Through self-acceptance and at the greater loss of ego, I now understand a singular truth:
Nothing is original.
Every medium of cognitive, (sub)conscious, theatre of thought has already been granted its space in reality.
Each stroke of the brush is but a sample of life that has since been lived. Each melody is but a vibration sung by stars whomst have since faded and lost their light. Perhaps they, too, collapsed and were repainted as the darkness between The Starry Night.
Ancient mythology and our creation mythos fall subject to this inevitable ethos. Take, for example, The Curse of Atreus and its retelling of the story of generational trauma throughout an existence that transcends humanity.
The tragedy that befalls The House of Atreus in itself is unoriginal and is an artistic concept that has been brushedand sampled by a myriad of artists throughout history.
Eden, Eve, and Adam and the depiction of original sin does not differ from the story of Tantalus and his damnation into the entity of Tartarus. The story of the tantalizing apple undoubtedly sampled the Abrahamic religions, with a re-brushing for a new era.
Each mosaic of stained glass depicts the story of a fallen kingdom—that of which the architecture has since faded and been reforged by the dimensions of time. By nature, the depicted mosaic would there-inevitably transform into the very same dust that it had sampled itself from.
Same sample, different time.
When the sun stumbled, it often fell behind the mountains where it shed the last of its flames upon the horizon. These last flames of the day flickered like the plume of the mythological fox—each tail providing a spin-off worthy of its own folksong.
To what lengths must an artist go to satisfy their incessant need for perfection? To what lengths is originality sanctified so that a painter must construct their own brush to paint upon an easel?
If the unnamed artist cannot kill the boar for which the bristles of the brush are sourced, must the artist use their own hair to impart originality in their piece?
A ridiculous, extrapolated metaphor it is, yes. This is often the level of perfectionism an artist may hold themselves to in light of never seeing others fail.
The false dichotomy of coming from nothing in an era of manufactured perfection breeds a characterization of unacknowledged privilege. Once the trace lines are erased from a fully drawn owl, one does not know where the starting point originated, thus giving the perception of innate perfection since the first line drawn.
With Artificial Intelligence (AI) being the next ‘big thing’ how we navigate the line between inspiration and imitation?
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Palimpsest
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Through self-acceptance and at the greater loss of ego, I now understand a singular truth:
Nothing is original.
Every medium of cognitive, (sub)conscious, theatre of thought has already been granted its space in reality.
Each stroke of the brush is but a sample of life that has since been lived. Each melody is but a vibration sung by stars whomst have since faded and lost their light. Perhaps they, too, collapsed and were repainted as the darkness between The Starry Night.
Ancient mythology and our creation mythos fall subject to this inevitable ethos. Take, for example, The Curse of Atreus and its retelling of the story of generational trauma throughout an existence that transcends humanity.
The tragedy that befalls The House of Atreus in itself is unoriginal and is an artistic concept that has been brushed and sampled by a myriad of artists throughout history.
Eden, Eve, and Adam and the depiction of original sin does not differ from the story of Tantalus and his damnation into the entity of Tartarus. The story of the tantalizing apple undoubtedly sampled the Abrahamic religions, with a re-brushing for a new era.
Each mosaic of stained glass depicts the story of a fallen kingdom—that of which the architecture has since faded and been reforged by the dimensions of time. By nature, the depicted mosaic would there-inevitably transform into the very same dust that it had sampled itself from.
Same sample, different time.
When the sun stumbled, it often fell behind the mountains where it shed the last of its flames upon the horizon. These last flames of the day flickered like the plume of the mythological fox—each tail providing a spin-off worthy of its own folksong.
To what lengths must an artist go to satisfy their incessant need for perfection? To what lengths is originality sanctified so that a painter must construct their own brush to paint upon an easel?
If the unnamed artist cannot kill the boar for which the bristles of the brush are sourced, must the artist use their own hair to impart originality in their piece?
A ridiculous, extrapolated metaphor it is, yes. This is often the level of perfectionism an artist may hold themselves to in light of never seeing others fail.
The false dichotomy of coming from nothing in an era of manufactured perfection breeds a characterization of unacknowledged privilege. Once the trace lines are erased from a fully drawn owl, one does not know where the starting point originated, thus giving the perception of innate perfection since the first line drawn.
With Artificial Intelligence (AI) being the next ‘big thing’ how we navigate the line between inspiration and imitation?