Creative Cogitation

Do you have a muse?  Is it some­how sep­a­rate from you or part of you?

I fre­quently talk about parts of me as though they are some­how sep­a­rate crea­tures from me.

I have Lit­tle Retrieval Dude, a small gnome-like crea­ture for­ever bound to search­ing the dusty stacks that are the vast library of knowl­edge and trivia inside my head.  Some­times Lit­tle Retrieval Dude is on the ball and gets me the answer imme­di­ately. Some­times he tells me he’ll get back to me later, and he does; I will blurt out this ran­dom answer min­utes, hours or days after the fact.  I actu­ally visu­al­ize him resid­ing in this giant cylin­dri­cal place, with sto­ries and sto­ries of books; my lit­tle gnome end­lessly climbs stairs and lad­ders to get at the infor­ma­tion then reveals it to me in my mind’s eye-while simul­ta­ne­ously oper­at­ing my mouth.  (more…)