richard and i have a new year's resolution to spend tv-free time together each week "doing art." i put this in quotations because we are still discussing just what these art evenings should entail and what counts as a creative pursuit.
it's quite a lively debate. drawing, sketching, writing, playing the guitar and knitting were all obvious but it quickly got fuzzy when we started thinking about how we would fill our evenings. putting together a jigsaw was nixed. so was computer gaming and checking email. but what about reading a novel? designing a dvd cover? editing photos to post on the web?
in order to get some definition around this, we thought we'd use the nine muses. what better way to define the arts? i thought i remembered them because they are painted onto a building behind the oxo tower on the south bank in london, but my recall ended at five before drawing a blank. wikipedia came to the rescue:
The canonical nine Muses, with their fields of patronage, are:Calliope (Chief of the muses and muse of epic poetry)
Euterpe (muse of lyric song)
Clio (muse of history)
Erato (muse of erotic poetry)
Melpomene (muse of tragedy)
Polyhymnia (muse of sacred song)
Terpsichore (muse of dance)
Thalia (muse of comedy and bucolic poetry)
Urania (muse of astronomy)
huh. we weren't sure this helped. i suggested we might replace urania, which isn't all that useful and in fact confuses matters by introducing a science without an obvious creative result, with "cuisino, the muse of cooking" or "sudoku, the muse of puzzles," but that wasn't well received.
the discussion is still open.
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