My Muse awesomeart suggested I join The Crusade for this round of the Green Pepper Press Street Team on the theme of "Who or What Is Your Muse?" and I thought, well why not?
I always get stuck when people ask me who my muse is... because its not a 'who' but a 'what'-and terribly hard to pin down. It is like the elusive quality I look for in the music I love-a 'tonality'-not quite an emotion but more an underlying texture for life. The closest I get is 'the grandeur of melancholy'- a feeling born of a deep love of the world tinged with a profound sadness yet also a sort of happy elatedness. All at the same time. Its that moment when a piece of music, generally in a minor cord, slowly builds and swells majestically and then fades or almost breaks. That's my muse, my tonality. The joyful hope of the hurt.
Usually melancholy is just defined as low spirits, but I feel its more than that-the best definition I have read suggests it is a 'thoughtful sadness', but I really think it has to have some secret hope or joy buried within it, a brokenness that yearns to be mended, to be true melancholy rather than simple sadness. Interviewed about his recent album of lute music 'Songs from the Labyrinth' Sting talked about melancholy in this light, and I find I agree with him - it seems true melancholy is easy to identify when its there, but hard to pin down and describe because it is a complex emotion. Music and art often describe it best. Perhaps there should be some sort of 'melancholy rating' for my artwork? A scale of 1-10 for both sadness and joy, with the final amount of melancholy being a synthesis of the two?
Much of my artwork is buried back across various pages of my journal here, so I thought that for anyone willing to have a go at applying the 'melancholy rating' to my work might find a few quick links handy ;)
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hybridartifacts) wrote,
