Speaking of bathes and creative inspiration, most of my creative
thinking is done in the bathtub, or happens to strike during the night.
Like I mentioned earlier this week, I keep a tablet and pencil on my
nightstand for any sleepy inspirations I might need to scribble down
in the dark.
Lately, in my delicious tub soaks, I've noticed a silhouette in the wax
of my candle. I know, I know, you're thinking I've been soaking a tad
too long. No, she's
not the Virgin Mary, but, I like to think of her as
my muse, perhaps the spirit of a Cherokee fore mother there to
comfort and inspire me. She kinda looks like Whoopi Goldberg, too.
Anyway, last night, I was revisiting Ken Burn's
The Civil War, and
the charming
Shelby Foote was telling about the circumstances of
Julia Ward Howe's (she was a huge activist for women's suffrage, by
the way) inspiration to pen the famous words to "
The Battle Hymn of the Republic."
Of the writing of the lyrics, Howe remembers, "I went to bed that
night as usual, and slept, according to my wont, quite soundly. I
awoke in the gray of the morning twilight; and as I lay waiting for
the dawn, the long lines of the desired poem began to twine
themselves in my mind. Having thought out all the stanzas, I said to
myself,
I must get up and write these verses down, lest I fall asleep again and forget them. So, with a sudden effort, I sprang out of bed,
and found in the dimness an old stump of a pen which I remembered
to have used the day before. I scrawled the verses almost without
looking at the paper."
So, always listen to your muse. And keep a pen and paper handy.
