To Whom It May Concern

Dear Citizens of Planet Earth,

Do you ever wonder where ideas come from? Do you ever stop when inspiration has struck you and think, “Hey, how did I come up with that?”

No, you don’t.

Don’t feel too bad; no one else does either. They all congratulate themselves on their wonderful turn of phrase or their witty dialogue. No one thinks to look back into the wings and thank the wonderful, beautiful women feeding them their lines.

I realize that I haven’t introduced myself. My name itself is not important, as I have many titles in each culture. You can call me Calliope, the Muse.

Oh, so now you know who I am. “Hey! You’re one of those sisters the Greek people put on them pots way back when!” I hear all you ignorant yokels exclaim. “I thought you was a, a whatyacallit, a myth!”

Ah, yes, the Greeks. Some of the best stories mankind has ever told came from the Greeks. They even had the decency to attribute their success to me and my sisters.

Unfortunately, their tendency to not write anything down confused a few paleontologists that dug up those pots you all seem to know about. Since then, we’ve been labeled as mere myths, like Hercules or Odysseus.

So, you want to know more about me and my sisters, do you? Well, there are nine of us, all descended from Zeus, the unfaithful King of the Gods, and our mother, Mnemosyne. We are, in order of birth: me (Calliope), Clio, Erato, Euterpe, Melpomene, Polyhymnia, Terpsichore, Thalia, and Urania. We’re pretty sure that Mom got tired of naming us early on and she went for whatever name she could think of. We’re all especially sympathetic to Terpsichore.

They’re all on vacation on Mt. Olympus right now. We take turns with our time off so we don’t leave the world completely without inspiration. Not that you’d notice anyways…

In any case, this arrangement seems to work out most of the time. The only problem is that the one Muse left behind (me, at this point) has to shoulder all the work for the decade or so that the others are away.

The good news, though, is that I get that time to work on whatever we want to, be it poetry, fiction, or an angry letter to the human race for ignoring me and my sisters, without my nosy sisters prying into whatever I’m might be my one chance in a millennium to write this letter, so I’m going to get down to business.

All right – first off, enough with thinking that we’re mythical beings, like the Minotaur or those nasty Gorgons. Yes, we are immortal, and yes, we vacation on a mythical mountain inhabited by Greek gods and goddesses. But I’ll say it again: WE ARE REAL! Can you comprehend that with your tiny little monkey brains? If you still don’t believe me, just check out the bestseller list for anything; DVDs, books, CDs, it doesn’t matter. 99 of the time, the work there is a result of our inspiration. The other 1 is drivel that should never had made it to a distributor, but those were undoubtedly helped along with some assistance from the Devil. Sneaky bastard just wants more Home Alone sequels, I swear. If he weren’t integral to the whole good/evil balance thing we have going, I’d give him a piece of my mind.

Second – a little acknowledgement would be nice. Back in the day, the Greeks would put us on pots and murals, high praise in their time. Maybe you could build us a statue or a few fountains. Americans seem especially fond of fountains.

Third – and final – could you please, please, PLEASE stop writing those terrible romance novels? We put ideas for some terrific plots in your head and you run away with it, adding in phrases like “throbbing manflesh” or “heaving breasts”. You already have enough of these sappy stories (you can buy them at any ‘respectable’ grocery store). Any more of this trash and I will be forced to do something drastic. Try writing something else. Science fiction, for example. There aren’t many great examples of modern literature in that genre.

I’ll stop there; I can hear the rumble of backed up inspiration just waiting to break free. I should probably go release some of it before I trigger another Renaissance.

Until your next spark of creativity –

Calliope

PS – Remember what I said about the romance novels. I mean it! Don’t make me set Cerberus on you!