A Mans muse?

He's been couch surfing for the past six months. He's in the wrong profession. He wants a business of his own, but can't seem to get the gumption to actually start it. Wants to get married and settle down.

He'll get it all together when he finds the "right woman."

She'll inspire him. Oh, he'll write that novel he always had in him, too. But he needs that perfect girl with that elusive, ethereal quality to propel him onward, forward through the fog. At least that's what he says. In the meantime, he loafs and procrastinates his way through life, noncommittal, uninspired. Waiting, waiting ...

Know any people like that? I have. They're not excessive in number, but I've met enough to get me thinking. Do we really need other people to "inspire" us to go on to greater heights -- a "muse" of sorts?

The notion of "woman as muse" probably predates us all by eons. I'm sure some of my more erudite readers could point to various works of art and literature, but for now, I'm sticking to the muse as represented on the Big Screen. There's an old movie, filmed in 1959 called "Gidget," which to me features the quintessential "woman as muse" story. It starred Sandra Dee, Bobby Darrin, your typical bobby-sox crowd. Sandra portrays Gidget, a sunny California teen who stumbles across a pack of professional beach surfers (in Austin we would call them "musicians"). There's the Great Kahuna, the head of the pack, who lives in his thatched hut on the beach, and then there's Moondoggie, the boy who eschews college so he can surf the waves. With only a few words, Gidget, our blindingly-blonde paragon of virtue and light, changes their lives. She says to Kahuna, "Gee, it must get really lonely for you out here," and suddenly he's inspired to re-enlist. Of course, Moondoggie, with whom she falls in love, decides to go to college at her urging. In the end, everything is tied up with a fat, pink bow, in that yucky saccharine way that only 1950's Hollyweird could produce.

I wasn't really around for the movies of the 60's and the 70's, but the 80's saw "woman as muse" portrayed more literally. Anyone remember the movie "Mannequin?" Thought so. Damn, I didn't want to have to do this to you, really. This starred Kim Cattrall filmed in her pre-Samantha days, and Andrew McCarthy. Mannequin. That pretty much says it all, doncha think? Cattrall portrays an girl from ancient Egypt who's cursed to become a wooden effigy until she finds true love. McCarthy a window dresser for a big department store stumbles across "Emmie," who only comes alive in his presence; when she's not, she stands in a store window wearing hideous New Wave clothing. You can guess the rest. He becomes a world-class window dresser, yada-yada, and falls in love, too. Obviously, someone in the way-back yonder had an inkling that the 1980's were going to usher in all kinds of weird fetishes. Boy does get to mess around with girl, but only when she's in human form. We hope.

Then there was "Date With an Angel." Forgettable male lead wants to do ... something with his life, I forget what, because he was that forgettable. But he has a brain tumor or some wacked thing. Sent to the rescue is eye candy Emmanuelle Béart, who portrays his "guardian angel." She wins his heart by doing nothing else than walking around with her wings aflutter making high-pitched squeaking noises. And if you haven't seen this movie yet, this sound will play your nerves like a high E-string. The moral of the story: you don't have to be able to communicate in any known language to inspire a man to live. All you have to do is ... well, be an angel. Who looks like a supermodel. Boy doesn't get to feck girl during the course of the movie, but when she comes back to earth in as a human wearing a tight white nurse's uniform, you get the general idea that there's gonna be a tumble.

Finally, I present to you "Xanadu." Olivia Newton-John as Ubermuse Kiera, wears flowing pastel ribbon-trailing frocks and rollerblades her way into a starving artist's life after popping out of a street mural. This movie is a musical, which makes it particularly egregious to sit through, especially when Newton-John starts screeching out those high notes, but at least the soundtrack

is salvaged by Jeff Lynne's deft hand. Keira inspires loser artist to open his own cheese ball theme club (these were the 80's, remember). Rollerblades allowed and encouraged. Boy doesn't get to feck girl in the movie. But like "Angel," once again Kiera is blessed by father Zeus with a human body in the end, and we all get the picture.

To recap briefly: We have two mythological figures representing very disparate religions (Judeo-Christian; Ancient Greek) and a doll.

In "Xanadu," the luminous Keira has no female competition, but in "Mannequin" and "Date With An Angel," our otherworldly heroines go up against the male protagonists' spoiled, bitchy girlfriends -- materialistic, ambitious shrews with the tempers of wildebeasts who rip up teddy bears and scheme for their lovers' personal and professional demise. Of course, these are the movies, so the betrayed have to be portrayed as villains. In real life, they'd be ordinary good-hearted Jane’s working entry level ad copy jobs who came home and threw on sweatpants. Once they saw the likes of Kim, Olivia, or Gabrielle, they'd give it up and walk away broken-hearted. Because you can't go up against a muse and expect to keep the guy.

I tried to think of a similar movie that featured a mortal female as lead and could only come up with "Starman," which features Jeff Bridges as the sexy, kind-hearted alien and Karen Allen as a young alcohol-wrecked heroine who's lost her husband. She doesn't get to keep the guy in the end, though. But she does get to have sex with the Starman on a moving freight train. In the end, he hands her a bunch of magic eight balls before he gets on the mother ship and says toodle-oo. Doesn't have quite the same effect as the guy getting the girl in the end, does it?

Woman as muse sent to guide our men with a heavenly hand? Don't try this in real life, gals. I tried playing "muse" once to a man who seemed to want that kind of inspiration. It was exhausting. Smile, pat, smile, encourage, inspire, give advice. Rinse and repeat. This works swimmingly until one day you give the wrong encouragement or wrong advice, and then the finger-pointing commences. Of course, it was my entire fault he failed; he followed my flashlight. You don't have to shoot me, because after this, I'm keeping my mouth shut. I'll listen and I'll give you my opinion, but I don't expect you to abide by it.

I don't know about the rest of you ladies, but I don't want to be anyone's muse. I don't look like a muse or act like a muse; on my bad days, I'm as out of it as Edie Sedgwick after a grueling Factory party. And I have bad days. It's all I can do to inspire myself, much less another person, and besides, the older I get, the more I find that there are just a lot of things that I do not know. As far as my own inspiration, there has never been any man who has made me want to become "more" than I already am. When I am inspired, it comes from within and above.

So I guess my question to the guys is this: have you ever held out on life until you found your worldly "muse?" Or have you found your inspiration in other places? And ladies, has a man ever expected you to be his "muse?" If so, what happened? Let's chat!  

Lynn 

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