Originality is the Art of Concealing your Sources

I had Andy watching Singing in the Rain with me the other day.  He had never seen it before.  Around the time we got to the "Good Morning" song, Andy looks at me and exclaims, "I didn't know this was from this!"  I've sung this song on many a morning.  

Another example--for some reason one day, I sang part of a Doors song at Andy one day with "Hello, I love you; won't you tell me your name?" which he chimed back with a cheerful "Andy!"  It became a call and response for a while.  Fast-forward to a couple of years later, there was a Time Life compilation commercial and a clip of that song starts playing.  Conversation went something like this:

Andy:  "It's a real song!"
Me:  "...y-yeah..."
Andy:  "I thought you made it up!"  
Me:  "...you really have never heard this song before?  You thought I made it up?"  *starts giggling*
Andy:  "Yes!  We need to buy this!"
Me:  "Honey, the whole thing is like $200."
Andy:  *pause* "...we need to download this song!"

This kind of thing has happened more than Andy might like me to admit.  Slowly, Andy is learning something:  I'm not as original as he thought I was; I just have a pretty good memory.

There's a verse that haunts me from time to time from Ecclesiastes, that there is nothing new under the sun.  I find this comforting on some level that whatever I'm going through can be overcome because it has been before, but I also find it terrifying that I'm not the special snowflake I think I am.  I've wrestled with these thoughts in my writing--what can I say that hasn't already been said before?  Is it possible to have an original thought?

So many things factor into your thoughts, from the more obvious things to the subtle and the random TV commercial jingle that you can never forget for some reason (CROSSFIRE!).  The exact combination may never repeat itself, perhaps, but even in compiling these various influences, is that then yours?  Yes and no.  A collage is made of many pieces of other things but artfully put together by someone else.  Every idea, creation, etc. is effectively a collage.  We have this habit of wanting to claim all of the materials as our own, but we are the vantage point that instead puts things together toward a purpose creating from the materials available.

And yet we fault the artist when their inspiration is so obvious.  How close to someone else's idea is too close?  I'm going to keep with the collage analogy.  If your collage has a single image, that's clearly plagiarism, taking someone else's idea and calling it your own.  If you have a collage that has three images in it, few people will credit you.  But take from many sources and suddenly "plagiarism" has turned into "research."  

Where that line is between plagiarism and research, that's a tough one.  Depends on the person to some extent and it also depends on what kind of idea is being pitched.  A book as compared to an idea for bettering the workplace will have some different standards for originality.  Another factor can be how much the "researcher" benefits from what they've taken (ie, take my idea and write a poem off it for your friends, that's fine; take my idea and land a million dollar book deal, not fine).  

And again, the more obscure your source is, the better, because then at least your collage is made up of more unique parts (and more likely to be credited to you, for that matter).  If you can build a collage into a collage, well, then we're getting all kinds of fancy, but that is what we do effectively in our thinking--taking ideas made up of other ideas made up of other ideas and filtered through our own experience.  As we live, we collect experiences and instigate others.  We're all collaborating as a part of something bigger by sharing our experiences.  How those elements may or not be turned into art from there, who's to say?  What moments stick with us from movies or life and what pieces will be quickly forgotten?  

I end up back at the same question--do I have originality or just a good memory?  Does it matter?  I still have the ability to surprise my husband, my friends, my family, but most importantly myself.  And that's enough.