Muse

When I graduated from college in the late 90's, I had plans for myself.  

My "practical" idea was that I was going to be a professor (English).  I could just imagine myself, the chicest of all the college professors (which, no offense to college professors, on most campuses would not take much), bringing my students to profound revelations as they all fell in love with me.  I would develop an eye-opening new theory about John Milton, write a book or two, and attend conferences, where I would naturally be much admired for my combination of erudition and elegance!

My more immediate, impractical-daydream sort of plan, however, was that I'd simply be discovered as an "it" girl.  Think of Chloe Sevigny, for example: just a quiet girl from the New York City suburbs, like me, who got discovered for wearing a nice hat (or something), and then got her own column in Sassy (I think), and then had an article written about her in The New Yorker, and a movie role, and so on and so forth.  Of course I didn't have Chloe's iconoclastic sense of style, or embedded mystique, or coy expression, but I figured it might happen.  And if that didn't work out, I had an impractical-daydream back-up plan: to dance in music videos. 

Surprisingly, though, when I moved to Manhattan a few months after college, while my roommate and I went out often, and danced a lot, I was not discovered as an "it" girl, nor was I recruited to be in music videos.  The city was filled with 22-year-old girls  going dancing, and the most recognition my roomie and I got was that we could sometimes get in to clubs for free because we were "on the list," and I think we maybe even got to hang out in a VIP room or two, which were exactly the same as any other rooms except they were better because not everyone got to enter.  Oh, and how could I have forgotten?  We had our picture taken for a book that never came out.  What might have been!!

And shockingly, now in my mid-30s, I am neither a professor (which I don't regret), nor a former-it-girl (don't regret that, either), and I haven't been in any music videos at all (which I regret a little, but it's probably for the better).  In fact, I not infrequently have days when I wake up and wonder, "what am I doing with myself, anyway??" and think I should run to the nearest employment agency, resume in hand, and get a job, any job - so that once hired I can sit in a corporate office again, wishing I were doing something more creative.  

But all is not lost: I've come up with a new impractical-daydream career: Muse.  A muse is a woman who somehow gets to know a big fashion designer, entrances him (for I've only heard of male designers with muses) by her great sense of style, and then is brought on staff to just wear the clothes and express opinions about things: "I think I'd like this better with a buckle," or, "what if we make one in red?"  

Now the hitch, of course, lies in the phrase "somehow get to know."  Sadly, muses tend to be very well connected.  Perhaps they come from an "important" (e.g. mind-bogglingly wealthy) family, OR are former fashion models, OR they plunged headlong into the fashion/art worlds straight after graduation, their tiny (if any) incomes (and consequently their wardrobes) bolstered by regular help from Mum and Dad.  

But what if you just KNOW that, if given the chance, you'd make a really excellent muse, possibly the best muse ever, the most reliable, organized, on-time, well-read muse (though certainly not the best groomed - but that would be part of the charm), yet you can't quite see how the chance will ever be given?

I'm going to think about this, and will post again on the topic when I come up with the answer!

Comments

[bridget]

I think you'd be a Super Muse!

[Awake]

You, too! Time for a muse training course?