Writer's Fallout Shelter

Do you have a muse? If so, what do they look like? What do they do for you? Are they a help or a hindrance?

Reason I ask is that one of my writing partners has a whole series of muses. When I first met her, long before she was my writing partner, her muse was a little girl running around with a lampshade on her head. That muse was later replaced.

In a conversation we had one day, I expressed my fascination with her muses and with all writers who have muses because I just don't have one. Never have. My characters speak to me directly and take me along for the ride, kinda like being a journalist imbedded with a military unit in a war zone. Sometimes, that lack of a filter makes it a bit harrowing, but at the same time, I can't imagine working through an intermediary, which is what the muse strikes me as being.

All of you writers who have muses, how off base am I? Do I not know what goodness I'm missing by not having one? Or should I thank my lucky stars that no muse has ever felt compelled to latch onto me?