[UA] The Muse

[Stuart Anderson]

Nick Wedig wrote:

> This is one thing I meant to address and forgot to when writing it up.  I was trying to make the Muse be more the normal people who inspire art in the artist.

    When I was 9, my childhood friend and mentor, Lamar Gaspard, responded to my sullen demand to "stop getting me in trouble" by giving me some amazingly insightful instruction on the arts and sciences of deceit. He couldn't afford to lose my strategic counsel for his capers, but he knew I needed some means of protecting myself. That wasn't really what I had in mind, but I'm a quick study and the advice has served me well ever since. It' perhaps the number one influential factor in my having become a writer.
    Years later, my friend Dionne, during a heavy, horrible discussion of my divorce, without even looking up from the tea she was steeping, responded to my pathetic, "why did I ever marry her at all?" with a casual "so you would have something to write about." I felt better, slowly realizing how right she was. Then she dropped "why did you hang out with Ed Mills in high school, or that Shreefer in college?" I quickly began to wonder how many of my deepest, most profound relationships in life were based on my scouting for material. It's some bizarre permutation of codependency, I think. They don't have a 12-step group for writing--or any of the other arts that will destroy your life as surely as the more common addictions they are prepared
to fight.
    I think you've got a great Type, and there's probably more cool stuff to be salvaged from water this deep.
--Stu


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