That nothing you come up with is original - somebody else has already thought it, written it, spoke it, acted it. For the life of me, I can't remember where I heard this, but I remember talking with someone one day about a phobia they had discussed in one of their writing classes. I can't seem to find the name for this phobia - and I've been looking for a while - but I remember that it was applied to writers. The fear of nothing they write ever being original. Which, in a sense, isn't that sort of true? The ideas we have for stories, papers, movies, etc, all of these...weren't they influenced to some extent by all of the things that we see and read and hear and take in everyday? (I would go in to a rant about how some forms of plagiarism in my opinion aren't plagiarism in my opinion, but I'll refrain.)
Where does "inspiration" come from? Outside sources. Everything influences everything we do, whether we notice it or not. It fits right into everything coming from myth. How many movies or books do we know that are influenced by some of Ovid's stories in Metamorphoses? Here's something my dad always seems to say: "Your own generation can't seem to write any good music so they just cover songs from ours" or something to that extent ;)
Sure there are a hundred versions of different fairy tales all over the world. They've been retold and refurnished and rewritten and spun on by different generations, and will continue to be. But they're all original - because none of them are told the same way twice. It's a bit like a game of Telephone. It evolves. Nobody tells it the same way.
Kind of like our repeated Creation Myth presentations.
Cool.
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| Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady |
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