ok its late and I need to go home
As The Tyde tells us in their melodic words of wisdom... “everyone is an actor, everybody lies, even those with the best of intentions, stretch the truth sometimes, accept it in your mind, baby you lie.”
Now this quote doesn’t really make a relevant point to what you pointed out below, but during this deconstruction, meanings slipped and I was reminded of it. Now lets forget those lyrics. Getting back up from the ground, I think what you talked about are several things ...
Just the natural subconscious way we are influenced. There are people who are hyper sensitive about ‘not-copying’ to the point where their creativity becomes rigid, out of the flow, out of the groove. They sorta have a bent-sense of what they refer to as “originality.” They say “originality is a must” but what they end up producing is nothing more than great attempts to be original. Now what is that but another way of being a “try-hard”? Its more artificial than natural. Its more a front than an honest expression that blossomed out of your loins.
My advice to myself is to not ‘copy’, and not ‘not-copy’. Just don’t fuckin’ think about it and stay in the zone. There is no copying if you did not intend to copy.
(uh oh, business idea... What if LimeWire automatically downloaded songs for me instead of making me press all those buttons that make me guilty? Officer, I swear I did not intend to download these songs. They just did)
However, IMO - what’s important is to put yourself in a different environment than your medium. If all I did was hang out with designers and talk to other designers about design - then I’m just swimming in the same poop as they are, baking the same formulas, concepts, ingredients within. Its like if I listen to NPR every morning going to work like everyone else I work with, then we might as well not talk about the news. Same with spectator sports. We’d all be just stirring the same pot of soup.
And what Elia said... “It all belongs to us” - which is to say nothing belongs to us. I’ve offended artists by telling them that I don’t think they really create anything, its not really theirs, but rather they only ‘point’ toward it. That their piece already existed and have a right of its own, independent from them. They were there to witness it, recognize it, and put a frame around it (so to speak). I’m not completely sure yet why I believe this or say it. Maybe its just bullshit. But right now its still the story I stick with. I don’t mind being wrong later.
Let me just say that I am not an pro-imitator, but I am not an anti-copyist either. How do we modify these labels when the intent is not fraudulent? Phillip once told me (in discussion about hypocrisy) that this is where the dictionary fails, in that it doesn’t consider intent in its definition. I thought Phillip was very smart when he said this. Was he the first man to understand and say this? Definitely not. The fact that he understood the idea and that expressed it to me in an honest way makes it his very own.
Blah blah blah...
Hey, you have to put this guy in your films. I’ve been Netflixing his stuff and he’s cool: Phillip Seymour Hoffman
Che
Now this quote doesn’t really make a relevant point to what you pointed out below, but during this deconstruction, meanings slipped and I was reminded of it. Now lets forget those lyrics. Getting back up from the ground, I think what you talked about are several things ...
Just the natural subconscious way we are influenced. There are people who are hyper sensitive about ‘not-copying’ to the point where their creativity becomes rigid, out of the flow, out of the groove. They sorta have a bent-sense of what they refer to as “originality.” They say “originality is a must” but what they end up producing is nothing more than great attempts to be original. Now what is that but another way of being a “try-hard”? Its more artificial than natural. Its more a front than an honest expression that blossomed out of your loins.
My advice to myself is to not ‘copy’, and not ‘not-copy’. Just don’t fuckin’ think about it and stay in the zone. There is no copying if you did not intend to copy.
(uh oh, business idea... What if LimeWire automatically downloaded songs for me instead of making me press all those buttons that make me guilty? Officer, I swear I did not intend to download these songs. They just did)
However, IMO - what’s important is to put yourself in a different environment than your medium. If all I did was hang out with designers and talk to other designers about design - then I’m just swimming in the same poop as they are, baking the same formulas, concepts, ingredients within. Its like if I listen to NPR every morning going to work like everyone else I work with, then we might as well not talk about the news. Same with spectator sports. We’d all be just stirring the same pot of soup.
And what Elia said... “It all belongs to us” - which is to say nothing belongs to us. I’ve offended artists by telling them that I don’t think they really create anything, its not really theirs, but rather they only ‘point’ toward it. That their piece already existed and have a right of its own, independent from them. They were there to witness it, recognize it, and put a frame around it (so to speak). I’m not completely sure yet why I believe this or say it. Maybe its just bullshit. But right now its still the story I stick with. I don’t mind being wrong later.
Let me just say that I am not an pro-imitator, but I am not an anti-copyist either. How do we modify these labels when the intent is not fraudulent? Phillip once told me (in discussion about hypocrisy) that this is where the dictionary fails, in that it doesn’t consider intent in its definition. I thought Phillip was very smart when he said this. Was he the first man to understand and say this? Definitely not. The fact that he understood the idea and that expressed it to me in an honest way makes it his very own.
Blah blah blah...
Hey, you have to put this guy in your films. I’ve been Netflixing his stuff and he’s cool: Phillip Seymour Hoffman
Che
