This is a FB post from Feb 13th 2014 , it just came up on my stories and felt worth sharing here.
It has implications for those of us who teach and our conversations around influence and originality, how we guide students towards the ingredients of their best artistic self.
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some thoughts bobbling around inside my head this evening.
Everything is synthetic.
At least, in the sense that word means ‘born of synthesis’. Language, ideas, art, progress, stories… the degree to which we fetishise the false notion of ‘originality’ as an objective reality, and as desirable over and above the thing itself, is not helpful. At all.
Let go: if a thing looks or feels ‘original’ it just means that no one of its constituent influences is more apparent than any other. Or that you haven’t experienced those things that influenced it. The perception of originality is a subjective observational position, not an extant embedded reality in ‘the thing’.
We build ourselves from the beauty and strangeness around us, choosing to process the things we see and experience towards our own end. Make great things with what you have, don’t freak out about the things that aren’t in your palette for building YOU. Seek out the experiences, situations, people and influences that will make you the person you need to become. None of those require fame/success/riches. All are contextual, everything is meaningful.
Being an extraordinary stay-at-home parent is way more impressive/important than being a mediocre stadium rock superstar. the metrics of synthesis are about What You Do With What You Have. And even then, the perception of those things is wholly subjective.
But let go of the pressure for everything to be new! exciting! original! unique!
Instead, be good. Be kind. Be Generous. Be thoughtful. Take every opportunity to make the world better for those around you.