My muse, a cross between Andy Warhol and Harpo Marx, arrives when an interesting new project is in the offing. He brings a ton of strange information and a couple of gallons of snake oil. I buy his shtick, whatever he's selling. I've learned not to look a gift horse in the mouth.
My muse has the best job in the world. He just has to fly in on those Hermes anklet wings of his, pluck a few notes on his lyre to get my attention (hey, it's a kalimba this time, what gives?) and deliver some gobbledygook: a pep talk, some motivational speech, a prophecy. He pitches himself somewhere between the Delphic oracle and a canny market researcher. Finally, after telling me how, according to his runes, the omens, and the gizzard of a buzzard, I'm ahead of some important demographic trends, he'll read me through a style sheet and reel off a list of tips, rules and guidelines. For the duration of the project these tips will be as binding as the decrees of my sovereign monarch or a post scriptum from Moses.
I've learned, no matter how mad his spiel sounds, to pay attention to my muse. His rules may not make me rich or even put me ahead of the pack, but they'll fire me up about working again, and help my jumble of ideas fall into some sort of pattern. Without my muse I'd just be another confessional singer songwriter strumming out feelings.