Eight years down the dusty, winding road of self realization and spiritual madness, my first instinct is to leap out the window like the insomniac in that Twilight Zone about the seductive cat girl on the roller coaster at the dream state country fair. "Take a minute," cautions the publishing goddess who shepherds the Dalai Lama's literary works into the marketplace. "There's more going on than just Satan. And if you really look hard, you can't tell whether he's laughing in glee or crying in pain." My inner voice is at Halford Screaming for Vengeance levels. But on the outside, I'm calm. Because I have come to learn that the muse always knows best.

An hour later, I'm relenting, even excited. We're on to other topics. "Do you have any ideas for your next book?" asks Amy. I rattle off a couple eternally undeveloped ideas and then this falls out. "I want to write a book about women in music," I say, my lower lip quivering. Halford has transmuted to Tori Amos and I can detect the ivory incantations drifting between my lobes. "Chasing the Muse: A Romantic Examination of Women in the Rock." I prepare for a cutting, disabling one line comeback. Amy is brilliant, honest and light speed quick. "I like that," she fires back without hesitation. "You're such a Leo, Lonn, it would be a fascinating read."

Let me reference how long this has been percolating in my bloodstream. I bought Kate Bush's The Kick Inside after hearing the LP played in its entirety at midnight on WRXL in Richmond, Virginia, where I was visiting my father on spring break. That was 30 years ago this month. Kate was my first, true, musique feminique crush. During RIP's hey day, she released A Sensual World and reluctantly crossed the Atlantic to do a week's worth of promotion out of the Columbia Records offices in midtown Manhattan.

Marketing pals Jay Krugman and Bob Chiappardi arranged for me spend a few moments with the bird-voiced British storyteller who landed her first EMI Record deal after playing a tea/recital on her father's Kent Castle lawn at age 16 that Pink Floyd's Dave Gilmour just happened to be attending. "You have so many fans here in America," I said to her, my knees shaking at her mere, ethereal presence. "Why haven't you ever toured?" I half-knew the answer but I wanted to hear it from the unicorn's mouth. "I'm terrified to fly," she responded. "But I very much want to see Disneyland some day."

We follow our favorites through thick and thin, no matter whether they're churning out yearly releases or disappear from the landscape for extended periods of time. Kate's fans waited for 15 years between The Red Shoes and 2006's Ariel, one of the most glorious and delicious aural feasts ever served up from a maiden's musical kitchen. Like we waited for Peter Gabriel's Up, our patience was rewarded, our souls soothed, our hearts enflamed. Ariel is a masterwork, complete, conscious and entirely current. 'Till the day I die, I shall keep Kate the Leo (she landed on this mortal spec on July 30, 1958, two years and one day after your humble narrator) on my celestial turntable.

Renaissance's Annie Haslam crooned like a feathered faerie, strutting the 70s stages in bare feet and batting eyes. She survived breast cancer and reinvented with new age melodies. The meditative, mystical Marcome hearkens dear Annie with synthetic strings replacing the authentic orchestral arrangements that defined the era past. No one touched the New York nastiness of Debbie Harry at the close of that ephemeral decade. The Go Go's and The Bangles were so much fun, delivering hooks; head bobs and hope to the horn dog brigade. Haven't caught their reunion tours. Just didn't hit the radar. Vicki Peterson, Michael Steele and Kathy Valentine had complimentary RIP subscriptions and true, rock n' roll DNA.

I had an album by an artist named Kit Hain in the 80s and listened to it constantly. The minute Lita Ford kissed MTV deadly; I grabbed the other platinum metal muse of the day, Warlock's Doro Pesch, and placed them side-by-side on the cover of our bible of bang. It proved to be the 2nd best selling issue of the year. I think the winner was Axl Rose and the rifle, the press shy vocalist's first published feature length interview ever.

The sirens have had my attention for as long as I can remember. Personally and professionally. It's nothing short of a miracle that I haven't been turned into a toad ala John Turturro in the Coen Brother's masterpiece, Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? Perhaps I have. I'm certainly no longer bona fide, least from the standpoint of fame and fortune. Almost fame, perhaps, pennies from heaven, without question. During one of the two lengthy pauses in my career, approaching the millennium, I had this heal the world idea to assemble six of my favorite songstresses for an end of century recording of "Amazing Grace."

I printed out six verses and attached each verse to a different muse. Kate Bush, Tori Amos, Alanis Morrissette, Beth Orton, Lauryn Hill and Sheryl Crow. If there were a seventh verse, I would have added Joan Osbourne. That was my line up in the summer of '99. I had access to them all but my fragile state of being (yes, it's been going on for a decade now so please holds your comments) failed to sustain the energy and excitement.

My one and only substantive conversation on the vision came in Tori's dressing room post her Irvine performance along side Alanis. The redhead faerie princess told me way back that despite her affection and respect for Sarah MacLachlan (oh yeah, she was number eight -- are you beginning to get a whiff of the obsession?), Tori was not a Lillith girl. But Alanis, she possessed the same exotic mixture of anger and enlightenment so the concert chemistry was cool. I laid out my plan. "Get one more girl to commit and I'm in," said the crimson-haired poetess on whom reaped printed praise post her groundbreaking Little Earthquakes performance at The Roxy in 1991. We've been friends ever since. "I'm going to talk to Sheryl Crow," I said. "I just worked with her on The Globe Sessions. We bonded." Then Tori and I talked about the year 2012 and I went home, never to actualize the "Amazing" idea.

So it's 2008, one presidential election cycle out from the Mayan-prophesized end times and I am awash in the muse. She is taking on numerous, magnificent, youthful incarnations. Kate Nash, Sia, Rachel Yamagata, Cat Power, Rhianna (courtesy of my daughter, Megan, number one muse), The Donnas, Evanescence, Lacuna Coil, just to name a very few. And below the commercial radar, they are revealing themselves. I just saw Lili Haydn do a benefit gig for the Writer's Guild. Lili doesn't play the violin. She invites it over, lights two candles, pours it a class of Pinot and makes mad, passionate love to it. Her new LP, Place Between Places (first for Nettwerk Records the venerable label that nurtured Sarah MacLachlan to international success) is breathtaking.

And what of my other UK unrequited passion pillar, the incomparable Enya? "Orinoco Flow (Sail Away)" was playing in the delivery room when Megan Rose sailed into existence in the spring of 1990. On two serendipitous desert drives to Joshua Tree and Death Valley A Day Without Rain provided the soundtrack for rock sculptures, indigenous foliage and moments of internal perspective and alteration that are so personal, only me and Enya will ever fully understand what happened. Our connection is a psychic one. We've never met but she knows me. I inspired the song, "Pilgrim." Just ask her.

You've probably never heard of Debi Nova. She had a seven-figure deal with Warner Brothers. I was the one who walked her into the boardroom where the Trumps of the tune world feasted on her creative carcass for six years. Paralysis from testosterone analysis and the Swimming with Sharks scenario of everything that could go wrong did go wrong resulted in no Debi record ever seeing the light of day. So she was dropped, like a thousand of her kind, set free into this remarkable new independent space where artists make and break themselves. From the black hole, this super Nova will emerge. Bet on it.

I just saw The Stones/Scorsese film, Shine A Light. No sequence burns as bright as Mick's sultry, adoring, all consuming "Some Girls." Why? Caues he's Mick, he's a Leo, he is beholding to the muse and he's inhaled her rarified air like no other of his kind. Which brings us to Leslie, Meatloaf's ex, Pearl's mom – oh my, can Pearl sing, like a baby Bonnie Raitt. Still fantastic in her 50s, Leslie is the original Cameron Crowe-crafted Penny Lane, in mind, body and spirit. She told me recently about the time she was working for the legendary Albert Grossman in Woodstock while the Stones were in residence. "Mick came in the kitchen," she smiled. "He was so sweet, started asking me about little things, work and stuff. Then he said, 'wanna come upstairs and have a bath with me, darling?' Oh God, I was flush like a beet. Of course I went! It was Mick Jagger!"

Bruce Springsteen recalls in the VH1 Storytellers that he didn't start writing about women and relationships until Tunnel of Love. He had to live a bit, lose a bit, and yes, love a bit. Then he brings Patti out to chirp background vocals on "Brilliant Disguise" and everything in the Universe suddenly makes perfect sense. Why are we here? To romance the muse. And for the muse to romance us.