Spirit, call it by whatever name one chooses, transcends our feeble efforts to fit it into a metaphor, from which we create a story, which we attempt to share with others by vibrating the air with throat muscles and lips. A gift to humanity.Īnd a word to this human conceit of bickering over what words we use to try and label something that transcends language. This sense of awe: how is possible that a bald primate could create something as reverential and transcendent as this piece of music or that one? It seemed to make more sense that Adagio for Strings or O Magnum Mysterium (or even something more modern like Caminando Por La Calle by the Gipsy Kings) existed somewhere “else,” and was midwifed into this place by a receptive composer (that is, one willing to listen to that muse or angel or spirit or deity). I’ve had some experience of deep meditation, hanging in a hammock in a forest and listening to a classical playlist (Elgar, Gorecki, Barber, Vivaldi). More on this prayer and its meaning in the coming weeks. “I carried this hanging with me,” Francesca wrote, “not knowing what it said till I met a university student who was studying Ancient Greek and she said it was the opening to the Odyssey. Francesca’s Prayer, translated and written out by her mother She told me that her mother had translated and written out the identical prayer, but in Greek, on brown mailing wrappers that Francesca taped together and kept on her wall as a source of connection to her mom. Make this tale live for us in all its many bearings, O Muse!Ī couple of days ago I exchanged emails with a lady named Francesca Mihok. Wherefore the sun god blotted out the day of their return. To destroy for meat the oxen of the most exalted Sun, Vain hope! For them! For his fellows he strove in vain.īy their own witlessness, they were cast aside. While his heart, through all the seafaring, The sport of their customs, good and bad, Of hallowed Troy, was made to stray grievously Who, after he had plundered the innermost citadel Sustain for me this song of the various-minded man, I say this prayer myself every morning before I sit down to work, just like Paul did. I can’t tell when I put them back together if I’m even getting them in the right order. Sometimes wind will blow the parts off my desk. You can see where the page has disintegrated into four parts. The typing is so faded it’s barely legible. My Prayer to the Muse, still hanging in there I still have that page that Paul banged out for me on his manual Remington atop the little formica tabletop in the back of his camper. “It’s the Invocation of the Muse, from the very beginning of Homer’s Odyssey, the T.E. Paul had a prayer that he said every morning before he started to work. That was all I was doing, day after day, week after week-trying to access the goddess. I had never taken such stuff seriously, but during those years when I was alone all day doing nothing but trying to learn to write, the idea of a mysterious force beyond the material plane began to make a lot of sense. Paul would turn me on to writers I’d never heard of, lecture me on the evils of the marketplace, and tell me stories about Steinbeck and Henry Miller, both of whom he knew.īut the best thing Paul did for me was he introduced me to the idea of the Muses. Learning from Paul was one of the great experiences of my young life. When I lived in Northern California years ago, I used to have coffee every morning with Paul in his camper, “Moby Dick.” I wrote in The War of Art about my old friend and mentor, Paul Rink.
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