Creativity is an Art of Stealing
“Good Artists Copy; Great Artists Steal“– Pablo Picasso
There is a story about Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971), the Great Russian composer and pianist. He was about to start a new ballet. Instead of starting from scratch, he decided to pull up with some of his favorite classical composers and started correcting their baselines and melodies as if it were his own. In the end, he came up with his own set of harmonies and compositions masked from those exposed great works. He indeed quoted, “Lesser artists borrow; great artists steal”. Many people confuse copying with stealing, Copying is the exact duplication of someone else’s work, on the other hand, stealing is nothing but iterating those nuggets of ideas that already exist to build that up into something new which never existed.
To steal is by exposing ourselves to the great works of the creators, innovators, artists and to the best things that humans have done. The source from which someone gets to steal is evidently as a result of empirical thoughts obtained from the human cognition of the brain. As far as the best way concerned to steal from other people’s work is to read a lot, do some research, collect those ideas and inspirations, add our thoughts and mind to it, come up with something different by connecting all the dots and texts at the end.
There is another story about a great American novelist, short story writer, essayist and a painter named William Burroughs (1914–1997), who discovered the art of cut-up writing, by which it means to take a piece of writing, cut it up as and which it reverberates with our taste, reform or reshape those cut-ups, connect the texts and phrases to come up with a new piece of writing. To the surprise, William Burroughs has got this idea of cut-up writing from Brion Gysin (1916–1986), who was a painter, writer, and a sound poet. He wrote poetries by cutting the text pieces found in the newspaper, connect them to form new poetry which originated as a result of his connectivity thoughts. There was another poet who lived thirty years ago, named Tristin Tzara (1896–1963), who is said to have implemented the same cut-up technique, by cutting up the pieces of texts from the newspapers to write a poem formed by his own selective texts gathering.
In the end, it turns out that, the original creativity is the result of “the art of stealing”, fostering upon the already discovered ideas, giving them the radical approach to invent something new which doesn’t exist in the past. Nothing is traced as original; all ideas came from something which was already built on. Only a few great artists will admit to this fact. The great poet, T.S Eliot (1888- 1965) said, “Bad poets steal and deface it, whereas good poets steal and turn them into something new”.
In that case, human genetics is a remix of genes. We are the result of two different genes and all of our ancestors. Mix up of two different genes creates something unique and original that is we, who never existed in the past. The same is evident in the genetics of ideas.
Therefore, the key to creative stealing is not just to write poems like Shakespeare or create music like Igor Stravinsky, but, to transform the ideas from the people whom you meet, talk, listen, read, write, inspire, expose. Grab from them, bring it to your idea box, create a fusion of your own thoughts with the stolen pieces of ideas in your mind and come up with something new and original, show it to the World, so that it can be stolen from you by the next generation creators.
To be a wanderer of creativity, the artistry of stealing is appreciated.
References: Steal like an artist by Austin Kleon
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