Muse

Who is it that reads, listens, watches? Who does one write for, read for, draw for? The 'ideal reader' is held in the head, sometimes a real reader, someone known. Other times, a hypothetical construct, what some theorists call the 'competent reader' or 'informed reader'. More appealing is the idea of a muse. I move between muses in the writing, drawing, bringing forth, carrying a sense of trying to connect with this or that person. It is a means of bypassing the vast audience beyond, that which is fickle, running on fashion, unguessable. I was therefore transfixed by Max Gimblett's interview on the radio yesterday. Moved in many ways, even by the sound of his voice inflected with emotion, speaking truths, baring his soul. But most of all in the way he described his eschewing of audience, of working to something internal, perhaps a kind of inner muse. Unlike Damien Hirst, for example, whom Gimblett described as a fairly good sculptor, but not much else. An implied sense that Hirst and his ilk merely serve up fodder for the masses. And yet, as I turn back to my own muse, who is a hybrid, part constructed 'ideal' reader, and part real person, I wonder about the danger of this too, since so much rests upon this pact, one that the muse themself is not even aware of entering, perhaps.

Maxwell Gimblett, 2007, The Hermetic Museum