THE MUSE

We've been living in Doha for five months now after moving from Dubai. One of the most intriguing things I have had happen to me since arriving is an unexpected connection with the editor of Woman Today, a Qatar magazine for women. Here is the piece I wrote for the June issue which describes how part of the settling in process has gone.

Our search for a villa was over. We'd finally found a place in Doha with large glass doors looking out onto a colourful garden. Tall, leafy trees lined the back wall. Magenta bougainvillea interlaced between them and jasmine entwined thickly around the terrace pillars. A beautiful garden was almost more important to me than the design of the villa and this one was beautiful. I knew how lucky I was to find an oasis like this in a hot desert country. I knew that having this to encounter every day would give me sustenance and inspiration.

I paint, although far be it for me to call myself an artist. I have always been fascinated with the historical role of the muse. Originating from the Greek word mousa, in Greek mythology the word “muse” refers to any one of the nine daughters of Mnemosyne and Zeus, each of whom presided over a different art or science. The muse has traditionally been a female source of inspiration for men, inspiring poetry since the time of Chaucer.

But what about we women? It seems to me that in these modern times, any form of extreme beauty can operate as a muse. When beauty is such that we fall into reverie, the mind surrenders to the senses. Suspended in a state of wonderment and even awe, we transcend momentarily the mundane aspects of life. In this engaged, more expansive state the space exists for insight, illumination and vision. We find ourselves fully present in the “now” - and that is a much-needed thing in our fast-lane, left-brain world.

My garden and the beauty of nature in general has always been my muse. The garden is of itself a work of art, a living, ever-changing and sculptural work in progress, its play of light and colour combining with waves of movement to create a visual symphony for the eyes.

There are no words to describe how I felt the day I arrived at our new villa, a couple of weeks before moving in, to check on maintenance work, only to find every single tree canopy gone, savagely lopped off. Years of verdant growth had been chopped down in a few ghastly seconds. The decapitated trunks were now level with the top of the wall. The bougainvillea and jasmine had been pruned to within an inch of their lives.

My muse was gone. Without the surrounding protective green buffer, the frenetic urban life beyond the walls crashed loudly in. This was not the villa I had chosen to live in.

The experience was highly stressful and left me extremely anxious to find a new muse, a new source of inspiration, to jump-start each day and to provide a focus of beauty that would stimulate my creativity to spring forth anew.

Beauty generally, not only in my life but in everybody's brings pleasure, replenishment, and enrichment. It represents what we feel is good in life. In my mind there exists a kind of continuum by which beauty can be quantified, with the skin-deep and pretty on one hand and deep beauty on the other. The location of something on my personal continuum is dependant upon the impact it has upon me. My fascination is with the deep end of this range. To experience something beautiful at this end of the continuum is profound. This is where I find my muse.

Nature provides an experience of beauty that is shared universally. A beautiful sunset, the ocean, green forests, blue lakes, snow capped mountain ranges, vast sweeping planes, curvaceous sand dunes can all induce reverie and a sense of the sublime, as can great works of art.

An example of this was the recent magnificent performance of the Carmina Burana by the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra. With a double choir, celebrated opera singers and the superb direction of Nadder Abbassi, the flamboyant piece was so powerful that the entire audience was on it's feet for a standing ovation that seemed endless. I left the auditorium elated, refreshed and feeling like a different person. It was cathartic and on the scale of my continuum very “deep end”, absolutely sublime. Such is the power of good art.

Still mourning my lost foliage, I have immersed myself immediately into a new and urgent creative endeavour, the planting of a new garden. My face is well known at the plant market now. I fear I have become the eccentric lady who buys up to thirty of the same plant a time. “Yes three, zero”, I reiterated to the raised eyebrows I received (yet again) at my last visit.

My musings have resulted in my concluding that we should all become beauty activists, to consciously seek out more beauty in our lives. And as I cultivate the emergence of a new muse in my garden, I wish you all well in finding yours.