The Muses and a 7:1 Ratio

"For every good poem, there are seven bad ones."

This one bit of advice from Creative Writing class has stuck with me for a while. I tend to write poems en masse, spilling out stray thoughts onto a page for a few hours at a time. Usually, I don't read them again until much later, but when I do, almost every single one has something wrong with it. One or two seem to show some promise, so I reluctantly share them via the Unique projection screen.  It is then that my worst fears or my wildest dreams are confirmed. I have been met with everything from scathing remarks (it's all more dramatic when people are criticizing your own work) to gushing praise. The praise usually is for a poem that I was either nervous about or disliked -- I can never quite figure out the critics.

The seven bad poems can sometimes become fourteen, or on certain fortuitous occasions, three. They may tumble out all at once, or take on a slow, steady gallop. More often than not, I sit idly, twirling my pencil or twiddling my thumb. I am, albeit foolishly, entertaining the hope that the Muses may take some pity on me.  Should they be late, there's always the vapid time-sucking abyss known as the internet. Or should I decide to be more productive, there's always homework.  Some of my best poems come to me while I'm churning out essays or math problems.  For some reason, the busier I am, the better my writing becomes.  If I was the subject of a nature documentary, this would be the time the narrator announces, "The writer thrives under pressure, reaching towards the sun despite the spiraling chaos outside her doorstep."

The Muses tend to pay me a visit right when I'm about to fall asleep. In a crazed frenzy, I attempt to ingrain the idea into my brain,  convincing myself that I will write it down first thing in the morning.  The second I wake up, I find that it has scurried away. Disappointed, I  spend the rest of the day shifting through the cluttered corners of my mind for an answer.  A few hours, days, or even weeks later, I will finally find an inkling of the original idea. At this point, I have probably come up with ten other better ones -- more than enough to satisfy the beautiful seven-to-one ratio of poetry creation.

The Plight of the Musically Fickle

She surveys the room carefully before turning the computer and finding the headphone jack. Her fingers become red from the pressure of plugging the headphones in and out. She must be absolutely sure no sound escapes the metal walls. She shirks from the discussion of musical artists, nodding emptily at the preferences of her friends. No one can know, she has told herself countless times.  And so she lives a life of personal espionage, forever closing computer windows and muting speakers.

I haven't known you all for very long, technically speaking.  And yet, the thin veil of relative detachment afforded by the internet has granted me the ability to share this with you.

My music taste is varied at best, fickle at worst. I am the kind of person that will devote herself to one song for a solid week, and never listen to it again. If I happen to encounter it again, I will likely be writhing in pain, utterly embarrassed at my poor judgment. Of my musical phases, there are many that I would rather forget (most of them concentrated in the murkiness that comprised  the latter half of elementary school and middle school). I am not quite comfortable enough to detail them here-- let's save that for never.

Perhaps my fickleness isn't as bad as I make it out to be. I can safely say that I have become (somewhat) more culturally aware due to my chronic tune-sampling tendencies. Eclectic would be

a nice way to put it, but in all honesty, I'm not quite sure how to describe it.

A few of the bands I have added to my ever-growing list over the past year or so include Daughter, Florence and the Machine, and The Hush Sound.   At the moment, I have become enamored with a band called Metric, and have been listening to a few songs of  theirs nonstop for the past two weeks. Like most of the artists I encounter in my strange trek through the music world, they are a little old, but still active.  I cannot claim to adore their entire repertoire, since I have only listened to five songs, give or take. My favorites, as of 5:37 p.m. on Saturday, happen to be "Sick Muse" and "Black Sheep." I would post a link to them here, but I will leave you instead with a warning: listen at your own peril.