back to the muse(um)

If anyone remembers that dull period last year after my red hair faded to a mousy brown, you can blame one of my muses, Jenny Lewis.  Lately I've been obsessed with a couple Rilo Kiley albums (again), but I must admit I haven't heard Acid Tongue yet (and I'll just go ahead and blame Bambino for that one, too, even though I'm not sure I ever remembered to ask for it).  When the lovely Jenny sings, "Any asshole can open up a museum, / Put all the things he loves on display so everyone can 'em," I am always reminded of my thesis (and now perhaps the blog below--see the reference to Ullman and Warhol) and the muddled ideas I'm still exploring about the connections between the MUSE and the MUSEUM.  

To summarize very poorly, one section of my thesis muses (haha) about the woman's role in art (as inspiration, closer to divine creation than man, but still incapable of the act of creation--so angelic, so much too good for "work" that work is impossible) and a coinciding fear (and contradictory wish) of being mummified--voiceless, stuffed, frozen, worshipped, a fear also experienced by displaced and revered cultures so that now I wonder if contemporary woman--if we can be considered a culture all our own intermingled with the culture of man--has experienced a diaspora that makes our comm-unity all the more impossible and precious at the same. 

Since the completion of said thesis, I have read Francine Prose's The Lives of the Muses and, just today, an article about Ruth Butler's new book Hidden in the Shadow of the Master: The Model-Wives of Cézanne, Monet and Rodin.  Does the subject of the muse and the museum intrigue me for self-destructive reasons?  On which side do I fancy myself? Do I imagine I am the man, Dali, Johnson, Nietzsche, drawing on my muses (both masculine and feminine--Jenny, Jackie, and on and on, and my real-life partners and friends), sucking them dry like meat from a crab leg?  Do I imagine I am a model, fascinating subject, inspiration to the few poet-seers with whom I have engaged?  Or do I, even more dangerous, pretend I am that odd combination, artist-without-muse, the successful woman poet, like Sylvia, feeding on myself like the ouroboros?  Although it's meant to be life-affirming, my Poe-loving brain cannot help but conjure up a more grizzly image.  Perhaps I only fancy that I am a Hawthorne (hawthorn even), frequently indulging in Emersonian optimism, but never failing to collapse onto the dark side--to de-press into meaninglessness.

There's an important connection, also, between the past (the museum) and the future (poetry as prophecy), but somehow the present prevents me from seeing either.