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First things first: The Undead Muse is the title of my most recent music album that, like the rest of the music that I make, is an exploration of postrock and postmetal music. As the title of the album reveals, there are Gothic elements in there – Gothic fiction, that is; not Gothic metal! We’ll talk about all that too, but there is another focus in this post: what I term accidental creativity.

Many writers will likely relate to the concept of accidental creativity, and will immediately understand what I’m getting at. Still, here’s a quick definition: I use the term accidental creativity to refer to artistically creating something that isn’t what you intended.

We’ll need to further revise this – and include some philosophical speculation; for instance, is there anything but accidental creativity? And allow me this little indulgence of combining this with a presentation of this newest album, which I really enjoyed making and really enjoy listening to.

How The Undead Muse Came to Be

The Undead Muse contains eight songs. Of these, the first three were composed many months ago, in the span of a few weeks. Back then, the tentative title of the album was “The Dead Muse” instead. You know why? Because I felt little inspiration. The muse was dead, I felt. I still liked the three songs, but it felt like simply going through the motions.

So I let the songs remain dormant on the hard drive, and occupied my time with other things.

Fast forward to a week or so ago. In case you don’t realize what this implies, let me spell it out: The remaining five songs were all composed and recorded in a matter of a week, basically a song per day, plus a couple of days for audio editing and artwork.

The funniest thing? It all began with… an accident. It would be the first of several.

Accidental Creativity for Art Is what Random Mutations Are for Nature

As I was browsing my hard drive for an old essay on the Gothic – the one on Only Lovers Left Alive, parenthetically – I accidentally clicked the wrong folder. Without even realizing how, I found myself staring at the contents of a folder named “the dead muse” and the files associated with the three existing songs.

Perhaps influenced by what I was really searching for, my mind flashed: Maybe I ought to rename this “the undead muse”.

A deluge of creativity overtook me in a single breath. It was as if I could see the whole and every part in one instance. I immediately felt (that’s the right word) what the rest of the songs should be about, both musically and conceptually, and I felt what associations there should be in there.

The way evolution works with random DNA mutations, this burst of accidental creativity had me forgetting about the Gothic essay and plugging the guitar into the amp. I mean, after all, the nature of art is accidental by nature – art is about finding connections, and about understanding… misunderstandings.

What The Undead Muse Tells Me

Though the difference between the first three songs and the remaining ones can perhaps go unnoticed by some listeners, I expect most to be able to tell there is a difference. If you’d like to compare, here’s the first song of the album, “When Sisyphus Cried”:

And here’s the seventh song, “With Whispered Words Bedight”:

Again, though one should clearly tell they’re part of the same album, at the same time it should also be easy to discern there is a difference in the way experiencing is expressed in each group.

But we talked about accidents and accidental creativity, so here’s another iteration of this concept: On several occasions during composing and recording, I simply hit the “wrong” note.

Accidental Creativity, Beethoven, and Passion

It was, supposedly, Beethoven who said “to play the wrong note is acceptable; to play without passion is inexcusable”, or something in that direction. Very likely, Beethoven never said such a thing, though the lesson is valid. But I would go beyond that, and ask you and myself something else.

What is “the wrong note”, really?

I mean, technically speaking, we could talk of dissonance. If, for instance, you play a pentatonic major scale but insert a note not belonging to it. Immediately, however, we face another issue: Where do we draw the line between the wrong note for scale x and the right note for scale y? Or, to make it more specific for those familiar with music theory, going from A to C is the expected step in the C major pentatonic scale, skipping B, yet not so in the C major scale, that includes B.

In reality (something that music composers have known for a very long time), scales and notes – in other words: rules – are just foundations; guidelines. They are there to give you a direction, to balance what the audience expects to here, what sounds harmonic, to something “else”.

I discovered, during hitting those “wrong” notes, that this something “else” was worth it.

Don’t Delete Things so Fast

You might recall in my post on the ideological baggage of digital photography, how I said that the overwhelming presence of digital photos of everything skews the experience behind the photos.

One reason is that there are no “mistakes” anymore.

Nowadays, when a person snaps a photo of themselves – or anyone and anything, really – it has to be perfect. Closed eyes? Delete. One of the four people was looking the other way? Delete. Aunt Jane forgot to smile? Delete, shoot again.

We are filled with endless images that all look “perfect”, and as a result they are all mediocre.

I almost did the same mistake with those wrong notes. I was about to hit “delete” and record the part again, but something held me. After the 4th time I listened to it, the “wrong” note was acceptable. After another couple of times, it was fitting. Very soon, I eagerly anticipated the “wrong note” part, it gave the composition personality.

Lessons to Learn from Accidental Creativity

When it comes to the key takeaway, what to keep in mind when it comes to accidental creativity, I can summarize it very easily: Let it happen.

Let mistakes and accidents happen. Don’t be in a hurry to delete a photo that “doesn’t look right”, rerecord a song where you played “the wrong note”, or rewrite that chapter in your novel which you wrote when you were “drunk” (whatever this means metaphorically; or not).

When it comes to The Undead Muse, all the little accidents – the couple I shared and those which will remain my personal secret – that occurred during its creation literally defined it. They made The Undead Muse be what it turned out to be.

Much of the symbolism you encounter in literature is accidental, because it is unintended. That is, books escape the conscious control of their authors. This also makes symbolism something very personal, to authors and audiences alike.

Perhaps it’s easy to figure out how a song titled “A Vampire’s Love” or “The Blood Is the Life” ended up in an album called The Undead Muse that began when its creator was looking for a Gothic essay. It’s also equally unsurprising to discover there are vocal renderings of Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla in some of the songs.

On the other hand, it’s almost certain that the meaning of titles like “Silvana” or “With Whispered Words Bedight” is completely opaque to you – though to me they, like the songs themselves, connote whole universes. And yes, they were a sort of an accident, too.

Maybe that’s the whole point.

You can listen to the entire album on YouTube and Bandcamp. I recommend Bandcamp (from where you can also download it for free, entering 0 as “Name your price”), because YouTube might show you ads placed there by Google, against my will. Needless to say, they don’t share any profits with me, either. I only offer YouTube as a convenience for those who want it.