We were lucky to catch up with Bryce Muse recently and have shared our conversation below.
Bryce, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?
It has been a long time coming, and will require even more time still, but I have enjoyed creating my very first book!
About a year and a half ago I had a random feeling that I NEEDED to write a book. At first, I’d be writing in a journal of mine of ideas for the overall story, character names, specific plot points, until I had about half the journal full of semi-useful information. I knew I wanted a fantasy-mystery type book that acts as a lens on modern issues surrounding the environment and claims made on both sides. The general idea? Three college-age students discover their innate abilities to transform any object into another. Paper can become diamonds, rock can be water, and everything can be anything, with the exception of plastic. Two schools have emerged in the book’s world where one rejects the use of plastics for its inability to continue in the cycle of transformation, while others praise its ability to advance the human race through medicine, food prep, and entertainment. The students will learn of both these schools and decide which they wish to align themselves with. There is deceit, torture, big-brother-like tactics, and mystery agents blurring the lines between “good school’ and “bad school.” Readers will be forced to truly take a moment and decide for themselves who they should be rooting for. You may have a bias to one side or the other, but my aim with the book is to make you question that bias and either reaffirm your initial thoughts or reject them for a new mindset. Either way, you’ll have a stronger opinion on the issue.
While I finding it meaningful to test a reader’s ideas, I wanted a couple subtle ways of bringing more meaning and uniqueness to the book. The two ways of doing that are A) using no he/she pronouns for the entire book and B) using other languages to name characters and places. I decided to implement A because what I found as a reader myself is the hardest thing to go through when reading a book and then seeing any media (photos, movies, etc.) of it after is the breaking of the image I had for the characters. Everyone reading the book gets the same description for a character, but we can all still have vastly different looking people in our minds. With that in mind, I decided to give physical descriptions to the characters so as to narrow down the image, but then never attribute a gender-specific pronoun so that each and every character can be more to the reader’s liking. Some descriptions may lend towards more masculine or feminine, but in the end the reader gets to decide. A fun element to the book that tests my writing skills as I can’t even use words like Mother, Brother, Daughter and so forth.
The other way of bringing meaning into the project is by using other languages throughout the story. Let’s say I want to name a character. What I do is decide a characteristic about them that I think defines them. For one character, they are quick-tempered and easy to anger. So, I want their name to be centered around “angry.” What I then do is look up translations of the word “angry” in other languages until I find one that sounds like it could be a name (assuming the reader doesn’t already speak that language). For Angry I have named them Zorn thanks to the German translation. I do this for almost all of the characters, names of locations, all while picking as many different languages as I can so that a reader who knows Balkan for example can get a tiny peak into what the character is like. It makes me smile to think about someone seeing a name that they know the translation of, and they get all excited like they discovered a secret, because they kind of did!
At the time of me writing this, I am about halfway through writing the book. I think. It is a long process with great bursts of inspiration mixed with long bouts of hitting the wall. This project of mine aims to be meaningful by means of addressing an important issue, giving readers more agency in character design, and adding tiny bits of culture in the book so each reader can have their own unique experience. Still working on a title, but for now we will call it “The Ability to Change!”
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
The long and short answer to this is I enjoy doing several different art forms while still being scientifically minded. The first artform I got snatched up by was music when I learned trumpet as a wee little 6th grader. Fast forward several years and I take my joy of playing music through brass and sax instruments and mix it with some Audio Engineering schooling I have gone through to produce songs. Almost entirely instrumental, I make songs that I simply enjoy making whether or not they end up being number one hits. I make music videos for the songs too, but that is definitely not a forte of mine haha! It is certainly a fun time when I can get others involved for the music and/or songs and make it all that much more special.
On top of music, I have also enjoyed some light painting using acrylics. Originally an abstract and gradients type, I have since branched into a more specific theme: space paintings. A little twist though is I go to 2nd-hand art stores, buy up already done paintings, and add large swaths of galaxies, stars, and other space elements on top. I use the colors and shapes already present in the painting to influence the shape, texture, and in the end, it becomes a collaboration as both the original artist’s and my own work are seen in the finish product. No idea where the inspiration came from to try this style, but I fully enjoy it. A couple of friends have requested my artwork and it’s a great feeling to have others enjoy and own my art.
Besides cooking, gardening, and other hobby-type art forms I enjoy, the last “concrete” art I enjoy is writing. Specifically, a fantasy-mystery book I have been writing for about a year and a half now. It’s always kind of funny to talk to people about my book because they often ask what my inspirations are for the story such as other books and that’s where I draw up a blank! In all reality, I have not read all that many of books. I’ve watched a little bit of tv, a little bit of movies, a book here and there, and while no one source of media is the reason I decided to add writing to my repertoire, I can’t deny that all the media I consume has some subconscious effect on my style. It’s not like The Lord of the Rings alone could have inspired me to write a book about college students learning about their transformation-style magic amidst two schools of thought battling over the use or disuse of plastics. All while using no he/she type pronouns and implementing other languages throughout. It’s hard to sum up a semi-complicated story like this, so please ask me questions about it I love talking about it!
With all of these different art forms you may ask, what’s the point? Am I trying to be a great Musician? Painter? Writer? While of those three I would probably enjoy being a writer the most what with its potential to create visual media down the line, my main mission is a little different from all of that: to become an Astronomy Professor. I know, not quite an artform, but let me explain on how it’s all about inspiration.
I originally went to college for the sake of going into med-school so as to become a doctor of sorts. During that time, I took a basic Astronomy class just as a gen-ed. What I didn’t realize when signing up for the class was that I was about to learn about a topic I would end up wanting to share with as many people as possible. Exploding stars, rotating planets, and ever-looming black holes make for some very interesting stories. I would end up getting a minor in Astronomy and even work at the school’s Planetarium for about 3 years just to be submerged in the subject. It is a great feeling to see people’s eyes light up when they see a close-up of a star or figure out how weird black holes are, or even find out why it is the sky is actually blue. That sparkle in their eyes, their minds being opened up to a wider perspective, that’s why my goal is to become a professor. Why aim to make only myself great when I can try to inspire others to explore, wonder, and perhaps become great in their own right.
So, while my hobbies are often found in the world of typical arts, my passion-project is teaching people about the awe-inspiring expanse that is our universe.
What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?
The tricky part about money and art is incentive. Whether it’s paintings, music, books, or even adult-entertainment, a consumer needs a reason to support the creator, and an easy way of doing so. What has happened as of late is it has become super easy to consume media for free or extremely cheap. While this is great as a consumer, this leaves the creator in a bind where they have to create vast amounts of content just to survive or even just exist in the art world. And it isn’t to say that consumers are out-right bad people, they just don’t have incentive to support an artist with time, money, what have you when there is no punishment for free, it’s super easy to consume for free, and the cost of free is affordable by everyone.
A driving force to this may very well be the world’s current need to consume huge amounts of content nearly constantly. It doesn’t matter as much to day to own a piece of artwork when I can just see a photo of it on social media and move on. The help change this paradigm we likely need to start with the creators themselves. We creatives can be the ones to re-introduce the grand feeling of supporting the arts whether its going out to see a play and paying for a ticket, buying an album from an artist we really enjoy, or buying a painting from an artist to own for yourself. This isn’t about making large gestures, a small amount of support from many people can help create a cycle of support. While it may be hard to support other creatives while aiming to be supported ourselves, showing people that good leads to good is important to creating a thriving ecosystem. How can we ask people to support us if we don’t support others as well?
So the next time you watch someone’s stream, find artwork in the flea-market, or discover short stories on the internet, if you find that you like the art, see what you can to help the artist. You don’t always have to spend money on someone to make them feel appreciated and wanted.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
I find it extremely rewarding to see others enjoying and getting excited over my craft. This is the most apparent when I do live-streaming. I am by no means a large streamer, but even still I have a little community that supports me and gets excited to see the next show. A few people stop by, a conversation gets going, and suddenly everyone is chatting up a storm and enjoying themselves. It’s like my art gives people a little hide away from the world where they can focus just on what is happening right now. Too often we get lost in the future, things we need to take care of and such, but if my art is able to give someone a chance to stop, enjoy, and breath, then I’m a very happy camper.
As a small creative I have found that it is important to get rid of the notion of making money for the craft. For me, having that be my only goal for my art made things dull, hard, and just not fulfilling. Find out what it is that makes you create in the first place and have that be the reason you do so. Any money made from there on will feel as a reward and not a necessary crutch.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://boogywoogybrycemus.wixsite.com/boogywoogyportfolio
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/boogywoogybryce/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCV9dk4PSH2SDZgAPVOXni0Q
- Twitch Channel: https://www.twitch.tv/boogywoogybryce
Image Credits
All media was taken / created by Bryce Muse.