“I have been used to consider poetry as "the food of love" said Darcy. "Of a fine, stout, healthy love it may. Everything nourishes what is strong already. But if it be only a slight, thin sort of inclination, I am convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away.” - Pride and Prejudice
The first was in the form of a song. Over skype he declared 'I've written you a song'. It was in a university holiday when our relationship passed from the intensity of sharing a room to the yearning of long distance. This was so far removed from his character, hardly the romantic type, on Valentine's day he had snuck a furtive single rose into our uni house so that our friend's wouldn't make fun of him. He was trepidatious and nervous to perform for me, although he must have wanted to, he had mentioned it. This was my refrain and after some severe goading and convincing his tall lean frame curled around his guitar, never for a moment becoming free of his self-consciousness. A self-consciousness which plagued both of us throughout the relationship. Far from experiencing the transcendental nature of music and performance his unpracticed voice strained through a few verses while the connection meant that I could hardly pick any of it out. It was emblematic of his and our relationship, both of us ashamed and scared to act on the totality of our feelings. For a while I thought this was what love was, something to be hidden. Something that should not be perceptible unless you were already in the know. Needless to say, the song was never mentioned in person.
Years later, another boy came along and wrote me poetry, lots of it. I became a manic pixie dream girl, lifting the fog of writer's block from around him. We worked together and our secret added some heightened drama that both of us had been craving. Drama is pretty apt, and Am Dram at that. Both of us were ultimately acting, playing up to a heightened idea of romance. And this was all depicted in reams and reams of poetry. This art that was supposed to act as a mirror was in fact distorting and began to feel like the ultimate alienation. I could not live up to my own depiction. I guess this is the problem of the muse. We met a few months after and I had moved on. Intoxicated, he slipped into another role. The jilted lover, he moved from anger to sadness and back. One minute shouting in my face, the other trying his hardest to cry. His drunkenness making him forget everything he'd just said. As he hunched over and simulated crying, unable to actually squeeze out a single tear, I took my bow and left.
Then, more recently, I woke up to a text, that he'd 'done something for me', that I'd come across it on my walk. I'd called it off a few days earlier because the brief lockdown romance had run its course. I trod the path we'd taken many times together. A liason where the uniform was hats and scarfs, a pint at the pub even out of the question as the world was shut around us. I came across it. In deliberate, scratched out letters as wide as the promenade itself were two well known poems. He'd written them in chalk that he'd salvaged from the beach. He'd left his house at 2am to do this, etched this into the ground from the light on his bicycle. I discovered another poem, in a different location, this one written just for me. As I trod this loop walking my dog I watched the immensity of his effort become apparent as they did not shift. Months passed, it snowed, it melted, I walked, and the poems were still there. Laid out like the Star Wars introduction for the whole world to see. Here it was, the tangible manifestation of a complete lack of self consciousness. The totality of his feelings was laid bare, heart on sleeve style. This was it, grand romantic gesture rom-com style. He was there with a boombox outside my window, hiring the school band and playing me a song on the bleachers.
Ultimately, this kind of gesture makes me uncomfortable. This may be the extension of this self consciousness that plagued me and the songwriter. But also, the problem that I’ve encountered with being a muse and with being written to is there must be a gap between myself, the way I see myself and the self that is depicted. This gap is insurmountable and actual sincerity is replaced with overwrought sentimentality.