Last night I had the opportunity to attend a lecture at my school conducted by Sam Mockbee, the Auburn University architecture professor who started the Rural Studio. The Rural Studio uses natural and "junk yard" type material to provide contemporarily designed housing for poor people in Masons Bend, Alabama. Though not a very articulate speaker, Mockbee is quite insightful and certainly has strong convictions about the conditions of social status in the south.

Anyway, he at least twice used the phrase "plug into the muse" when referring to creative inspiration. I hadn't heard this used before and got the impression that is was a cyber-age equivalent of invoking the muses. Then I got to thinking that I remember the Muses only being the patrons of things like history, poetry, and theater.

Has anyone heard this phrase before and what do you think of it?