Welcome to the Gathering Pod, the audio version of my weekly gathering room broadcast. I'm Martha Beck.

You will notice I'm not in my usual foresty environs, along with my partner Rowan, the gracious badger

mangon, and our little one, Lila, and Rowan's mom, Paula, we are on a visit to New York.

And as we drove in the car yesterday, I said to Paula, who is a brilliant writer and who hangs

around with brilliant writers in Australia. And we're talking about the books we're all working on

and everybody, I used to know not a single

writer and now almost everyone I know is a writer and I have to say it's awesome so I said to

Paula what are you thinking about lately and she said I'm thinking about the muse and I was like uh-huh

she's like I'm fascinated by the question. And I was like, uh-huh. She's like, I'm fascinated by the question

of what's your muse. And we all thought about this deeply for a while, especially Lila,

whose muse is hats and things that can be worn as hats, such as underpants. Everything,

everything goes on the head. She was born with a little, a birthmark on her

head and we're not supposed to expose it to the sun, so she had hats on since she was born,

and now everything's a hat. She finishes her dinner, plate becomes hat. So that's her muse,

but we were talking about what the nature of a muse is, and I looked it up, of course.

And as we all know, the muses in Greek mythology were the nine goddesses of the various arts and sciences,

the daughters of Zeus and Nemnossany, who, as you know, is the goddess of memory.

I bet you forgot that, didn't you?

I bet you've already forgotten it.

Ha-ha.

Nemosone is not with you.

Anyway, so memory and the power that creates the universe get together, and what did they

...