The last two days I’ve been stuck indoors with a heavy cold and a raised temperature. Not even tasting the fresh air outside, and my head thickly congested, I’m unable to activate that part of the brain that’s a spokesman for the soul, but I thought I might just start anyhow, and see if in half an hour the Muse might be sufficiently invoked to lend a hand in publishing something.
O muse, o alto ingegno, or m’aiutate;
o mente che scrivesti ciò ch’io vidi,
qui si parrà la tua nobilitate.
O Muses, O high genius, now assist me!
o memory, that didst write down what I saw,
here thy nobility shall be manifest! [Dante, Inferno, Canto II]
Reading and writing are important, especially writing because it is the window to our own soul—when not stuffed up with a cold of course. Wikipedia gives examples of poets invoking the Muse: Homer, Virgil, Catullus, Dante, Milton, Shakespeare, Chaucer. How many of them actually believed that their inspiration actually came from a feminine being named Clio, Melpomene or Calliope? Enough, we can leave out the names of the other six.
I’m not sure how to answer my own rhetorical question, for inspiration comes from somewhere that can only be referred to indirectly, with metaphor. It is brought up from a deep well, or it is forged from the heat in a furnace; or it is a Muse providing assistance.
It’s that word “belief” that causes the trouble; as if each one of us is prepared to enter the witness-box at any time, take the book in our right hand, and swear by Almighty God that the evidence we shall give is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth: “so help me God”. For God helps us tell truth, as the Muse helps us with poetic inspiration, at any rate will help Marc now that he’s announced to the whole world: “I have started it.” For there is something sacred about this creative endeavour, and I wonder how many of the millions of born-again scribblers and bloggers and emailers and published authors give thanks to the parts of their brain which connect them to their Muse, and more especially to the Muse herself. And if they don’t glimpse their soul through writing, then give thanks to the guardian angel who fixes chance encounters.
I wrote in a recent post Beginnings about eavesdropping the conversation of two boys on a bus. The other day I arrived at the same bus stop for the same ride back into town and found there a young woman anxiously examining the timetable. I won’t bore you with the full details of our conversation—the selective exchange of life-stories that seem to happen when I bump into strangers—so suffice to say she was a committed Christian on her way to a retreat. So at some point I admitted to having been brought up in the Church of England, attending services twice on Sundays 
and yet never believing that Christ died for me, or that he was Lord. Despite this, I said, I find myself somewhat drawn to the C of E in my declining years, for it rounds off my life somehow, and since I don’t even care about belief any more, I can just go along for the ride, enjoying the hymns, the Book of Common Prayer, the ancient buildings, the fellowship (though I’ll always be a Steppenwolf, at the edge of the congregation, slinking out hoping to remain unnoticed). I was banking on the traditional notion that the C of E is a “broad church”: anyone can join!
My diatribe provoked an arousal of the poor girl’s evangelistic instincts, as if I were a lost sheep who had just happened to stray within her orbit; and she started to go about her Father’s business, invoking the Bible in admonishment to my waywardness. I told her I didn’t believe anything in the Bible and moreover, whilst solemnly respectful of the rituals and holy objects of religions, especially the Bible which I hold in superstitious regard as a magical object, I feel that beliefs are divisive and keep us in chains. She demurred at that of course, until I mentioned the Martyrs’ Memorial six miles away, where the names of seven Protestants are inscribed, who were burnt at the stake (by other Christians) for wanting to worship their way and interpret Holy Writ for themselves. As soon as I’d delivered this coup de grâce I repented, for it was too much force to use in a pleasant conversation between strangers on a bus. I need not have worried. It affected her like water on a duck’s back; and didn’t dissuade her from inviting me to her church one Sunday. We had reached town by this, and parted on good terms.
So I feel like making up a new slogan, a new motto hybridized from old ones:
Abandon belief, all ye who enter here!
You have nothing to lose but your chains.
a wayfarer’s notes 