what is originality?

I went looking for that quote about how great writers steal, and I got an extra bonus: 

When asked about his writing influences, the screenwriter Aaron Sorkin responded, “Good writers borrow from other writers. Great writers steal from them outright.” The irony is that he was purloining as he said it, paraphrasing the great T.S. Eliot, who stated, “Good writers borrow, great writers steal.” (from HuffPost, May 14, 2014)

It goes without saying that he's not talking about plagiarism. The reason I was thinking about that quote was because I was thinking about what I wrote about Jose Feliciano in my last post and about his covers of other artists' songs. It doesn't seem appropriate or respectful to say that he improves the songs he covers, but as I wrote in my earlier post, he fully owns them....which, interestingly, is another way of saying he steals them. 

When U2 recorded Helter Skelter, Bono said, Charles Manson stole this from the Beatles, now we're stealing it back. It's a cool thing to say and a worthy sentiment, but they didn't really steal it in the sense we're talking about here. It was very much a cover. They didn't really enhance or augment the song (I think). 

Someone(s) else that is a superb reinterpreter of songs is the O'Keefe Music Foundation. I mentioned them in my earlier blog post as well. Aaron O'Keefe wrote in the description box of their cover of Cosmic Love by Florence and the Machine (December 10, 2012), that 'This video marks the beginning of how we will cover songs from now on. Instead of note for note covers the students will strive to reinterpret the songs, changing instrumentation, arrangement, melody, etc..' 

One of my favourite examples of this creative augmentation is the song New Noise. I like that these kids do hard rock, punk, death metal, etc - all in their own style, of course, and sometimes the lyrics have to be adjusted to be child friendly (The Pot by tool, which I included in my last blog post, is a good example of that). It's worth noting as well that they also produce very good music videos. 

So, here is their version of New Noise. And here's the original version, by Refused. I listened to the original after the O'Keefe one, and I like both. 

Harold Bloom's literary theory has this idea of stealing as one of its core principles. According to Bloom, no one really ever writes anything new, they just revise the work of those they most admire. They regard the work of their precursor(s) as perfect - unimproveable - so all they can do is reproduce it, but, to make their work original, they deliberately 'misread' their precursor(s). Bloom makes much of the idea that they wilfully do this, regardless of the many writers who insist that this is not at all what they do - that their work is not about or overdetermined by the work of other writers, as Bloom suggests. Bloom calls this phenomenon 'the anxiety of influence'.....the anxiety that I, as a writer, have nothing new or worthwhile to add, so I have to make a space by creatively misreading other writers. I come up with a wrong interpretation of the text I want to copy and then I write that. One of the things I really like about Bloom's theory is that he conflates reading and writing. So, a writer's work is their misreading of other texts - writing as reading. 

Just in case you think I'm exaggerating (or misreading Bloom), here is his main argument stated in his book The Anxiety of Influence (1973):

Poetic Influence–when it involves two strong, authentic poets–always proceeds by a misreading of the prior poet, an act of creative correction that is actually and necessarily a misinterpretation. The history of fruitful poetic influence, which is to say the main traditions of Western poetry since the Renaissance, is a history of anxiety and self-saving caricature, of distortion, of perverse, willful revisionism without which modern poetry as such could not exist.

To Bloom, there's nothing benign about the process of poetic influence. He doesn't believe in the idea that poets might inspire each other, or interact in a way that is mutually enriching. I forget where he wrote it and exactly how he worded it (and don't want to go looking right now) but Bloom suggests that, where the relationship between poets is friendly and collaborative, if anything, that weakens the poetry they produce. Unsurprisingly, not everyone agrees with Bloom. Some poets especially, take exception to his views about how poetry works because it differs so markedly from how they see it working, and....they are the poets! 

but, to return to the O'Keefe Music Foundation songs, if there's some truth to the idea that no creative work is completely original and new - but draws on existing work - and I tend to think this is the case, even though, like many others, I think Bloom takes it a bit too far -  then ⇾ while we think of the O'Keefe versions as covers, there's a sense in which their work is as original as any other song. 

I don't think originality used to be such a big deal. Like, for example, Shakespeare didn't make up his stories from scratch. He adapted old stories, legends and historical events. He also drew on contemporary stories. It makes me think of the way hip hop music pulls samples from songs that have already been produced. Here's an example: 2pac changes (under pressure) remix. There's also 'Ice Ice Baby' which draws more heavily on the words and melody of  'under pressure', but isn't as good as the 2pac one (in my opinion). but anyway, it was quite successful and Vanilla Ice got into some copy right trouble and ended up having to pay rolyalties to Queen and David Bowie. 

But, especially in the 20th century, copy right and intellectual property became a big deal. For example, George Harrison got sued because his song My Sweet Lord sounded so much like the Chiffon's 1963 hit, He's so fine, and the judge ruled against him, although he (the judge) did say that he didn't think Harrison plagiarised deliberately. The litigation continued until 1998, and Harrison was charged with subconscious plagiarism and had to pay $1,599,987. That was simply because the melody was (admittedly) virtually identical. 

But I think - and I could be wrong about this - things are swinging back the other way in the 21st century. Like, sampling is a thing. Yes, Vanilla Ice got in trouble with his use of 'Under Pressure', but he used the melody, the words and everything. The 2pac song I linked above, just sampled the main melody, and used some of David Bowie's singing towards the end. I don't think he was cashing in on or exploiting a great song. The song also draws on 'The Way It Is' by Bruce Hornsby and the Range, and 'Changes' by Black Sabbath. 

The thing is, technically, 'changes' did breach copy right, but there was no copy right controversy or litigation about it. I don't think, in this era, there could ever be a repeat of what happened with George Harrison's 'My Sweet Lord', and I think a big part of what's changed is the way that technology has facilitated a kind of creativity that has an element of curation about it. Like, for example, on Youtube, as a result of the principle of Fair Use, you're allowed to play parts of someone else's videos (so their intellectual property) as long as you don't use too much of it and also as long as you're using it for a different purpose to that of the original video. Examples of acceptable purposes for fair use are: criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. So, you're basically allowed to sample as long as you do it in the right way. 

Technology has opened up the possibility for a much wider range of people to create content, so of course a lot of that content is going to be derivative and of course there's going to be a lot of new issues and complexity around copy right.