Becoming Bewildering

the muse emerges

We drove through windy mountain roads after hiking in what felt like a private zen garden, and I found myself floating in memories of 26 — a haze of smoke, alcohol and terrible sex with men whose names I can’t remember. Back then, I thought I was free. I could do what I wanted (as long as I was good at it). Eat what I wanted (as long as I was intoxicated). Fuck who I wanted (whoever wanted me, as long as they were good to look at). 

The memories bothered me. 

You know, originally, bothered meant bewildered. That feeling of rubbing up against something you can’t quite fathom. How does this exist? How did this happen? You can’t explain it, yet there it is, plain as day.

Over the past few weeks I’ve become hotter, more bothered, peering through the pages of my life. Reflecting on choices made and not made. Noticing things done and not done. Desires realized and forgotten and realized again. Beliefs that got in the way. I’ve been thinking about how things might’ve been different if I hadn’t flushed ten years of my life down the drain. Where would I be? Did I really flush anything down the drain? Could I have done things differently?

No. I don’t think so. And it’s not worth agonizing over. I’m a firm believer that we are all doing the best we can with what we have. Which has far more to do with the actual forces our bodies can handle than ideas of “willpower” and “manifestation” that are thrown around like they mean something concrete. Like there’s any sort of form to them. Any hint of definition. “Mental toughness,” is an empty concept if you’re not open to emotion. Do, or do not — it all comes back to sensation. What’s the relationship? How does it feel to be alive, as this being, in this moment? Can the body, the psyche, handle what the spirit is offering?

In earlier years, I was entrenched — trapped in a place I didn’t want to be. My desire to get the fuck out of there propelled me into the physical world and out of the dreamland I’d lived in since as long as I could remember. A land of imagination, fleeting dreams, and perfect ease. A world in which I was always taken care of. Everything worked out perfectly. There were no consequences for my actions, at least, not that I was aware of.  Money was never an issue. Nor food, nor shelter, nor entertainment. What was the point of working? Truly, I didn’t know. 

What I know now is that it was too easy.

I was bored. 
Asleep. 
I didn’t know a thing about wanting. 

Now, more than anything, I want the challenge. 

I want to be of use. 
I want to be seen.
I want, period.

For years I’ve wondered, how do I share myself well? How do I say what I mean? How do I communicate the inner feeling? It tortures me, teases me into places I didn’t know I needed to go.

It makes me wonder, how do I organise this chaos into something that makes sense to any body other than me? How do I make the  ripple mean something?

This has nothing to do with fame. Rather, everything to do with connection —with this pulsing bass drum of my white hot heart. I want to amplify it. To love better. To feel more. To plug into something bigger than me. 

I want to breathe life into my dreams. 

Sometimes there is a voice in my head that tells me I’ve accomplished nothing. I know it’s not true, but I’m a perfectionist and nothing is ever exactly as it is in my imagination. Nothing is ever as perfect. 

original photograph by Erwin Blumenfeld

After a purple skyed stroll at dusk a few weeks ago, I had the sudden feeling that I could do anything I wanted, create anything I wanted. I felt the world as it is: wide open, spacious. And I trusted it.

 I felt what the word belief means, my heart beat, the process of becoming set into my body.

Through sobs of surprise and gratitude I told I told C (aka Luke)¹, “I feel like I can create anything I want to create. And I have never felt that before. I don’t even know how to explain it… I didn’t know that I didn’t believe I could make whatever I wanted to make. I always had this layer of doubt about everything. And then suddenly today…  It’s a big feeling. A huge feeling…”

He said, “Hey, so you see in you what I see in you.”

I sobbed for another hour, bewildered and believing.

How is it that we come to doubt our own voices? 

More than anything, I know I know things because I’ve experienced them. Who’s to question that? 

Hint: It starts with who you surround yourself with. The culture you’re embedded in. The influence. Your permeability.

Most people are sheep. Most people question creative genius. Most people question freedom. Most people question you if they, themselves, don’t believe they could do something just as great. It’s not that they couldn’t, if they let themselves want it, but that they are enslaved to the belief that they can’t.

It’s easier, in a way, to accept what the doubters say, because that means less work for you. But there’s a tipping point. If you choose to let desire in, acceptance by the sheep becomes a horror story. If you choose to let desire in, you have no choice but to belong to yourself, to become bothered, bewildered, by the friction of longing.

This space can be mysterious — wobbly, wiggly — like trying to see directly through a flame. For a while, I couldn’t tell what I was doing. If I was really doing anything. You know, something that would go from amorphous blob to body of beauty. I couldn’t see through to the other side; I didn’t know if it existed. Looking back, it’s not a surprise; how could I see when I was in the wiggling thick of it?

I remember years ago a mentor said something to me about not being able to see clearly in the middle of an experience, and I didn’t quite get it. Well that’s not quite true. I didn’t want to get it, because I wanted so badly to believe I did see and understand and know everything already. Desire is a bitch sometimes. I hated not knowing. But the fact is, I didn’t. And until I accepted that, I couldn’t learn anything. Not really. What I mean is, I couldn’t live any way other than the way I was living without curiosity. Without opening the floodgates to the mystery. Without wanting something different.

Desire makes more sense when you zoom out. It’s hard to know, sometimes, that your desire is misplaced. It’s hard to see there is another way — there is an open invitation — there is a choice.

The hardest thing, sometimes, is to realize you don’t have to let the guilt of wanting kill you. 

Lucifer says in hell, the door is always open. But nobody’s ever left. 

I left. 

Original illustration by Don Brautigam

When you leave hell, you start to see the fireworks differently.

Engulfed in flames, creating feels like INEEDTOGETEVERYTHINGDONERIGHTNOW

or else… 

I need to GET IT OUT OF ME.

If the door is open, where is all that pressure coming from? 

There is always a bigger picture, isn’t there? The fireworks are small-time stuff. They can be intense, yes. Exciting. HOT. Awe inspiring. But also frantic, flustered, panic inducing. We need the pressure sometimes, to give us momentum. But we also need to release. There is balance to everything. 

Isn’t fire mysterious? The wildly dancing orange tendrils that capture our attention, tracing back to the molten center — desire’s core — without which the dancing would never happen.

You can’t tame a wild thing, but you can go deeper within. You can rest there. 

Fire doesn’t burn itself.

God has always been interesting to me. A secret and not so secret relationship. A name for the unnamable thing. How do I explain seemingly divine inspiration? How do I explain that soul quenching feeling? I can’t, not really. I mean, I could get all scientific about it, talk facts, figures, power systems — and while that’s a good starting point, to the Muse, it’s not satisfying. 

What I want is awe inspiring. And maybe that’s what god means. Maybe bewilderment is all I need. Or maybe naming the experience — giving form, shape, space — heightens it. Maybe it helps me believe the unbelievable. 

Joseph Campbell asks, without myth, “can the psyche handle it?” The monstrous mystery. The miracle that is existence. He also says the problem with religion is that it takes myth literally, and that’s not the point. The point is to inspire awe.

Aha. 

Whatever you name it, it’s apparent that the human psyche needs a little structure to form a relationship with the force of power coursing through us. Good Orderly Direction. That’s what Julia Cameron calls it. C calls it building a foundation of strength based on your values. I call it many things, depending on what mood I’m in. Magic, mystery. One time, in a rather scientific moment, C said to me, “god is dead. Now the clit rules all.” 

The point is, it doesn’t matter how you define *it* as long as you define it for yourself. In my experience, any concept of god is best served as personal mythology. What’s your hero’s philosophy? What guides the force of your journey? How do you know which direction to go when anything — anything — is possible? What kind of life do you want to live? What do you want to bring into this world? 

What inspires your desire?

And what are you gonna do to become it?

Was this essay a big tease for what’s coming next to this space? Why, yes, yes it was. Not that I knew that at the beginning, when I was tracing tendrils back to the center.

Anyhow, let’s get on with it. Six months ago I planted a seed with the Creative Expansion Challenge. Since then, things have been growing within me, and baby i’m about to burst…

Welcome to the future home of Feed the Muse, a virtual studio. 

I don’t have all the details written out yet (don’t worry, this will get its own post) but I want to give you a little idea of what I’ve been working on. So, here’s what I have to tell you right now: Feed the Muse is coming to reflect you as the force of power you are while offering creative guidance, curious community, and endless sources of bewilderment. Because if I know anything, it’s this: creativity flourishes when it has something to rub up against. 

The studio will be a space to explore, reveal, and create through three main modalities. If you’ve been reading for a while, you know how important movement and physical connection are to the creative process. So movement will, of course, be part of our curriculum. We’ll also explore several modes of writing, and, this might be a surprise — self portraits — which I am overjoyed to share as they have been an integral part of my process ever since I got my first camera at 13. 

Because the Muse is always changing and becoming inspired by different experiences, and because the purpose here is to help you expand your creative depth and range, we’ll be guided by a well rounded, rotating menu of themes, archetypes, and artistic principles. I’ve found this the best way to create structure and focus without inhibiting the creative process. Rub up against the thing, chew it up, spit it out, recreate it, feel how you feel, refine the message… do whatever you want with it. As long as you’re involved in the doing process, that’s what matters. That’s where the becoming happens.

Alright. That’s enough for now. See ya on the other side, my friends. 

xx Faye

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For anyone following the situation with C’s gym, which was destroyed in Hurricane Helene, you can donate to the fund to rebuild here.

1. Mike Birbiglia has a running joke about calling his wife, whose name is Jen, Clo. There's no further explanation.