Oh dysseus, won'cha come to see us&;#063;

When I wake up each morning there are a number of things that I
always have to do. Firstly, find out who my sisters are. Thelxepeia,
Molpe, Aglaope, Aglaophonos, Himeropa, Peisino&;#955;, Raidne,
Teles, Thelchtereia, Thelxiope to name but a few of my potential
siblings. There is absolutely no assurance that I won't wake up to
seven sisters, four of whom I've never met before, and by the time I
get to the shower all the hot water is gone.

On the day of the Odysseus saga I awoke relieved to see two familiar
faces, Ligea, and Leucosia. This inconstancy stems from a common belief
that we are a literary device and, therefore, to be treated like
polyfilla. We are stretched, warped, squeezed to fit whatever purpose
the inconsiderate author deems us suitable. Thus, depending on the whim
of a poet, playwright, painter or whatever, the dynamic of our
household changes dramatically from day to day.

Today, like most days, I am half-woman, half-bird. Occasionally I am
rather shocked to wake up with a fish's tail but it's something I have
had to get used to. Just to complete our sense of insecurity, and I
think this is the most upsetting of all; nobody ever gave us a definite
history. Some days I remember that I was given wings so I could go in
vengeful pursuit of Persephone, on other days I wake with an
overwhelming sense of guilt and knowledge that my wings are a
punishment from Aphrodite for being rebellious to love. It's all quite
disorientating.

I once wrote a letter to Homer asking him or her why this was, I
received a rather unsympathetic reply that grumbled on, saying that he
or she never received the plaudits he or she deserved and saying
something about unspecified gender being a lot worse than wings or
fish-tails.

I try not to, but it is easy to get desensitised to it all. I woke up
last week and decided that I was not going to get out of bed, there
would be no eating of sailors today, no shipwrecks for me. I spent the
whole morning rather unclearly rambling on the nature of my existence
and it wasn't until the next day I realised that the whole episode had
almost certainly been the result of an English student's long-winded
take on the nature of literature and myth; the author's ability to
control and undermine literary tradition.

Today, however, everything began just about as normal as is possible
when you are a siren. On the day when we met Odysseus and crew, if the
word met does not imply too much interaction, the morning started
beautifully. The sky was the kind of white-blue that you only see on
the very clearest days. Once we had got ready we went down to the beach
and we found that we all knew a song. It was about Odysseus and it was
quite clearly designed to play on his ego. It had lines like 'Odysseus,
we have waited so long for you...' This is not strictly true; we spent
a few pleasant hours sunbathing until we saw the ships mast breach the
horizon.

The song also said that we have some truths about the world to tell
him, truths that would change him and make him a far wiser man. I
suppose we could tell him that he is not the only one who suffers as a
result of the destabilising nature of myth. Myth, it has always struck
me, is, by definition, a kind of socialist idyll, a story that is owned
and controlled by the people. It's socialist for everyone except those
whom it is about; we are given no choice in deciding our own
fates.

For instance, I was recently shocked to wake up in a rewrite where the
Odyssey had become a musical. Needless to say we had a central role as
the all singing, all dancing sex kittens. I believe our big number was
called "Oh Dysseus, Won'cha come to see us?" Oh gods. It's strange how
time can change interpretations of myth. We never used to be considered
necessarily beautiful or sexy but in nearly all modern adaptations it's
just as much our curves as our cadences that attract men to go
literally head over heels. Why is it that in modern culture to be
attractive to men you need to be sexy?

It seems to me that modern interpretations are rather reductive because
the idea behind the sirens, much as I hate to hear myself reduced to an
'idea', is to play on the battle between sense and intellect. Now, is
it that in modern society the depth of emotion that used to be inspired
by music, by smells, by words has instead all been superseded by skin.
Music, writing, taste, smell have all lost out in their influence while
sex is given ever increasing importance. Maybe it's just me being
old-fashioned.

I'll get back to the story in a minute but while we are on the subject
of lost values I just thought I'd talk about the way 'modesty', like
'sex', has managed to gain undue prestige. Modesty has gone from being
a vice and, by definition, aligned with false-modesty, to being a
virtue. I remember the first time we heard a Chaucerian translation of
The Odyssey. Every time Odysseus spoke, and bear in mind that he is an
intelligent, well-spoken, strong, good-looking man, he would pre-empt
his speeches with 'I may not know as much as you fine fellows' or a 'I
may not be a great public speaker but...' Gods, it was awful. I much
prefer him when he is straight forward, I know sometimes it comes
across as arrogance; but after all, he has just defeated a fuming
Cyclops, I think he should be allowed a little self-confidence. Sorry,
had to get that off my chest.

We were very excited to see Odysseus, ship full of men, all apparently
ripe for the eating. The boat got near and immediately the wind
dropped, the sails becoming sad and droopy. Once the ship was within a
few hundred metres we started to sing the song we had learnt that
day.

Much to our surprise not a soul on the ship moved. Odysseus, always the
poser, was tied to the mast in a kind of Christ-like pose long before
that had become a clich?. His crew must have had something in their
ears to block the sound because they barely registered us, just kept on
rowing. To be honest it wasn't all that dramatic an event; well, not as
dramatic as the paintings and things make out. They just kind of sailed
by; Odysseus struggled a bit, asked to be let free, they tied him even
tighter, and then they were gone. It was all very picturesque, don't
get me wrong, the sun glinted off his oily muscles and we looked pretty
special, I don't mind saying, wings flapping, chests heaving with our
vocal excersions, but not much really happened.

There was next to nothing we could do. As the phrase goes there would
be more fish in the sea and, more appropriately, more ships on it. Once
we realised that they could no longer hear us myself and Leucosia gave
up and watched the boat from the shore as they untied Odysseus. Ligea
kept singing for a while longer, the words haunting and heartfelt in
her wavering voice. I noticed that for a short moment Odysseus looked
back at us, no, not us, Ligea, from the bow of the ship, he seemed
rather melancholy I thought.

On the way back home Ligea asked me "why don't we just fly over to the
ship and sing?" A very sensible question but sadly a question with an
even more sensible answer. "Body weight to wing span ratio my dear,
I've got the graph at home...sorry." Ligea didn't reply. Leucosia
offered her a thigh bone she had been picking at but Ligea turned it
down with a shrug, said she wasn't hungry.

I made a note to myself to write another letter to Homer asking him if
he could speak to the writers' guild or whatever as ask them to not
include heartbreak in our story, I think we have enough trauma as it
is. Then I realised it wasn't really necessary to write a letter, all
that was needed was for me to say how I felt out loud, so that author
and reader can all hear, live and direct. After Ligea and Leucosia had
gone inside, Ligea locking herself in her room, I went for a walk to a
clearing in the woods behind our house. I looked up to the sky and
shouted:

"Listen, it's all very well rewriting this story and I know you are
trying to make it entertaining and maybe you want it to appeal to a
larger audience but the idea of Odysseus and Ligea falling in love at
first sight is completely ridiculous. Not only is it cruel to both
Odysseus and Ligea, they are not even the same species for gods sakes,
but you've also completely discarded Homer's original intentions.
So...well, I don't know, can you change it back or something?
Thanks."

I felt rather odd standing there alone. When I got home I found Ligea
in a much chirpier mood, she apologised for being in a funny mood
earlier on and said it must have been something she ate.

The day had been, superficially, a dent to the pride. We don't often
fail to attract but today we had. However, on later reflection we began
to consider it a kind of victory. It was an important milestone in the
battle between sense and intellect not because intellect won but
because intellect made the concession that it couldn't win without
pre-meditation. The only way Odysseus avoided jumping in the sea and
swimming to his doom was not by a mental effort to overcome his
emotions but by an anticipation of the emotions he knew would defeat
him. Orpheus on Jason's Argo employed his lyre to help undermine the
allure of our singing. This was music to overcome music and therefore
it did not reflect on the relationship between emotion and
intelligence.

If anything, the episode with Orpheus and the Argonauts only acted to
reinforce our faith in the emotional power of music. So although our
encounter with Odysseus seemed to be one up for intellect, in the wider
view of things it was rather more of a concession to the undeniable
power of sense.

I went to sleep with the strange fear I always get, it's like a fear of
dying. I almost always get it at the natural end of a series of events.
I've got this sensation that I'm about to be cut off, it's as though
once the line ends I die, if the reader's eye flicks away or is
distracted I have a minor coronary. That night I dreamt of leaking out
of the page, finding myself stood next to the author or lying next to
the reader in bed as they read, finally released...

I woke up to find we had been rewritten into a kind of class-based
reinterpretation of 'The Odyssey'. Odysseus, and by implication, his
crew, are middle/upper class in that they can defer gratification. They
are able to avoid doing what their heart tells them at a specific
moment in the knowledge that it will benefit them at a later time.
Those who succumb to our formidable charms, i.e. those who throw
themselves overboard, are working class because they succumb to
immediate gratification. That was about as deep as the idea got but I
thought it was interesting nevertheless. I'm sure there was plenty more
scope for examining the way that the gods play hero's and creatures off
against each other to stop people realising there essentially
unchanging fate the god's underclass, a kind of divide and rule
theory.

It was a few seconds after I had this thought that I had the strange
feeling of fear again... It was mid-afternoon though and it didn't seem
like a natural time for things to end. Ligea walked up to me looking
glazed. "You okay? I asked. "I don't know what this means or why I am
saying this to you but I feel impelled to tell you that we are rapidly
approaching the word limit," Ligea replied. "Oh" I said. And with that,
I am gone.