“Look at this from The Muse’s point of view, that somehow in you, there’s an underground river flowing... The Muse has got all this stuff, all these papers in front of her, and she’s saying ‘I’m giving these to you.’
So, the fact that you’re energized by [the work] and when you don’t do it, you’re being depleted, that sort of gives a picture of reality where you’re a receptor of a flow of energy, coming from somewhere else.
And it’s not just random energy; it’s a world, a story, a universe, a cosmos, that you or I, or anybody, we can’t know what it means, and in some ways it can feel self-indulgent, but it isn’t. In fact, it’s the most important thing.
Everything we learn in this commercial world says the opposite: ‘you should be seriously working on [fill in the blank]’ when, in fact what you’re working on [from The Muse] is probably the most important thing. And that’s true for everybody.
If we don’t do it, that underground river is gonna mess us up one way or another, if we don’t let it flow.” -Steven Pressfield (lightly edited for clarity)
“As you heal yourself, you heal the world around you.” -Nicole LePera
I was not quite 14 years old. It was one of those days where the clouds were high in the sky and it was a bright gray, the kind of day that passes for sunny in the Pacific Northwest. The light lifted the air around me and I felt brightened, inspired. Combined with the quiet comfort of my seat and the focus I had on the page, I found myself in a deeply meditative place.
I’ll never forget this line I scribbled in my journal: “I want to be a healer but I need to heal first.” (I was only half right; as we strive to heal others, we benefit deeply from the energy that passes through us.) But this is the first vivid memory I have of wanting to use my voice in service to others. I mean that quiet, authentic, deep-inside voice that whispers from beneath our inner critic, our incessant anxious chatter. That voice that whispers “yes” in the moments where our actions are aligned with our deepest purpose, what Steven Pressfield calls "The Muse.”
I started writing regularly around that time, soon expanding to writing lyrics and finishing my first songs. Two things happened soon after that.
First, people that enjoyed my music started asking me when I was going to make an album. “Soon,” I would say, and I really believed it; I felt that whispered “yes.”
But then the second thing happened: I shared my songs with some people whose opinions I really cared about and they didn’t like them. They were “too depressing”, “not my style”, etc, and my inner critic talked me out of making an album. I would do it someday, I just needed to get better at writing songs.
The cycle repeated itself for another year, then five. I decided not to go to music school because I didn’t know if being a professional musician was really “for me.” I had a teaching gig I really liked already, why give that up? The truth was, I was scared shitless that I would fail, that I wasn’t good enough to make it.
Five years became ten.
I wrote songs every now and then, even played them a few times for others. Again, I would hear “I love your music! When are you going to make an album?”
“Soon.” Soon.
I wrote literally hundreds of pieces of music, recorded them, filed them away unshared. I told myself, “Music is a young person’s world and it’s too late for me; I’m an adult now. I have a great job and I love what I do.”
Ten years became fifteen.
Songs started coming to me in my dreams, fully formed. At 3:00am, I would rise in half-sleep, already singing the lyrics, and go to my guitar, capturing a recording in the voice memos app on my phone.
Deep songs. Real songs. True songs.
Like the hawk, I soared over mountains, finding peace in the emptiness of wild landscapes. I felt the wind in my wings and knew the vast expanse of the heavens. I was the moon, the hummingbird, the sun rising over dew-laden meadows. I knew the beauty of nature and its power to heal us, its power to connect us to who we truly are.
At 7:00am, though, the pressures of adulthood are very real. The alarm clock and the gray of a weekday morning pushed me to forgetting again, at least for a little while.
Fifteen years become twenty.
I find an ironic equilibrium in my work, encouraging young people to find their creative voices and chase their musical dreams. I’m quite successful, thank you very much. I’ve figured this whole adult-hood thing out. Sure, it takes a lot of work hours, a lot of television, and too much alcohol, to cover up my quiet voice. But surely that ship has sailed. Right?
Turns out that voice doesn’t ever shut up, damnit. In fact, I’m sure it’s louder now. I have these moments of (unwelcome?) creativity breaking through, overwhelming me with emotion. I have to take sick days because I can’t find my way back to my adult self. And songs come like thunderstorms, like floods.
Deep songs. Real songs. True songs.
I sit in oneness with the universe around me, connected with all living and moving things, riding the waves moment by moment, deeply in love with the world.
But now it’s Thursday and I need to get back to work on important stuff.
Twenty years creep toward twenty five.
There are two parts of me waging war inside, and it’s increasingly clear which one needs to win. I am falling apart. I feel a deep, clinging dread when I pull into the office parking lot. I do my work at the coffee shop around the corner when I can. I have to get out of this place. Someday.
My dad used to say “If the whole world stopped for a week and all of us got together and talked about how we wanted to start up again, is there any way we would decide that this is the best way?” In March, 2020, that’s exactly what happened.
It took a global pandemic for me to start listening again.
“…that underground river is gonna mess us up one way or another, if we don’t let it flow.”
This isn’t about finding your voice. It’s not. You know it already.
This is about letting it out. This is about being brave enough to do the thing you’ve known you wanted, no, needed, since you were young. And it’s about realizing that, if you don’t, it’s only a matter of time before all the distractions of work, sex, alcohol, tv, social media, and junk food won’t be able to push down that flood of energy inside of you.
The dam will break, and it will sweep you away.
Or you can start to listen to what’s inside, and you can make a little space in your life to let it out. You can manage the flow and work to channel it into something you can share. Something Real. Something Deep. Something True.
Something of Meaning.
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