Where's my muse gone?

Why can't I write lyrics at the moment? Words have never fallen easily onto the page for me, but I can usually force some out.

It may be that when I write lyrics, they are part of a larger project - usually a musical experiment. Goodbye Monster was an experiment with James Brown style funky drumming, and a vocoder. Elvis in Space was just part of teaching myself to sing. Let It Be was me trying to express how I felt about D, and Ring of Steel was an attempt to encapsulate the end of that phase of our friendship. Have You Ever was about my breakup with M, as well as a (failed) attempt to write in the style of Goldfrapp. Does She began as me trying to make something resembling Some Speculation by the Pet Shop Boys. And 12 Monkeys was me trying out some new drum sounds, and figuring out how to make the Reason NN-XT module make acid basslines.

In other words, I can't write songs simply to write songs - I need to be exploring some sonic possibility that has nothing to do with the meaning of the lyrics. Maybe this is the real reason why the music so often comes first.