For a start my muse is a guy. And he’s black.
I’ve never seen my muse. Not in the physical sense, like I’m sitting here in my bedroom, typing away. I’ve never heard him speak, like I can hear the endless din of the rest of my house. But I’ve heard him and seen him in the same way I see and hear everything I write. I sense him in the way that I try desperately to block out the world around me and write.
Beyond doubt and distraction, that’s where I see my muse. It’s where I see the world that I write about.
It’s some ungodly hour of the morning in the dim lit apartment. The window is open, and the long drapes, once white but now stained with age drift in the cool night air. I’m sitting at a desk that overlooks Irving’s Halstead Park, through one of the many other windows of the apartment. Outside it is almost as dim as it is in here, the only light I’ve got around to turning on is the desk lamp.
Irving is one of the slightly nicer districts of Bradford, a true shithole of a city. It’s a little bit Los Angeles, part New York and splash of Auckland. People ask me where in the United States it is. I think at last count it was somewhere on the East coast.
I don’t question my fans. They are fans that have me looking something a little like the picture on one of my old websites. I’m tall, athletic, light skinned brotha, expressive eyes peering out from under the rim of my floppy black Kangol. A well kept, short stache contrasts dark against the light of my skin. My thick nose betrays my heritage. I look mysterious. I guess I look like a writer.
I’ve got a Polaroid of what I look like on my desk along with countless others. They record what I see, snapshots of rich life that some might say don’t exist. They sit scattered beside the typewriter that I bang out my stories on. It’s the sort of typewriter I learnt to type on, one that didn’t have a backspace, one where you couldn’t disguise your mistakes.
When I’m writing, really writing, this is where I am. Sometimes though, I'm here even when I'm not writing, watching people and considering my next words. I sit here trying to block out a world that’s not Bradford, where I’m not the brotha in the Polaroid, and I try to focus on the words.
Occasionally, like now, my muse is there. Keeping me going.
Like I said, he’s a guy, and he’s black. My impressions of him are not always as fixed as what I see around me, not physically at least. Those eyes are distracting, pale green against skin like smooth peanut butter. And like me, he’s dressed black, like the shadows that linger in this old dusty apartment. Except he looks dressed for the clubs, he always is. He looks like he has better places to be than hanging out in this place. Those tight black curls crown atop his head, with a luster that looks well kept.
"Why aren’t you writing?" he asks me, because again, I’m sitting back in this chair that isn’t even a desk chair. The apartment is quiet other than the sounds of the city outside. It’s not filled with the sounds of those lettered hammers, banging away at the page.
"I’ve got a headache."
"You work for eight hours a day and come home and write," he says, lingering near the desk. "You always have a headache. Why aren’t you writing?"
I draw a deep breath, rubbing at my eyes. This place reminds me of Interview with the Vampire, and my muse is my own personal Lestat. None of Rice’s vampires were ever this black, though.
"I’m not sure this story is even worth writing, let alone reading," I protest, motioning towards the stack of papers next to the typewriter. They are almost organized in a stack, at least.
"Fuck that," my muse says, casually picking up a page or two and looking them over. "You know the deal. Three pages every Friday. I don’t get them and there’s hell to pay."
Did a writer ever sell his soul to his muse? I stroke at my slight stache, and ponder it as he looks over the pages. My muse dumps them back down on what passes for my progress so far. His handsome features don’t give anything of what he’s thinking, of course.
"Bro, you’ll get them," I say, honestly. "I’m just taking a little break."
"I don’t want to hear your excuses, because you got countless excuses for not writing. And I’ve heard them all," he has, and he spits them back at me like weapons. "You're too tired. You don’t think the plots worth reading. You don’t know what to do with your shit when you’ve finished with it. Your too lazy. You want a break. Playstation is more interesting."
I give him something of a look that makes me look like a schoolchild under the tirade of headmaster. I slouch in my seat. Ain’t no headmaster I ever seen that looked like this smooth thug. And thuggish is how he lays it down, cutting through my every excuse.
"It’s not like that," I reply, and this time it’s an honest attempt to explain myself. "Sometimes I feel like writing, I know I want to write. But then I get these ideas in my head. I think of everything else that I could be creating ... I could be programming. You know I could get out a game or two. You know how cool it is to make code work? I mean really work. It’s like solving a puzzle!"
He doesn’t want to hear it, and those pale green eyes are dangerous to behold, "Fuck your programming, and fuck all the other things you want to do. Your black ass is gonna be a writer. And that’s all there is to it."
"I don’t have to write," I say with a slight, smooth smile. I like the idea of toying with him, but part of me knows that I mean it. "I can just live life without having to prove anything to myself, or anyone else. I don’t have to be famous."
My muses response is unexpected, and it’s sudden, like a viper striking. I hear the sound of shattering glass and the desk lamp catches sharp glints off the broken bottle he’s now holding in his hand. I recoil.
"If you give up on me!" he shouts, brandishing that broken bottle at me, and I know he means to use it. "I swear to god, I’ll make you pay!"
I fall silent, mostly because I’m stunned, but partly because I don’t know what to say to that. I see the fury in his eyes, and the tempered rage built up in his body. I see the light still sparkling off that broken bottle. It’s a sight as truly vivid and real as any other I’ve seen on the hard streets of Bradford. We stay there in that harsh silence, muse and writer, trapped in this truly twisted, symboliotic affinity.
My muse and I have a strange relationship. Oh yes we do ...
"I’m joking," I admit, but that’s almost as dangerous as saying it in the first place. "I do want to be a writer. It’s not like I have much of a choice ..."
Hearing this placates my muse, and he lowers that broken bottle, dumping what remains in the wastepaper basket beside the desk. It’s true that I don’t have much of a choice. My muse thinks it’s because of him, I expect, but that’s only part of the reason. The more time I spend in this place, away from the house full of people and noise that does its best to distract me, the more I think about it. I don’t have a choice in the matter, I have to write. Every passing day convinces me of that more and more. Like my ancestors, I’m a storyteller.
"No, you don’t have a choice," my muse echo’s my inner thoughts, straightening his clothing with the attention of someone who dresses to impress. "So get your fucking ass back to writing. I want my three pages ..."
"Where are you going?"
"You don’t have to worry about that," he says. "There’s only one thing you have to worry about." He doesn’t have to tell me, we both know.
I pull the page out of the typewriter and load in another. With only a few moments pondering on what I’ve written, the ideas start to flow again. My muse forces me to write, and the ideas come. I’ve forgotten he’s there as the room starts to fill with the sound of metal hitting paper, quick rapid fire. He’s done his job, yet again.
My fingers flow and word moves to paper in the formation of image and sound. I start to write with a passion that shuts out everything else. And deep inside, that thing that makes me realize that I have to write fuels me with a power. It’s almost spiritual. And I don’t question it. It’s beyond this place I’ve created inside my head. It’s beyond that which has created my muse in physical form.
Just for then, nothing else exists, and I just write. And they watch on and smile.
|