![” “Now I shall have to pay in my own person for those desires, she reflected: “for women are not (judging by my own short experience of the sex) obedient, chaste, scented, and exquisitely appareled by nature. They can only attain these graces, without which they may enjoy none of the delights of life, by the most tedious discipline. There’s the hair-dressing,” she thought, “that alone will take an hour of my morning”; there’s the looking in the looking-glass, another hour; there’s staying and lacing; there’s washing and powdering; there’s changing from silk to lace and from lace to paduasoy; and there’s being chaste year in year out… . .” Here she tossed her foot impatiently, and showed an inch or two of calf. A sailor on the mast, who happened to look down at the moment, started so violently that he missed his footing and only saved himself by the skin of his teeth. “If the sight of my ankles means death to an honest fellow who, no doubt, has a wife and family to support, I must, in all humanity, keep them covered,” Orlando thought. Yet her legs were among her chiefest beauties. And she fell to thinking what an odd pass we have come to when all a woman’s beauty as to be kept covered, lest a sailor may fall from a mast-head. “A pox on them!” she said, realizing for the first time, what, in other circumstances, she would have been taught as a child, that is to say, the sacred responsibilities of womanhood.” [1]
“The reason Weetzie Bat hated high school was because no one understood. They didn’t even realize where they were living. They didn’t care that Marilyn’s prints were practically in their backyard at Graumann’s; that you could buy tomahawks and plastic palm tree wallets at Farmer’s Market, and the wildest, cheapest cheese and bean and hot dog and pastrami burritos at Oki Dogs; that the waitresses wore skates at the Jetson-style Tiny Naylor’s; that there was a fountain that turned tropical soda-pop colors, and a canyon where Jim Morrison and Houdini used to live, and all-night potato knishes at Canter’s, and not too far away was Venice, with columns, and canals, even, like the real Venice but maybe cooler because of the surfers. There was no one who cared.” [3]
“Greek mousa is a common noun as well as a type of goddess: it literally means “song” or “poem”. In Pindar, to “carry a mousa” is “to sing a song”. The word probably is derived from the Indo-European root men-, which is also the source of Greek Mnemosyne, and English “mind”, “mental” and “memory” (or alternatively from mont-, “mountain”, due to their residence on Mount Helicon, which is less likely in meaning, but somewhat more likely to be associated linguistically).
The Muses, therefore, were both the embodiments and sponsors of performed metrical speech: mousike, whence “music”, was “the art of the Muses”. In the archaic period, before the widespread availability of books (scrolls), this included nearly all of learning. The first Greek book on astronomy, by Thales, was set in dactylic hexameter, as were many works of pre-Socratic philosophy; both Plato and the Pythagoreansexplicitly included philosophy as a sub-species of mousike[6]Herodotus, whose primary medium of delivery was public recitation, named each one of the nine books of his Histories after a different Muse, invoked at the outset.
For poet and “law-giver” Solon,[7] the Muses were “the key to the good life”; since they brought both prosperity and friendship. Solon sought to perpetuate his political reforms by establishing recitations of his poetry—complete with invocations to his practical-minded Muses—by Athenian boys at festivals each year. It was believed that the muses would help inspire people to do their best.” [2]
ALL IMAGES OF LADYFAG’S APARTMENT, AS PHOTOGRAPHED BY STYLELIKEU.COM; TEXT TAKEN FROM “ORLANDO” BY VIRGINIA WOOLF, 1928 [1]; “WEETZIE BAT” BY FRANCESCA LIA BLOCK, 1989 [3]; AND VIA WIKIPEDIA.ORG [2]](http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kpfsynrErf1qz93lzo1_500.jpg)
” “Now I shall have to pay in my own person for those desires, she reflected: “for women are not (judging by my own short experience of the sex) obedient, chaste, scented, and exquisitely appareled by nature. They can only attain these graces, without which they may enjoy none of the delights of life, by the most tedious discipline. There’s the hair-dressing,” she thought, “that alone will take an hour of my morning”; there’s the looking in the looking-glass, another hour; there’s staying and lacing; there’s washing and powdering; there’s changing from silk to lace and from lace to paduasoy; and there’s being chaste year in year out… . .” Here she tossed her foot impatiently, and showed an inch or two of calf. A sailor on the mast, who happened to look down at the moment, started so violently that he missed his footing and only saved himself by the skin of his teeth. “If the sight of my ankles means death to an honest fellow who, no doubt, has a wife and family to support, I must, in all humanity, keep them covered,” Orlando thought. Yet her legs were among her chiefest beauties. And she fell to thinking what an odd pass we have come to when all a woman’s beauty as to be kept covered, lest a sailor may fall from a mast-head. “A pox on them!” she said, realizing for the first time, what, in other circumstances, she would have been taught as a child, that is to say, the sacred responsibilities of womanhood.” [1]
“The reason Weetzie Bat hated high school was because no one understood. They didn’t even realize where they were living. They didn’t care that Marilyn’s prints were practically in their backyard at Graumann’s; that you could buy tomahawks and plastic palm tree wallets at Farmer’s Market, and the wildest, cheapest cheese and bean and hot dog and pastrami burritos at Oki Dogs; that the waitresses wore skates at the Jetson-style Tiny Naylor’s; that there was a fountain that turned tropical soda-pop colors, and a canyon where Jim Morrison and Houdini used to live, and all-night potato knishes at Canter’s, and not too far away was Venice, with columns, and canals, even, like the real Venice but maybe cooler because of the surfers. There was no one who cared.” [3]
“Greek mousa is a common noun as well as a type of goddess: it literally means “song” or “poem”. In Pindar, to “carry a mousa” is “to sing a song”. The word probably is derived from the Indo-European root men-, which is also the source of Greek Mnemosyne, and English “mind”, “mental” and “memory” (or alternatively from mont-, “mountain”, due to their residence on Mount Helicon, which is less likely in meaning, but somewhat more likely to be associated linguistically).
The Muses, therefore, were both the embodiments and sponsors of performed metrical speech: mousike, whence “music”, was “the art of the Muses”. In the archaic period, before the widespread availability of books (scrolls), this included nearly all of learning. The first Greek book on astronomy, by Thales, was set in dactylic hexameter, as were many works of pre-Socratic philosophy; both Plato and the Pythagoreansexplicitly included philosophy as a sub-species of mousike[6]Herodotus, whose primary medium of delivery was public recitation, named each one of the nine books of his Histories after a different Muse, invoked at the outset.
For poet and “law-giver” Solon,[7] the Muses were “the key to the good life”; since they brought both prosperity and friendship. Solon sought to perpetuate his political reforms by establishing recitations of his poetry—complete with invocations to his practical-minded Muses—by Athenian boys at festivals each year. It was believed that the muses would help inspire people to do their best.” [2]
ALL IMAGES OF LADYFAG’S APARTMENT, AS PHOTOGRAPHED BY STYLELIKEU.COM; TEXT TAKEN FROM “ORLANDO” BY VIRGINIA WOOLF, 1928 [1]; “WEETZIE BAT” BY FRANCESCA LIA BLOCK, 1989 [3]; AND VIA WIKIPEDIA.ORG [2]
