Elizabeth Gilbert is the author of many things other than Eat, Pray, Love, written in 2006 and expected to be a movie this year. She came to TED in 2009 and discussed creativity. What she didn’t mention, among the magical creatures like the genius, was the more famous and adapted name for inspiration as its own entity: a muse.

No, not the band, Muse. But what that band named itself after, what a “museum” is named for, and what we hear in our head when our creativity is at its peak. The muse was that which tormented the artist, gave him the inspiration to create and drug it out of him when it was most needed. The muse was loved and hated, and was embodied in many stories and folk lore throughout European countries.

The concept of a muse as something to talk to is not new, but could be less insane than depicted in movies and TV shows. Are we who have identified our muse tied to the visions of Janosz Poha in Gostbusters II talking to the spirit of Vigo the Carpathian entrapped in a centuries-old painting?

I have a muse, a gleeful, very energetic sprite that bursts into my head like an explosion, then out again like a black hole. She is not a specific inspiration; I get help with everything from writing to sketches to business projects. She has got me in trouble with my kids (and my wife) on several occasions. She is why I have attention problems sometimes. But my muse is there. I don’t feel insane or worried by saying that; if it were not for my explosions of alleged genius, I feel I would live a very dull and mundane existence.

I promise not to let her convince me to let a centuries-old madman take over the world.

Thanks to SmallBizWit.info and Steve Moore for the post. It was like a muse for my blog.

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