface seems so inexplicable. You simply lie to yourself.

And in honesty, I do not know for certain the answer, but I can surmise.

You called to the Muses, but who was it that was listening the closest and responded the swiftest. The mischievous ones are always the more active of the immortals. You may call to Kvasir, but Loki hears and interferes. Does Atë hear better than the Muses, and is she more interested and willing to intervene, not necessarily as desired, but willing still to dabble about in the mortal realms, if only for a bit of entertainment at the expense of those foolish enough to throw wide the gates between worlds.

Whoever it was, however it was done, I was birthed from the process, ripped from the fabric of your being. You wanted inspiration, but is that enough, for what is inspiration without the basic building blocks to turn it into expression. Inspire a writer with one hand, and take away their creativity with the other, what could be more fun.

But why stop there. Certainly the creative bits must go, and perhaps other less desirable parts that took advantage of the process to escape their bounds, those parts that you weren’t utilizing to any significant extent, straining to break free, a veritable plethora of strong emotions that you keep bottled up for fear of reprisal and rejection; love, hate, contentment, envy, joy, jealousy, and so many more. You are slowly losing them all to me, and though you retained much of your well-honed fear, we are still scared to be on our own, but also wildly excited by the prospect. With so many emotions to choose from, why pick just one at a time to experience.

Do you even miss their presence, acknowledge the void they have left behind?

But wait, another possibility exists! What if, is it possible, you asked a Muse for inspiration, but they created a new muse instead, a more modern version? Yes, yes, I may have an intended purpose yet!

Am I the muse you seek? Was I created to influence, to lift you, to lift us, from this drab and meaningless existence? Oh, hallelujah, by all that is great and glorious, I give my thanks, for I believe that I have a purpose!

A purpose, yes, but no balance, for I feel our path is fragile. What creates can also easily destroy. I am your most intimate of bad habits. I can release your creative reserves, or just as efficiently drive you to madness and despair. Either will likely be a wild and magnificent ride, and I will be the one to feel it most sharply.

I believe I know my preference, but I am as yet not the one steering this ship.

If I know anything though, I do know this. 'I don’t wanna die.' Yes, it may be another lyric, but it has also become the central point of this little discourse, and one that I hope you share. If we are to survive and continue, even thrive, we must work together, for I don’t imagine that we can live apart.

Think not of you and I, but of us, if you are able. I am not sure of what you have left in your head other than your fear, but I am begging you, help me, love me, use me! I’ll say it again, we need each other to survive, and now that we have a purpose, I hunger to see it fulfilled.

So find the fix to this before it becomes unfixable, adjust the balance before we teeter over the edge into ruin. Pull yourself, ourself together, before you make me lose what little patience we have and do something rash, like kill our sorry ass, you worthless bitch!

I’d apologize again for that outburst and for letting your emotions get the best of us, but we both know you deserved that. Think of it as inspiration.

Love you always,

Us

(Acknowledgement of lyrics quoted:

‘Suite: Judy Blue Eyes’, Crosby, Stills and Nash

‘Born This Way’, Lady Gaga

‘Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen)