Thank you!

I also enjoy discussing the writer's intent and the dichotomy of their intent and what has been written. I didn't read Steven Pressfield but, reading what you've said about him, hits a home run with me. I also think that ideas flow somewhere out there and an artist is only the antenna capable of receiving it. Of course, ideas require prepared minds. Otherwise, they won’t be able to interpret what they see. Just like Nostradamus who (supposedly) saw airplane fights and bombing during WWII, but was able to describe it only as “fire chariots” in the sky.

After that, it is already his or her skills to express these ideas in some available to the media. So Edgar when this “reception/revelation” came upon him was completely going in another dimension so to speak, where he raptured the connection with this world and concentrated on storing the information into his mind’s “workbench” until he could deliver it through the instrument and records it in the musical media. His scream Phantom was most likely an indication that he did access the invisible portal between everyday life, and let’s conditionally call it “the artistic reality”.

What do I think would have happened when his wife would ask him about the nature of his behavior? That depends on several things. How intimate was their spiritual connection? Sometimes (rarely) couples could be very close. In that case, Edgar would try to describe what went inside of him during these moments. More often, spouses' life with each other having a reasonable compromise: you don’t bother me and I won’t bother you, but let’s make sure our common business is taken care of. In that case, he’d answer her the way he answered Else in your story “I don’t know.” But then all the following development in the afterlife, pointing to a spiritual closeness of the spouses, was problematic.

As for women (muses) being an inspiration to men’s creativity…Seemingly this is the case especially in songs: Michel by Beetle, Angie by Rolling Stones, etc. as many cases are pointing to something else. For example, Beethoven wrote “Für Louise” when he was a very young man, while published it already when he was old. He did it because while meeting a new attractive young woman Ludwig told her that she was his muse and he wrote “Für Louise” exclusively for her. 😊 I also heard that Salvador Dali deliver ally provoked his wife for being unfaithful so that feeling betrayed he could create his especially contrived paintings.

So, yeah…

Thank you for an interesting discussion @carolkean