I have long despised artists’ chatter about muses—“voices”
that speak to them and enable a vision, the source of which
they could not otherwise name. I thought of muses as
inventions to protect one’s insight, to avoid questions like
“Where do your ideas come from?” Or to escape inquiry
into the fuzzy area between autobiography and fiction. I
regarded the “mystery” of creativity as a shield erected by
artists to avoid articulating, analyzing, or even knowing the
details of their creative process—for fear it would fade
away.