What is a Creative Muse?

Gera Clark
23 hours ago
3 min read

This, to me, is where the creative muse begins.

A creative muse, to me, is something that awakens curiosity — something that transports you, stirs something ancient or imaginative within you, and invites you into another way of seeing or being.

I don’t think this began for me later in life. I think I was always this way.

When I was five years old, if you asked me what I wanted to be, I would say: an archaeologist. I was fascinated by ancient worlds — Egyptian hieroglyphics, different alphabets, different realms. I remember standing in museums and, rather than just looking, I would feel myself stepping back in time. My imagination didn’t just observe — it entered.

There was a time I visited a mansion with my mother’s friend, who was a nun. The home had been inherited and was filled with extraordinary artifacts — Chinese vases, Oriental rugs, even a room styled after Louis XIV. Outside, there was a small amphitheater brought over from ancient Rome, complete with a bust of Augustus Caesar.

As I wandered through those rooms and gardens, something happened. I didn’t just see objects — I felt transported. I wondered: Who were these people? How did they live?

And then something else: I began to imagine myself there.

What would it feel like to sit in a Louis XIV room, dressed in layers of fabric, with delicate pointed shoes and a towering wig? What would it feel like to embody that world?

This, to me, is where the creative muse begins.

It is not just inspiration — it is participation.

You don’t just admire — you enter.

But a muse doesn’t have to be a person.

It can be anything.

A fabric store can become a portal — the textures, the colors, the weight of cloth in your hands. You begin to hear the music of another time, imagine the dances, the etiquette, the movement of bodies in space.

Running your fingers across a woven basket, you begin to feel the hands that made it. Where did the materials come from? Who sat and wove this? What was their life?

All of this becomes information for the imagination.

And then, when you sit down to create — something shifts.

You are no longer just “you.”

You are in dialogue with something larger.

You may feel like an artist from another time, or an energy that is moving through you. Whether that artist actually lived is not the point. The point is: how do you feel? How do you engage?

Sometimes the muse is subtle.

A certain paint.

A brush.

The way light hits a plant.

A bird.

Once, in the middle of winter — in the coldest, bitter days — I opened my curtain and saw a bright yellow and black bird on my feeder. A Baltimore Oriole. I had never seen one like this before, especially not in winter. BTW- this is not the bird. I don't want AI taking my pictures of it yet but I do love this owl. The goddess Athena would be pleased. Anyway I digressed- pardon me.

ok so back to story, there it was.

For a month, it came every day — while I was rewriting, while I felt low. That flash of color, that unexpected presence, brought something back into me.

One morning, after I had gently said, “You need to go home,” it was gone.

But the memory of it remained — that sudden beauty, that visitation.

That, too, is a muse.

A creative muse is not something you chase or define too tightly.

It can be: