Don't forget the Muses

Press photo--Erata

Where do ideas come from? A great corporate environment with lots of beer parties on Friday afternoon? Or maybe from some half-draped, rosy figures perched on a mountain above us, drinking wine, lounging, and shooting out ideas?

Adam Haviaras, WritinginthePast.blogspot.com, reminds us that the Muses may still be around someplace. Why should the Ancient Greeks have all the luck?

Those Muses of Olympus, daughters of Zeus, apparently reached out to Hesiod and gave him "a rod of sturdy laurel, a marvelous thing, and breathed into him a divine voice to celebrate things that shall and and things that were aforetime."

So he wrote the biography of the gods called Theogeny. Ghostwriter to the gods! Cool gig.

Before that he was a shepherd.

The Muses more or less dictated, he said. In the Greek and Roman worlds, the Nine Muses were credited with most inspiration. These were, after all the offpsring of Zeus and a goddess named Mnemosyne (Memory).

Homer gave them a hat tip. They specialized in such things as lyric poetry, song and elegiac poetry, tragedy, hymns, dand, comedy, astronomy. Erata over their helped with lyric poetry.

So when you are in the Zone, satisfied with a great day of creative work, remember--the Muses may be just out of reach someplace watching over you and maybe slipping you a smokin' insight once in a while.