[UPDATE, August 2013: I recently closed Demon Muse because of repeated hacks. The ebook that I produced from material published there, A Course in Demonic Creativity, is now available here at The Teeming Brain.]
I’ve started a new blog titled Demon Muse. Its dedicated topic is the daimonic model of creativity and human selfhood.
Here’s a passage from the About page:
Demon Muse is about the unconscious mind — the muse, the daimon — and its role in artistic creativity. It’s about tapping into your “inner genius” and learning to let it guide you in discovering and doing the work that you were uniquely born to do. It’s written specifically for writers and other creative artists who are seeking to clarify their creativity, but the general principle it explores is valuable to everyone. The blog is updated every Monday (plus occasional bonus posts during the rest of the week) with new articles and essays exploring the psychology of creativity and techniques for tuning into your deep self and establishing a creative flow. It also features commentary on books and films that highlight the daimonic theory of creativity, and presents original interviews with successful creators who share their practical insights into the inner workings of the creative process. The focus is evenly divided between the theoretical — exploring the daimonic model of life, consciousness, and creativity for its pure informational value and inherent fascination — and practical — learning how to work productively with this knowledge.
Several posts are already live:
- Welcome to Demon Muse
- The Daimonic Insight: Creativity Is a Force Separate from You
- Steven Pressfield and Seth Godin: Artists and Innovators vs. The New Dark Age
- A Brief History of the Daimon (and the Genius)
As you can see, I’m using Demon Muse as a place to concentrate on one of my long-running interests that shows up in Dark Awakenings (in the Angel-Demon essay) and has popped up repeatedly here at The Teeming Brain.
I invite you to come on over and have a look around. If you like what you see, subscription options are clearly labeled at the site.
Image credit: Florian Siebeck, Wikipedia, under the GNU Free Documentation License
My best to you on this new venture, my friend.
Thank you for the encouraging words, John. I do appreciate them.
I’ve subscribed, not least because my recent reading of and about poet Jack Spicer keeps going back to his own belief in the daimonic, which he refers to as a poetics of dictation.
I posted a reply to your comment right after it arrived, Andrew, but just now discovered that it had somehow never seen the light of day. Apologies for the delay. I appreciate your support, and also your link to the Spicer piece, which promises much enjoyment.
Consider me subscribed, sir. If there’s one joy I have left in this bitter life, it’s the discussion of the writer’s craft. A chocolate-chunk cookies. I loves me some chocolate-chunk cookies!
Great to have you aboard, Simon!
I love your blog. There is nothing else quite like it on the web. Can you possibly point me in the right direction regarding the subject of music and inspiration? I don’t mean CD’s of inspirational music (there are plenty of those) but rather, the way, say, that the Greeks and so on have regarded the power of music to evoke inspiration. I know that Plato and Aristotle believed that the musical modes to which a person listened molded the person’s character. I am also familiar with the “Mozart effect,” and so on. I am interested in particular with the way that Platonists and Neoplatonists in particular – and perhaps the Romantics – viewed music’s power to inspire. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Thank you for the good words, Linda. I’m afraid I’m drawing something of a blank at the moment regarding any helpful resources for the subject you describe. Although it’s not from the Romantic period, I know Nietzsche said some insightful things about this issue; you might try his first book, popularly known in English as The Birth of Tragedy, but whose full title is The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music.