THE GREAT MIND ROBBERY: ON NINA PALEY’ S COPYRIGHT AND THE CULT OF ORIGINALITY
EPISODE 11 MUSIC IN PHASE SPACE
COPYRIGHT AND ORIGINALITY
One territory of copyright that has been getting a considerable amount of attention of late is the question about the originality of music, particularly in the light of different prominent cases of copyright infringement. The latest maybe is the ongoing Williams v. Bridgeport Music, Inc, in which the estate of Marvin Gaye sued Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams for plagiarism in the hit melody “Blurred Lines,” claiming that the music was derivative, to that of Gaye’s popular “Got to Give It Up.”
The jury ruled in favor for Gaye, and the estate was granted $7.4 million in damages. That decision is on appeal, and it has proven controversial among copyright specialists and music industry insiders. Some have contended that the decision could negatively affect artists endeavoring to investigate music from past periods, fusing sounds and styles from well known craftsmen.
In Original Sin: Reconciling Originality in Copyright with Music as an Evolutionary Art Form, Emma Steel investigates the subject of creativity in music in a fascinating and critical way. Steel initially portrays the development of music’s components, giving careful consideration to rhythm and melody as the essential stepping stones of music. Rhythm takes the form of tempo, meter, and rhythmic pattern.
These patterns produce repetitions that have a tendency to be common in different styles and genres. For instance, the 4/4 meter is the most well known and widely used in rock n’ roll, while 3/4 is found in waltzes and blue grass music. But it is in melody, where originality is most commonly shown in music, and it is “the connection between melodic tones of different pitch and span.” Steel remarks that in Western melodic conventions tunes have a tendency to be monotonous in nature and shared across all music genres. This is vital on the grounds that when one separates music to its most fundamental components, it turns out to be evident that originality is more restricted than anyone would have have gathered. Steel remarks that “the utilization of recommended scales, keys and structures to design melodic lines gives rise to an audience’s dependence on Western tonality in order to make sense of the sound.” The outcome is an arrangement of rhythms and tunes that can be regularly found over a few tunes in a sort or time, as audiences become used to specific combinations that are in fashion at the time. Steel contends that culture influence both the creative process and the utilization of music, and general topics develop during specific periods.
Given the broad similitude of melodic creation over a period, the originality prerequisite in copyright law ends up hard to fulfill in music works. Copyright protects the expression of an idea, not that idea. The issue is that numerous basic components in melodic creation could be considered ideas in the event that they are broadly shared across pieces of a comparable kind or similar genre. To the untrained ear, all music of one class sounds much the same, so it turns into a fools errand to attempt to adhere to a meaningful boundary of where a work has gone from utilizing let’s say “commons” and when it’s it own thing.
Blurred Lines.
In any case, drawing these lines isn’t the main question. Since judges and juries should likewise decide whether the songwriters have been too generous appropriating something and they are accordingly guilty of copyright infringement. Steel infers that the present test for originality in music does not recognize the regularly subsidiary and derivative nature of melodic creation. It additionally neglects to acknowledge that some fundamental melodic components have a tendency to be shared across genres and times. She suggests that the examination of creativity should consider “shared characteristic in melodic works” and advocates for a substantially more extensive scope of unprotected musical ideas.
Actually, don’t bother me with original stuff
WHAT IS ORIGINAL?
Your Work Is Good and Original, But What is Original Is Not Good; What Is Good Is Not Original
Originality is the aspect of created or invented works as being new or novel, and thus distinguishable from reproductions, clones, forgeries, or derivative works. An original work is one not received from others nor one copied from or based upon the work of others. It is a work created with a unique style and substance. The term “originality” is often applied as a compliment to the creativity of artists, writers, and thinkers.
Originality is consider it to be an uncommon ware, something hard to find. We consider it to be something that is exceeded by ‘non-originality’ — by subsidiary, second-hand stuff of some sort. The other option to originality is redundancy; it is possible that I make something new or I duplicate what has been done previously. As Paul Gauguin has said, ‘art is either plagiarism or revolution. There is nothing in the middle’
The threshold of originality is a concept in copyright law that is used to assess whether a particular work can be copyrighted. It is used to distinguish works that are sufficiently original to warrant copyright protection from those that are not. In this context, “originality” refers to “coming from someone as the originator/author” (insofar as it somehow reflects the author’s personality), rather than “never having occurred or existed before” (which would amount to the protection of something new, as in patent protection).
POP WILL EAT ITSELF
The statement ‘Pop will eat itself’ comes from the English jangle pop band Jamie Wednesday, that held out about four years in the 80’s and then passed into oblivion.
The quote can be found in an interview that David Quantick wrote down for English music magazine New Musical Express (NME).
In the interview Jamie Wednesday predicted that cannibalization will be the downfall of pop music, due to the endless recycling of old ideas.
Plainly, there is less legitimacy in making a copy(something that is itself a duplicate of something unique). All things considered, each time some component or other is copied it winds up above and beyond expelled from the the three chord blues or folk song source, and therefore is loses yet another piece of whatever minimal hint of ‘reality’ may have remained.
As Jean Baudrillard says, the thing about simulation is that it quickly does away with the need for the original since the copies can very easily get away with copying each other, creating in the process and unending series of null or vacant worlds — worlds that bear only very superficial resemblance to the original article. In this case the simulated worlds — like the serially reheated dinners — also become what is essentially an insult.
Simon Reynolds Retromania claims that today’s popular culture is made up entirely of bits of the past, that where the artists and musicians of the 1960s looked to the future, their 21st-century counterparts are almost all looking backwards.
I suspect, though, that pop music may turn out to be not a post-ironic window into the future, but the final days of old-fashioned entertainment. YouTube and other online arenas continue to alter the way we watch our performers. The music industry continues to falter. In some ways, the success of The X Factor and its ilk is the last gasp of pop, which has almost certainly eaten itself now.
So the leading artists of today don’t even try to build a large catalogue. Lady Gaga is an international phenomenon, the only true pop star on the old model, but even she has released what is basically the same album three times, the second as a deluxe version and third as a remix CD. Leading veteran artists have a large stock of hits to sustain a two-and-a-half-hour set. Stars of the last 20 years don’t. They have a third or less of a repertoire.
THE “BIG FOUR” AS CLOSED SYSTEM
Nielsen SoundScan in their 2011 report noted that the “big four” controlled about 88% of the market:
- Universal Music Group (USA based) — 29.85%
- Sony Music Entertainment (USA based) — 29.29%
- Warner Music Group (USA based) — 19.13%
- Independent labels — 12.11%
- EMI Group — 9.62%
In a closed system originality isn’t only ‘an uncommon item’, it just doesn’t exist. It can’t be permitted to exist. Originality — which is to state, something that has not been indicated ahead of time, something for which there is no priority, something that has not been affirmed by the best possible experts — can’t exist inside a closed system. This is after all the meaning of a closed framework! So originality or uniqueness is a fantasy’; the closed framework can’t come out and concede that originality is ‘off the menu’ since it can’t confess to being a closed system.
The way that it can’t or doesn’t confess to being a closed system is the thing that makes it a closed system in any case. The one-sided system can’t confess to being one-sided and it can’t concede any data that doesn’t fit in with it its own method for seeing things; it likewise can’t concede that there is some other method for seeing things.
In the event that the closed system allowed originality into its dominion then this would blow the entire trick away. The lie can’t allow anything separated from itself and originality isn’t a piece of the lie. Authentic originality would unfailingly show up the concealed inclination for being an inclination thus the way the framework gets around this issue is by playing the diversion that innovation is hard to come by, that it is sparse, that it is a restricted product, that there ‘sufficiently isn’t enough of it to go around’. It is something that is connected just with the individuals who society marks as being uncommon and remarkable people, ‘the outsiders, the mavericks, genius’.
For some reason this ensures society against new ideas. On the off chance that The Beatles write such a bizarre melody, or if Bob Dylan writes some sort of weird lyric, at that point we realize it is because they are masters thus we ‘fail to acknowledge’. They are permitted to say whatever it is that they are saying.because they have forced their way through the system and imposed their genius to the “man”.In the event that you or I were to write a something similar, without the Beatles or Bob Dylan having made it okay to say it in the first place. Not just anybody can turn out stuff deviating from what is normal or usual. You must be approved. You must be an approved to be considered a master of your craft. Note that the criteria for approval have less to do with mastery and genius than with the socio-economic political and financial sets of priorities of the time.
This established or official way of being named (or ‘certified’) by society before we are permitted to turn out with exceptional stuff is a remarkable thing. It goes back as far as the establishment of the guilds in mediaeval Europe. Thomas Kuhn alludes to it in connection to his concept of the ‘paradigm change’
(…) the new idea is resisted to the limit in the first instance and the bearer of the new idea is reviled and castigated, marginalized and ignored. If the new idea still manages to break through the formidable defenses of the system then a different tactic comes into play and the idea is co-opted, it is made forthwith into the new orthodoxy and so the ultra-conservative, neo-phobic system gets to survive after all (…)
Society watches and judges, so we self-program little judges into our insightfulness. The judges begin viewing our thoughts, dealing with the crazy. Society supports the standard, the known. Legends are saints since they’ve survived excursions to a prohibited land, the obscure.
Like Nick Williams says in the Negative Psychologist this tactic of smothering or blocking small challenges, and co-opting the challenges it cannot block or smother make the system well-nigh impregnable. Orthodoxy does not care what ideas, what values, what beliefs it enshrines, just as long as it gets to place it (as a revered or precious object) in an appropriate receptacle. Once it has enshrined something or other, then it can get on with the very important business of repressing everything else for as long as it can possibly manage it…
This is like the punk movement of the seventies after it become a mere fashion trend, after it became just another way of seeking approval, another way of trying to ‘fit in’. Because it has been approved by the establishment, it is the establishment. The mere fact that we have been taught a particular poem at school, or given a particular novel to read, is enough to send us to sleep. Everything about the system has the function of putting us to sleep — that is the whole point of a ‘closed system’. ‘Closed’ equals ‘asleep’, ‘open’ equals ‘awake’.
Originality is tied in with awakening. It is tied in with seeing past the subjectively forced ‘authority boundaries’ and understanding that the world is greater and more extravagant than we had been led to believe. Consequently new ways of conveying information are blasphemous (or ‘progressive’) and they cannot be incorporated into a dead and mechanical system without it also becoming formulaic dead and mechanical. At best it turns artist into performers of repertoires, actors (don’t get me wrong nothing but respects for actors) but more often at its worst turns artist onto wax figures replicants or Manchurian candidates.
Openness cannot serve limitation without ceasing to be open—
Creativity is all around, it is in everything — there is no lack of it and it doesn’t belong to a certain group of artists and virtuosos. It is in all things, if no one but we could see the world in our own way, as opposed to seeing it again and again in the worn out, stale old methodology of observation that has been given to us by the system.
Right Holders
One of the things you notice is that the rights holders are like road trolls living under a bridge with the power to prevent the dissemination of art, to forcibly put an end to communication. The artists that made up the music have been dead for a long time. Yet before they were dead they had signed their copyrights to the companies that were exploiting the songs. By 2018 all those publishing companies are down to like five global mediate conglomerates that control all music. And, like Paley says, these rights are basically abstract financial tools that are traded between corporations. For example, a single song from the 20s will be broken into percentages, owned by multiple corporations with, ultimately, no money going to the artist that originally wrote the tune.
I could discuss the idea of copyright reform We could abbreviate copyright terms we could add duties to the business model but would this be enough? Like Nina Paley; I too intend is to nullify copyright in my own head. We all can and should do that. We are information receivers and transmitters. Data enters through our eyes and our ears and becomes information. It exits through our expressions and looks , our voices, our compositions, writings or illustrations. And all this makes Culture.
If the goal of Culture is to remain alive we must be openly transmitting and receiving information. Culture is a complex system, similar to a neural network. What’s more, we are neurons in an extraordinary mind. In an individual personality data streams from neuron to neuron and that creates Thought. Furthermore, thought creates a greater wonder called Mind. In the Great Mind, information moves from human to human. Furthermore, the sum of all minds creates Art which then go on to create culture.
(…) The Art that artists transmit contains all sorts of information that they first received from Culture. This might be language, symbols, aesthetics, references of all kinds. This information has to freely flow between humans for Art to exist, especially under adverse conditions. Just like information has to flow between neurons for Thought to exist. It’s through this flow that culture stays alive and we stay connected to each other. Ideas can flow in and out, and they change little as they go along and that’s called innovation or progress. But thanks to copyright we live in a regime where some information can go in but it can’t come out(…)
Nina Paley
I hear a lot of musicians that don’t play Jazz, folk or Rockabilly ask if they’re allowed to do this or that. They don’t want to get in trouble, compromise status by playing parts in a way that ULTIMATE GUITAR deems unacceptable etc and it’s obvious to some of us that the threat of trouble is dictating our choices about what we sing. Most people give it up and go play in cover bands or similar.
(…) Copyright activates our internal censors. Internal censorship is the enemy of creativity because it halts expression before it can even begin. If you’re asking “am I allowed to use this?” you may have surrendered your internal authority to lawyers, legislators and corporations. Whenever we censor our expression we close a little more and information flows a little less. The less information flows, the more it stagnates. Evolution, progress and innovation stall. And this is what we call “permission culture”. When you shut up neurons to preventing them from transmitting signals we call that “brain damage”(…)
BRAIN DAMAGE
Bad business models and protestations have led to an unjustified expansion of the U.S.’ copyright laws that has squelched rather than promoted creativity. With false appeals — “moral panics,” to perpetuate their backward-looking businesses. On top of that they end up with a model of institutionalized “legalized” plagiarism in the form remakes, reboots, spinoffs, cookie cutter stories over and over where “trailers end up being more creative than the final film or so predictable that a well informed viewer can actually describe in details the angle shots and lengths.
The copyright industries, particularly the motion picture and record companies, want to control customers, not satisfy them. They seek ever-expanding rights and draconian penalties to solve their problems. But piracy is not responsible for the failings of the film and music industries. It’s that they fail to give customers what they want. Faced with the prospect of new technologies, they’d rather litigate than innovate. Also the structure of large entertainment companies, is partly to blame. They’re hierarchical, top-down businesses run by executives who are afraid to take risks:
New-media tycoons like Steve Jobs create gadgets that generate demand for copyrighted works. While the film and music industries resisted innovation, they have been saved by content distributors that don’t.
[Chorus 1]
And if the dam breaks open many years too soon
And if there is no room upon the hill
And if your head explodes with dark forebodings too
[Verse 2]
You raise the blade, you make the change
You rearrange me ’til I’m sane
You lock the door
And throw away the key
There’s someone in my head but it’s not me
Nina Paley popularized the idea that Copyright is like brain damage. It’s brain damage in the collective mind, and it’s brain damage in the individual mind. Sometimes I ask myself like she did if I ever I ever should let permission culture into my brain. What’s more, why am I consenting to this restriction, and how much decision do I truly have about what information goes in and leaves me. Furthermore, the appropriate response is that I have some control I can open myself to mainstream media for instance, I can pick what sort of data to go along to certain degree. Be that as it may, to be on the planet and to be open means a wide range of information will come in.
From WIKI
There are multiple responses of the body to brain injury. The immediate response can take many forms. Initially, there may symptoms such as swelling, pain, bruising, or loss of consciousness.
Aphasia is the loss or impairment of word comprehension or use. Apraxia is a motor disorder caused by damage to the brain, and may be more common in those who have been left brain damaged, with loss of mechanical knowledge critical.[16] Headaches, occasional dizziness, or fatigue, all temporary symptoms of brain trauma, may become permanent, or may not disappear for a long time.
There are documented cases of lasting psychological effects as well, such as emotional swings often caused by damage to the various parts of the brain that control human emotions and behavior. Some who have experience emotional changes related to brain damage may have emotions that come very quickly and are very intense, but have very little lasting effect.
The solution I realize is an ever increasing number of individuals simply disregarding copyright.
I do not mean go plagiarize stuff.
Make it your own.
Pronounced dominion over your own head does not mean taking the easy route and pretending you did all the work. Flexibility starts at home. Allow yourself to recognize the influences and take it to the next level.
Consciously recognize the unconscious mechanism of self censorship that result from years of indoctrination
Thought police will still exist outside the head. What’s more, that is the place we need them to remain. Outside our head. I’m not going to help awful laws and companies by setting a station for them in my own head.
Being an artist means allowing your mind to be free of outside constraints and most importantly to allow it to actively resist the establishment of police stations inside your head by corporations. I never again will support or reject ideas in view of their copyright status. I need to be a liberated person, and a free craftsman. Furthermore, the main way I can do that is by overlooking copyright. Be that as it may, But I’ve been indoctrinated by decades of this shit. So, for me, ignoring copyright takes discipline and courage.
BREATHLESS
Art is a form of communication in which detail and form are intended as a meaning. This concept is referred to as aesthetics and related to the study of appreciation of art. In a matter the artists is constantly asking; “How can I best express this idea without jeopardizing the work as a whole?” For example, the album that I’m working on, “Breathless is a personal challenge to ignore copyright completely. At first it was really difficult because like most of us I self-censored without even noticing. The first time I heard my song “Talking to Die Now or Better Tomorrow” First thought I had was “Oh, that’s great” then immediately followed by “I can not possibly use that, it’s just a play on a Mississipi John Hurt melody. What happened then is that I have train myself to notice this acts of self-censorship resist them. I did not shut it out of my mind instantly and discarded the idea, which would have happened otherwise. So the result of me not shutting out of my mind instantly ultimately was this, I made a connection with something probably written in the late XIX century, recorded in 1928, received in 2018 and made it fit to travel another 25–50 years into the future. It took some mental retraining but soon a full world of culture opened up to me and I could create freely. Then I saw it, I had been crippled by decades of permission culture indoctrination. But small acts of ignoring copyrightto heal our collective brain damage go a long way. Like Nina Paley says (…) I hope you join me and make it art and not law(…)
Nothing is the only one of its kind; unlike anything else. For a work to have meaning, it must utilize language — it must “bode well.” It needs to work with images effectively living in the host mind: dialect, pictures, songs, designs. It can’t be entirely unique. It can scarcely be unique by any stretch of the imagination.
Son there will be 8 billion people on earth. The greater part of them look the same, — unoriginal copies — otherwise we wouldn’t be human. A human with a winding shell and foul, slug-like body would, by human norms, be very unique. They additionally wouldn’t be human.
You hear everybody say it, as though it’s a gut response embedded into the brains of business people and creatives. What makes you one of a kind? Have you discovered your voice? Be unique. It nearly doesn’t make a difference what the question is. The appropriate response’s a blend of disgorged self improvement listicles and the order to be unique. That is simply insane.
At the point when individuals say “be original,” — they don’t understand this — they don’t mean “accomplish something totally new that nobody has ever comprehended previously.” They mean “be unique.” If you’re simply replicating other individuals, for what reason would anybody focus on you rather than to those other (likely better) individuals? Being unique isn’t tied in with being new. It’s tied in with being not the same as every other person doing what you do in your chance and field.
Socrates, Descartes, and every other person who’s said a similar thing are correct. Nothing is new. There are just varieties. Your work as a creative is to be the variation. You must steal from everybody you can, gain from it, pick and pick viewpoints you like, and expand on it. Austin Kleonuses the expression “Steal like an artist” to clarify this. That is being unique. Steal everything accessible to you, and make it your own.
The theme from Beethoven’s fifth? Not new. Any psalm reviewed until the point that the twentieth century could likewise be sung to the tune of some other song (and every now and again was). Biggie’s after death #1 hit Hypnotize (still a most loved of mine) examples the track of Herb Alpert’s Rise. Boston’s More Than A Feeling is the base for Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit. Andrew Lloyd Weber made The Phantom of the Opera from no less than two pieces out of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat or something.
“ No More auction Blues” became “Blowin in the Wind”, “Bombay calling” from It’s a Beautiful day becomes “Child In Time” from Deep Purple. “You need Love” becomes Whole Lotta Love” by Led Zeppelin, George Harrison — “My Sweet Lord” …He’s so fine by The Chiffons, Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child O’ Mine” and “Unpublished Critics”, a song by Australian rock band Australian Crawl.
- The Strokes — “Last Night” … Tom Petty
- Oasis — “Shakermaker” …from the Coca Cola Ad I’d like to tach the world a song
- The Beach Boys — “Surfin’ U.S.A.” …Chuck Berry’s Sweet Little Sixteen
- John Fogerty — “The Old Man Down the Road” …ripping off his own song Run Through the Jungle
- Ray Parker, Jr. — “ …Ghostbusters
- Coldplay — “Viva la Vida” …
- Red Hot Chili Peppers — “Dani California”
The list goes on and on like the phonebook…Each time Max Martin makes a hit, every other person in the pop business references or emulates it. The whole universe of Hip Hop depends on samples! Music is unnaturally non-unique, however that is precisely the point. Development and thriving originate from taking something incredible, and expanding over it. That is your obligation! Be that as it may, you need to manufacture. You can’t simply duplicate. Consider PCs.
Pretty much every progression in PCs and programming has originated from open source networks. One individual forms something here, someone else takes that code and expands over it, endlessly. That is the manner by which we’ve gone from the introduction of IBM to floppy discs to the cell phone, and everything in between.
You have to “be unique.” You do. Don’t wait until you know who you are to get started. It just means something totally not quite the same as what it says. It implies that you have to utilize your capacities to “steal like an artist like a craftsman,” to test extraordinary works and expand on them until the point that you make something particularly your own. Nothing is original, so embrace influence, collect ideas, and remix and re-imagine to discover your own path. Follow your interests wherever they take you. Stay smart, stay out of debt, and risk being boring — the creative you will need to make room to be wild and daring in your imagination.
OBVIOUSNESS
Be Obvious And Eliminate Fear
Eliminate Fear And You Are More Creative
When you are on a practice room, on the studio or writing a song… you are being stared at by lots of imaginary eyes in the dark brush. This can lead us to be self conscious and this can produce fear. And when we are fearful we it’s that more difficult to be creative.
One of the jobs is to reduce the fear for the improviser.
An easy way to reduce fear is to perform spontaneously or without preparation. To Improvise.
from French improviser or its source, Italian improvvisare, from improvviso ‘extempore,’ from Latin improvisus ‘unforeseen,’ based on provisus, past participle of providere ‘make preparation for.’
Keith Richards likes to just charge and see what happens. Highly recommended. Then play it. Play whatever occurs to you. It doesn’t have to be
original. Normally the mind doesn’t know that it’s rejecting the first answers
because they don’t go into the long-term memory. If I didn’t ask you
immediately, you’d deny that you were substituting better chords progressions.
Then encourage the improvisers to be obvious. As improvisers we often feel that we need a ‘good’ choice or a ‘funny’ thing to say. But there is so much power in being obvious.
In Impro Keith Johnstone writes that when improvisers try to be original, they fail. “Don’t be original; be obvious.” When you state the obvious, you actually seem original. Paradoxical, eh? Likewise, the more specific the feelings, experiences, stories — the more universal they appear.
The trick is, what’s completely obvious to you isn’t obvious to anyone else. Many people can tell exactly the same story about exactly the same event, but if each speaks from their authentic point of view, each story will seem “original.
Here’s Johnstone:
“I began to think of children not as immature adults, but of adults as atrophied children… “I decided just before my ninth birthday not to believe anything the grown ups said. The next day, I decided to always see if the opposite could be true. I think it changed my life, I’ve been doing it ever since. It taught me to be looking for the obvious and not the clever. The obvious is really your true self. The clever is an imitation of somebody else”
Clever thinking is outside-in: thinking and acting based on external conditioning or expectations. WHAT WILL THEY THINK?
Obvious thinking is inside-out: instinctual, common sense, no-one-is-watching thinking. WHAT DO I THINK?
Effective improv is tied in with expelling these congruity channels and detonating from the inside out. Permission is one thing, action another. So here are two ways to be more obvious:
- TUNE IN
- SHOOT, PREPARE, POINT
Tuning in to yourself is difficult to do, and getting nearly impossible this days due to the 24/7 bombardment of broadcast, social media and the constant pressure to always be “on” Not a surprise when you think that the closed systems do not want to open. They want want you to be a captive audience. They’re desperate for your attention so they give you access to a highly addictive pre-selected information, specifically calibrated to to educate or enlighten too much rendering tuning in virtually impossible re-programming our minds to fear silence.
. The obvious thing is regularly covered under layers of tradition, so you can’t hear it. Listening to yourself is hard to do, because often the obvious is “strange,” or outright forbidden. And because we are distracted. The obvious thing’s voice is often buried under layers of convention, so you can’t hear it.
TUNE IN: SHOOT, PREPARE, POINT
Historian Jacob Bronowski said, “We have to understand that the world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation.The hand is more important than the eye” I find that carpenters are often more interesting than professors.
When you start in the traditional way, with “PREPARE,” you are designing. You are trying to control the future.
“It’s this decision not to try and control the future which allows the students to be spontaneous.”
If “PREPARE” is about the future, “SHOOT” is about the present. When you start with “SHOOT,” you are getting in there and seeing what works. This leads to what we think of as failures, But they aren’t failures! To even think that failure is possible is to miss the point.
Fear is about failure. “Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.” It is dangerous to conceal fear, but we are taught to do so! , “don’t shine the turd.” Don’t be controlled by fear. Let fear pass over you. Fear is about the future, but beware the past too. Bragging is about the past. I struggle with this.
So cleverness is about the past and future. Obviousness is very much about the present. It is of-the-moment. The present is wondrous. We don’t live there often enough. The past and future are “important.” We spend too much time there.
By trying to be clever you become tedious. By listening to and sticking to the obvious, you arouse curiosity. So get rid of clever, seek out the obvious. Listen. Get in there and tinker. Shoot first. Remember, this is how evolution works… It tinkers (mutation, etc.), it “listens” to what works without preconceived notions, and then it amplifies. We should do the same.
PERCEPTION
Most inventiveness lies in discernment. We’re not mindful of precisely what makes us novel, but rather we realize that 2 objects can’t occupy a similar space at the same time. That implies no two individuals, no two personalities, have precisely the same of view (nor a similar history).
Ever had a contention? What’s undeniable to you isn’t evident to your rival, Such huge numbers of various perspectives! The world is overflowing with innovation. Music is a transmission of a perspective to others. Ordinarily individuals adhere to their own particular perspective and reject others’ as doltish or insane. However, a fruitful gem inexplicably connects that hole, and as opposed to dismissing the other, the group of onlookers acknowledges it — and now and again even adores it.
The specialists’ test is to take thoughts other individuals say are inept, and show them in any case. The more unique a thought, the more individuals will state it is idiotic, and the more the craftsman must defeat to love it into being in any case.
Most “unique” thoughts are as of now out there, being hated. Who will work at showing a thought others have just said is moronic? Every new thought is dismissed at first. Artists just champion those lost, discouraged little images no one else likes.
Perhaps an artist gives a home to an image everyone else is dismissing. They feed and sustain it. It touches base in their brain as a spore from the center (the “zeitgeist”); they don’t really begin it. The thought is in “the ether,” however most people dismiss it or don’t offer it rich soil in which to flourish. For reasons unknown, the artist does.
GENUINE
My thoughts are not unique, they’re simply not popular — yet. They’re “in the ether” at the present time, and I’m articulating them since somebody needs to. I write this not to be “unique,” but rather to share what I see as evident. I need to discover “my kin,” individuals who can perceive what I see, who realize what I know. Since the contending gets tiring. What’s more, things being what they are numerous who contend with me do perceive what I see and recognize what I know — they simply aren’t mindful of it yet.
MUSIC allows others to see that reality reflected back at them, and in the event that they perceive it — if it reflects what they definitely know — they will love it. At the point when music truly succeeds, it just communicates what we definitely know, however didn’t know we knew. Like 6 year old I know said “I did not know I knew so much…”
A few things must be said again and again; we never feel worn out on them, since we never completely learn them.
That is the reason individuals go to exhibition and films and theaters and houses of worship and sanctuaries and ashrams and mosques and 12-step gatherings. We have to hear it, again and again. In case we’re fortunate, for a couple of moments or even a small amount of a second we “get” it. At that point perhaps we’ll rehash it to others. Be that as it may, rapidly we overlook it and need to hear it once more.
We couldn’t care less if it’s “unique.” We simply need it to be earnest.
