Amateurs imitate. Geniuses steal.<\/p>\n
I’ve always found this idea comforting.<\/p>\n
There’s no such thing as an original idea.<\/p>\n
I heard that in a music composition class, although I think I read it in a Sting interview in high school.<\/p>\n
When I was much younger and a lot more unchecked with my egotism — these days it’s reigned in but not by much — I prided myself on being a thief. I would write a song and say exactly where I took each idea.<\/p>\n
I stole that drum beat from Basia. I took that bass rhythm from Duran Duran. That background noise is from John Zorn. I wrote those lyrics in the style of Robin Holcomb.<\/p>\n
I was confident my theivery was blatant but unrecognizable once filtered through my own sense of harmony and rhythm and melody.<\/p>\n
I’m doing it again.<\/p>\n
I said I’m “studying” ACO’s absolute ego<\/i> album to work on the second Eponymous 4 project, which is a euphemism for “stealing”.<\/p>\n
But it occurred to me — is it really possible for me to know if I’m really stealing? What if my sense of theft is actually imitation?<\/p>\n
What constitutes imitation anyway?<\/p>\n
When DJ Danger Mouse deconstructs the Beatles and Jay-Z, is that theft or imitation? When MC Hammer lifted Rick James’ “Superfreak” for “You Can’t Touch This”, is that theft or imitation?<\/p>\n
When Kurt Cobain lifted the chorus of “More Than a Feeling” from Boston for “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, is that theft or imitation? When The Killers sing about a “boyfriend who looked like a girlfriend” 10 years after Blur sang about “girls who are boys who like girls to be boys”, is taht theft or imitation? (Never mind both songs rip off the ’80s.)<\/p>\n
Today, I bought Soul II Soul’s “Back to the Life” from iTunes because I wanted to use that song’s beat in a reconstruction of a song I wrote 12 years ago parodying their style. (The beat I came up with then was closer to Madonna’s “Vogue”.)<\/p>\n
And just before I sat down to write this entry, I went track by track through absolute ego<\/i> looking for more beats to steal. I’m finding it easier to play randomly to a rhythm than just plucking chords out of thin air.<\/p>\n
When am I stealing? And when am I imitating?<\/p>\n
And would the listener notice in the end?<\/p>\n
Maybe ACO would …<\/p>\n
In a fit of irrational paranoia, I spent a few minutes yesterday jotting down the serial numbers of all my valuable electronics.<\/p>\n
Now that I’ve bought the same model keyboard that was stolen from me six years ago, I want to make sure I can recover it should lightning strike twice.<\/p>\n
There’s a superstitous part of me that thinks an object which attracted thieves way back when isn’t something to welcome back into my home. I think that’s culture — my mom was once adamant that we keep a moth fluttering about our porch light from entering the house. She said it was my grandfather.<\/p>\n
However much that primordial sense influenced the act of taking down those serial numbers, really it’s just a smart thing to do regardless.<\/p>\n
The following section are a bunch of notes to myself, but I’m posting them hear to make myself accountable.<\/p>\n
So far, I’m working on the following songs for the second Eponymous 4 project. I’m taking a few of them from A Ghost in My Shadow<\/a><\/i>:<\/p>\n