truth: pleasure is the *ultimate* muse.

Tell me this:
When is the last time you felt good?

Really good. Down to your bones.

When did you last taste your own ecstasy, take it into your mouth and swallow it into your being?

How long has it been since your skin sang a fucking aria of satiated desire and you were insensible, pleasure-drunk, beyond words?

When did you last make the experience and expression of that sort of hedonistic pleasure your absolute imperative?

What are you doing to seek it, to find it, to place yourself in the path of it, over and over again?

We can create from a million spaces.

From heartache. From pain. From trauma and the sharp sweetness of the wound.

Art born from the rage and ache is therapeutic and necessary. Absolutely.

But let’s not forget what we are here for.

What our bodies were born to see and feel and know.

I will tell you this, the shadowlands can become a habit.

My muse and I spent too long dancing there.

Past the time that the work was moving us through and into the space where I became captor and captive of a narrative I no longer sought but somehow could not escape.

I forgot what she and I could create when set free.

I forgot the sound of her sigh and her ask and her yes.

I forgot that I could call her to me through the simple act of claiming my own pleasure.

And I forgot how well and how often she puts out when we dance together in that kind of ecstasy.

Yes. Pleasure —YOUR pleasure—is the gateway to the muse.

Find a lover who will take you, the way you need to be taken.

Become that lover for yourself and touch yourself holy again.

Feel each moment you are in all the way to your toes.

Taste what you are tasting.

Feel what you are feeling.

Allow yourself to be penetrated by beauty and sound and light and love.

Become a seducer of life.

The ultimate hedonist.

A hardcore pleasure seeker and taker and maker.

And then you sit down with your pen or your paint or whatever the tools of your particular craft my be.

Tell the muse you’re ready for her to come in hard and hot and ready.

And just wait to see what happens next.

I predict it will be damn good.