Discovering My Muse

riday, February 20, 2009 

Discovering my Muse
Current mood: accomplished
I guess you could say regardless of whatever I’ve accomplished you could say I’ve had issues. Emotional, physical, whatever other generic synonym you could use to label the category I’m sure I’ve had an issue with it. 

I was driving to work today, listening to my iPod through the car stereo, and I came across orchestrated music that I used to love in high school. I had a reflective nostalgic moment that ended in a disturbing brief mental collapse.

I couldn’t seem to gather some sort of cognitive resilience to provide a reason for my daily toil. I couldn’t provide a reason that it was 6 in the morning, and I was driving nearly 35 miles to get to a job that I find pointless. 


Why was I working so hard, and so much? To be respected by others, or acquire some sort of satisfaction through academia? Is the ability to purchase material things, or control people (pay for labor) really worth all this? What happened to that kid that could spend a full day listening to a cello, a viola, a piano, what happened to not needing a reason to create or compose, but to do it for the sake of novelty, and self discovery? 

What the FUCK am I doing and why am I not happy?


It was a strange austere moment, it was as if through a whole lifetime looking at others through a critical eye; being judgmental, hypercritical, disparaging, that I had forgotten to step out in front of a mirror and let what I have become, what I have made myself into, be criticized by that same eye. 

It was a horrifying feeling, to not understand why I exist as I do. I was felt as if I were ghastly, staring into a fabricated mirror that failed to reveal a reflection. All I could see was a lack of creation, a lack of purpose, a living façade designed to appear complete.

It’s so easy to reveal the demons of others, their failures, their weakness, and then utilize the shortcomings of others and conceal them from your own image, to disguise weakness, shroud ignorance, and even hide fears from yourself.

I was nothing more than a salesman that constantly sold myself a product that stated who and what I was. True this could have been an acquired trait through my 23 years of life, or a long term lesson learned to stop thinking about who or what I was, and to just act like who or what I am. I guess I was meddling where I don’t belong in thoughts of antiquity, to be, or not to be, is that REALLY the question? eh?


For once I felt as if I was a man. I had never felt that I could be referred to as a man; I was merely a young male, or still a boy. To be able to stand in front of that mirror, and not convince myself that I was great, to not ignore my shortcomings, but to stand there and reflect, to take in what I am and as I exist in completion. To find the strength to confront my weakness and incorporate it into my being, to stop hiding from myself and to finally grow, as a man, as an individual.


My muse to exist as I do, is nothing more than my reflection. An unaltered, imperfect reflection. However the desire to change how I see my reflection, to see it complete, unaltered is what keeps my muse for existence strong. To be able to improve my critical eye, so only a genuine image is reflected in that cruel mirror; an image that I can stare back at with a stern critical eye and say, “This is Joseph Perry.”




My muse comes from me, and as a man it is my ordained responsibility to provide the strength for my muse to survive, or else I shouldn’t bother referring to myself as a man, but as a boy.


-Peace cabrones

--Joey