Xanadu: Roxie Peters as Calliope, Olivia Berger as Kira, Joshua Powers as Sonny, Debbie David as Melpomene

According to Greek mythology, humankind can credit the knowledge and inspiration behind any artful act of creation to the nine muses. These daughters of Zeus represented tragedy, comedy, epic poetry, music, and other media available to ancient Grecian technology. We are not responsible for all our great ideas, it turns out, but mere ciphers decoding what wisdom divine beings might whisper in our ears.

Today, it sounds silly to personify the creative spark in this way, but that’s not to say modern artists are any more adept at articulating whence they draw inspiration. Muses are not as easy to define as subjects: models posing for figure studies, or landscapes coming into focus before a photographer’s lens. They are not behind the raw ability of a vocal talent, the finishing skill of someone well-practiced in the sculptor’s craft, nor necessarily the desire of a painter to claim that ambitious mantle, artist.

The Greeks knew from Plato that shadows cast upon a cave wall offer but a single, limited perspective, and that freedom from the constraints of perception is necessary in the pursuit of knowledge and truth. Perhaps then a muse is what- or whoever inspires us to fill in the gaps left between our senses, cueing the artful interpretations of the metaphysical; universal elements we can’t see, hear, taste, or touch. Or, maybe it’s much simpler than that, and we just use the word muse to class up the idea that inspiration takes the form of a pretty person the artist wants to impress.

A more interesting question might be whether there’s any correlation between a muse and the quality of art she, or it, inspires. If an artist chooses a terrible person as a muse, can great art be the result? What if you were to turn a notoriously bad movie into a Broadway musical? Would there be a ceiling to how good that musical could be?

The spark of creativity behind the film Xanadu likely wasn’t issued by divinity — not if its Rotten Tomatoes score is any indication. The 1980 film takes roller disco too seriously to be taken seriously.

But in a literal sense, film isn’t really all that different than the shadows cast on the wall in Plato’s cave allegory. It represents only a sliver of the whole story, and an inspired artist can escape its constraints. Suppose the musical embraced the film’s flaws and answered them with camp, that brand of comedy uniquely qualified to strip away the sacred tropes of theatricality? Such a thing might turn the flawed wisdom of the muses into an altogether absurd inspiration, well suited to an absurd world.

Xanadu plays at On Stage Playhouse in Chula Vista until August 18.