I mentioned it to Vinnie, and he repeated back the line that everything is derived from other things. Yes, maybe, but this isn't so much derived as simply taken. I called the Fringe a Festival of Discovery back in 2003 because I wanted it viewed a different way. I didn't like the snear that some reviewers gave the Fringe, I didn't like the notion that we should all wait for some reviewer to tell us which shows to go to. The Fringe used it, but since they don't talk to me, I have no idea if they really understand what I was saying, or if they thought it was a good slogan. The Zoofest is removed a second time, I'm certain they simply thought it was a good marketing phrase.
Yes, everything is created out of what came before. But there is a difference between merely repeating something, and taking it in, processing it and and then spitting it out in a modified form.
The difference might be portrayed by the first Indiana Jones film. Steven Spielberg was influenced by others, he never denied that it was a look back at the serials of the old days. But, it was distanced by time, and at the very least he put something out there that hadn't been done for a while. But once Raiders of the Lost Ark was out, various movies and tv shows came along to go after that market. They didn't do the work to lookback to the old serials, figure out what was good about them, and then create a new character, they had to wait till Raiders of the Lost Ark came out.
I knew what I'd do with the internet long before I had access, before I knew about Arpanet. It was very much based on science fiction fanzines, and that famous Gestetner machine in San Francisco in 1967. But it was 20 years of waiting, and all kinds of other things mixed in with it. It's not the same thing as aiting fifteen years with internet access and then saying "Oh look, facebook is popular, let's use that". I sure didn't think in 1996 "Hey, the internet is the latest thing, we must jump on it", I was trying to deal with traditional problems of getting the word out.
Every bit of creativity is based on something, it needs stimulous to happen. But that can come from taking in a lot and processing it, or it can come from observation. You can look at a circuit and say "wait a minute, change this and you can do this...", but it requires an understanding of the circuit before you can make that leap. I once saw a whole different path for something simply because I read a newspaper article about the trespassing law in Ontario changing; others were unable to make that leap. But creativity doesn't come from "others" it comes from everyone. I can think of Great Thoughts I had when I was sixteen and they are not unique, in fact they were verified by the fact that I'd later read similar yhings elsewhere, but they were based on my own observation. I'd forgotten some of those early observations, yet the reality is they are what colors my view of the world.
I invented bike paths when I was ten, in 1970. "Invented" because at the time I was unaware that such things existed elsewhere. I can run down exactly what caused that reaction. But I can also tell about being 25 and realizing the error, that segregation doesn't fix things. Bike paths were a way for people to get tangible recognition, they are a way for municipalities to say "see, we do see bicyclists", yet they don't change things. I can point to where bike paths were first debated on the island of Montreal, all the points taken up back then. Yet for anyone who came later, Le Monde a Bicyclette came five years after, it is a different thing. They aren't reacting to something and coming up with a solution, good or bad, they are reacting by pulling an existing solution off the shelf. They don't know a world without bike paths, so they continue to demand them, even taking painted stripes on roads for the acknowledgement. The only public argument today about bike paths is cyclists versus car drivers, one wanting them, the other hating them. Very little is argued about whether they are the proper solution to the problem, that is lost in history.
Is creativity easy or hard? I have no idea. I am inclined to believe it's less about some ability than it is about external force that enables or disables creativity. But I suspect many people don't realize their dependence on creativity, the masses thinking copyright is outdated, not thinking about where they'd be if others weren't creating.
I want people to speak their own words, because that's the only way I can tell if they understand something or not. If you just repeat back what was said in that magazine article, you aren't telling me anything new. I am reminded of grade 7 or 8 science, where the teacher who otherwise taught English read through a book about how to fly a plane. Not only was it more about the mechanics of flying than how a plane flies, but did she understand any of it when she was reading straight out of the book?
Art at the very least is about speaking your own words. Yes, there can be horrible copies of things, but even then artists are forced to create using their own words, and hopefully they get better at it. If you don't start, you can never move from mere copying to deriving.
