Muse Musings

Sing, O Muse, of the concept of muses in general and specific people who are widely recognized as muses.

I was listening to “Layla” today by Derek & The Dominos and it sent me down a rabbit hole of famous muses. The song is written about Pattie Boyd, an English model and photographer who, at the time of the song’s release, was married to George Harrison. Boyd and Harrison met on the set of A Hard Day’s Night in 1964 and soon after began a relationship after Harrison took her to a gentleman’s club. Now, don’t make the mistake I did by not researching further and start taking all of your first dates to a gentleman’s club. It’s a different kind of a establishment than we understand nowadays. It was a private social club for men of high standing, not a dimly lit room full of dudes on bachelor parties, middle aged men in sweatpants, and a man about to get a negative review in a Facebook group after insisting “it will be a fun way to get to know each other.” Harrison would go on to write “I Need You” “Something” and “For You Blue” for The Beatles which were interpreted be about Boyd, Harrison would deny "Something” being about her, but Boyd claimed in her autobiography that she was told otherwise. Eric Clapton would write “Layla” about his unrequited love for Boyd four years before Harrison and Boyd would split. In the meantime, Harrison and Boyd would engage in a infidelitous spouse swap with future The Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood and his wife Krissy that was not agreed upon beforehand. Leading Wood to write two song about Boyd “Mystifies Me” and “Breathe on Me” which were released around the time Harrison released “So Sad” and Harrison and Boyd separated, the final straw being that Harrison had an affair with Ringo Starr’s wife Maureen. All of the men mentioned up to this point are friends by the way and Woods also claimed that Krissy was involved with Clapton, so like, what the fuck is going on here? Eventually, Clapton and Boyd get together and he writes “Wonderful Tonight” then she leaves him and he writes “She’s Waiting” and the year their divorce is finalized he releases “Old Love” on his album Journeyman that features George Harrison. There are other songs about Boyd I’m sure but those are the highlights and this blog is not about Pattie Boyd, but I wanted to talk about her first to establish the conclusion that I’ve come to about muses. Being a muse sucks. All of this is horrible. I don’t understand why everyone who writes about Pattie Boyd being a legendary rock muse says it like any of this is ok. Alan Light wrote in his article "A Guitar God’s Memories, Demons, and All” in The New York Times that this love-triangle was “one of the most mythical entanglements in rock’n’roll history.” I’m sorry? What the fuck about emotional and physical abuse, alcoholism, drug addiction, and multiple strings of infidelities is worthy of such flowery language? But while we’re at it, lets talk about myths shall we?

Calliope in Greek mythology is considered Chief of all Muses she is believed to be Homer’s muse and is invoked by name by Virgil and Dante Alighieri. She presides over eloquence and epic poetry so it makes sense why they would want to invoke her name. But why do they invoke her name? What purpose does it serve? Muses were considered the sources of knowledge of the arts, literature and science. In Classical times, the nine recognized muses were responsible for epic poetry, history, mime, music, chorus and dance, lyric poetry (erotic) and mimic, tragedy, comedy, and astronomy. When Homer writes “Sing, O Muse, of the rage of Achilles” he is asking for the assistance of Calliope to inspire his writing and to inspire through his writing. This was a healthy muse-artist relationship because Homer couldn’t then go out and cheat on her. Calliope had a son Orpheus, the story of Orpheus and Eurydice is one of the most well known Greek myths. It is represented in my favorite video game of all time Hades, but it is slightly misinterpreted and shows how our understanding of the term “muse” as a society has changed. If you aren’t familiar with the myth, Orpheus is a musician and he marries a nymph Eurydice, Eurydice gets bitten by a snake and dies. Orpheus is sad and sings a sad song that all the people of earth and the gods can hear. Orpheus goes down to Hades (the place) and asks Hades (the god) and Persephone if he can bring Eurydice back. They say yes because contrary to what the Disney corporation will tell you, Hades was a pretty cool guy, but he had to lead her out of the underworld without looking back at her. Orpheus made it 99% of the way and right as he was at the exit, he considered that he may have been bamboozled and lost faith that she was behind him and turned around. He saw that Eurydice was there and then she disappeared back into the depths of Hades and you’re not allowed to go into Hades twice while living so she was stuck there and it was all his fault. The game Hades takes place a long time after and it is one of the missions of the main character Zagreus to reunite the two. Eurydice mentions to Zagreus that Orpheus used to always call her his muse. That isn’t true, there is no mention in the original texts of Virgil and Ovid that Orpheus called Eurydice his muse because he wouldn’t, that’s not how they understood muses at the time. Hades is a pretty mythologically accurate game, so why would they include that dialogue? I think there are two reasons, one is that narratively it’s easier to understand her as a muse in the modern sense, and another is because Orpheus screwed her over and subliminally they associated being screwed over by a flawed artist with being a muse.

So what exactly is our modern understanding of what a muse is? Well, I think Julia Fox said it best. Nobody really knows but for some reason it is something that people want to be and take pride in. Fox mentions Van Gogh in her explanation, if you were to look into who s generally considered his muse, you will find that the common opinion is his brother Theo and the city of Arles, which I’m drawing the line at cities. It seems the definition has expanded to anyone or anything that an artist has taken inspiration from or has depicted. The argument for Theo Van Gogh being Vincent’s Muse was because they have recovered letters of Theo showing emotional support to his brother and sometimes financial support, and a self portrait of Vincent has been retroactively considered a portrait of his brother. Frida Kahlo broke all the rules and said “fuck it, I’m my own muse” -not a direct quote. Kahlo said she was her own muse because she is the subject she knows best and a subject she wants to know better. Her work is famous for depicting herself authentically. Her self portraits were representations of how she was experiencing her chronic pain from a condition she was born with and an accident she was involved in on a school bus, the physical and emotional pain of her miscarriages. Her work also explored the questions she had and was trying to understand regarding Mexican identity, traditional gender roles, and sexuality. Frida Kahlo was asking the same thing of herself as a muse as the Greeks were asking the muses, for knowledge. In all of the depictions of herself Kahlo was interrogating her own nature trying to find the truth in who she was and what role she had in the world, the truth of which she was also trying to learn. On some basic level all of art is attempting to express some form of truth. Homer believed Calliope had it, that’s why he asked for her help, and Kahlo thought that if she looked at herself hard enough she would be able to find it. When you don’t have a spiritual being to look to, you look to people. Josh Safdie found truth in Julia Fox for Uncut Jaams. It’s appealing to be considered something inspiring, something beautiful, something containing truth. It makes you feel special. If someone is using you to empower their artistic expression you ought to be treated with the respect. But that doesn’t happen all the time, especially if you’re involved with a British musician in the 60s and 70s because holy shit what assholes they all were. It makes me sad. Sad that people are mistreated in general yes but also because they had something beautiful. It’s nice to have someone in your life that inspires you and it’s nice to have someone in your life that makes you feel seen and appreciated. That should be cherished.