[ 7 minute read ]
Approbation and appropriation, in my words
My brother was older than me when he died; he drowned. When we were very young, if I had an idea my brother who could run faster than me, would claim it as his own. When my ideas were good he was lauded as being clever and imaginative. By the time I reached the applauding crowd, unaware that my brother had claimed the applause, when I told them of my idea they thought I was a plagiarist, a stealer of ideas. By taking advantage of the order of events, as they unfold in time, my brother effectively, publicly undermined my intelligence, and worse still, my honour and integrity. It did no good to protest that it was my idea and my brother stole it. The damage was done.
'You could not have thought of it, because you have no claim to being special. You are young; inexperienced, and this is a strong and clever idea. You are not able to think like that. You must have heard it from elsewhere.'
I don't believe in blowing one's own trumpet. Unfortunately, my brother stole the tunes from a trumpet I never learnt to play. I always thought that if I picked up my trumpet and blew, the sound would be wrong. 'This is my song' would be heard as, 'Shut up and listen because I am about to fool you into thinking I am special.' I have never wanted to deceive.
Because I have, falsely, been the victim of public denouncement as a fraud, a copier of ideas, a cheat; when I was not; and when I was undermined by someone else to hide their weakness; their incapacity to excel; I find self-promotion to be despicable behaviour, particularly if it involves hanging onto the coat-tails of other people; 'appropriation'.
I love writing because I like words. Like playing with Lego blocks, it is the countless concepts that combining words in specific orders that pleases me; with each word a single block that makes a larger block, or phrase. If you tell me a story, I am compelled to never repeat it, without making it clear it is not my story and I did not create the magic.
I came up with the phrase, 'I like vinegar on my cake' to mean something distinct from 'sweet and sour'. I have a greater understanding of spoiling a sweet cake with vinegar, than relishing sweet and sour pork balls as a takeaway Chinese restaurant dish. I believe that it is impertinent to subsume anyone's carefully created concept and overshadow it with a claim to being the first to discover it.
The correct thing to do, if you find someone’s idea interesting is to wait until it is secured in history and then revive it, preferably by referencing it or asking for permission to reproduce it. This is integral to study with the Open University, or any university.
I think there are people who are inspired by others, yet have no recognition of it and claim any new idea as their own. The idea that has entered their head through someone else’s careful placement of words acts as a key for them to understand something they are consumed by. Such is their unseeing nature that it is their own narcissism that presents themselves as the true conceiver of knowledge, ideas and concepts. My brother was a narcissistic psychopath. He actually thought that he was being noble by making speeches such as, ‘I am nothing without the people around me.’ as he waved an encompassing and, to him, magnanimous hand over the assembled family members. I would think, ‘You are actually nothing, because you are a parasite of ideas. You steal excellence and drain the energy from everyone around you, for your own need to promote yourself’. Such promotion always revealed him to me as a fraud.
I was once quite a good artist. I write that in the past tense because I was pleased with my work and other people showed their appreciation by buying my pictures, designs, logos, and paintings. I had a portfolio that I carried from country to country as I moved around, to show people how wonderful I am. One day, I realised that I had not added anything to the collection, and realised that the only honest statement I could make about my creations was that I was once good at art. I could not make up a lie that related to my current ability. I gave all my pictures away. I had never painted them specifically to sell, and I only sold anything if people begged me to let them own it. If I am still a good artist, I decided, I can paint all of them again and I will do that, if I want to have fun. All of those paintings were me, or a part of me; they no longer are. Now, I rarely do that kind of creative activity. It is possible that I am a fantastic artist. I cannot say that I am. Because I sold some paintings, I can only say I WAS an artist. If I have a completed painting and have not sold it, I can only say I have a hobby. It is different for musicians because they provide entertainment for others in any number of spaces; band members; jam sessions; or serenading someone. If they only play in their own home and no-one hears them or their lyrics; it is a hobby, they are not musicians – they like and perhaps understand music.
Just to make it clear – I am not an artist, a musician, a writer, or a yachtsman. I can probably still make pictures; I try to like and understand music; I love writing words and sentences; and I once owned some yachts.
In a story I posted, about how I understand what ‘Love’ is, I made up some expressions or collided some ideas for effect. I came up with ‘The knowledge was like discovering there were ants in a lemon meringue pie, or a sharp strawberry tart at a picnic, but only after he had taken a few bites’; and ‘it is for the people who are wearing roller-skates on the thin ice of a lake, like Mimie, and are trying to reach the edge, but can only see the ice shrinking from the shore’; and ‘This is for the people who need vinegar on their chocolate cake, and for the people for whom love once washed through an open ended street, but now for them, stops in a cold cul-de-sac that no longer has a path out the other end; a dead-end that no amount of bulldozing with love will open again’.
Anyone can use these if they are not put in your books, plays or films, or other creations that you claim as being totally your own work, I CAN currently make new phrases and while I will use these few again, I am not about to show you how limited I am and use them anytime soon, except maybe ‘vinegar on my cake’ or its variants. It is pithy enough to be useful. But help yourself, just don’t consider yourself to be creative.
Anyone who followed the ‘evolution of love’ story, I posted, will probably know that I tried to use a template of the English seasons on which to guide how the love in the story unfolded and was expressed. That is what I do, independent of outside influence. I have never heard of anyone doing that before, or something like that, but I am not arrogant, conceited, or narcissistic, so I cannot claim to be the first to do it.
I don’t expect that I will ever be a writer. I am delighted if someone is happily distracted, or enlightened, or positively influenced by my attempts to make sense of the world. I don’t need applause or to be lauded. I don’t want to be famous or rich. I don’t measure success in those ways. Selfish success, for me, is to be true and robust. Selfless success, I think, for me, is removing my ego, so someone else can positively shine, but I will NOT be diminished, while I am in the process of re-building myself; nor will I allow my goodwill or creativity to be tarnished or sullied, especially not by temporal means.