Imagination

I like to think I’m creative. Like to think. I’m probably not as creative as I think for two reasons. Number one in the reasoning stakes, I simply don’t do enough creating. Yeah I have me blog and I act, but I used to spend hours writing plays or poems or stories. Hours and hours, wandering around, thinking of clever and interesting things and then tapping away at a keyboard furiously for half hour and then back to the thinking. I’m not sure any of my musings were any good, but I enjoyed it. I simply don’t do that any more. I don’t feel I have the time or the energy now. And if I have free time, I like to play computer games and enjoying other people’s creativity.

The blog is a great outlet for me. I have this space to write down the things that are in my head and swear and rant and be passionate. And some people actually read it, which is always lovely. I get to write and create, but number two in the reasoning stakes is that I worry sometimes that what I write is influenced by outside sources too much. Podcasts, radio, books, TV. All of these things provide me with inspiration and leaves me wondering if I am overly influenced and I am just a mouth piece for other people’s creativity. I hope that I put enough spin on it so that it becomes my own.

I love to act, if you didn’t already know. And again I am influenced in this creative pursuit heavily and rightly so. There is a text, a play that needs to be performed. As an actor, I am constrained by the words my character is meant to say. I am hard on myself when learning lines and I do the best that I can to not go off script. (This is where my awe and admiration for those who do improv comes in, because I actually like and feel comfortable in having that framework and can’t imagine having to act without a script.) I get to impart myself onto the text and create my own character. But again, I do this in conjunction with the director/s. It is their vision, I just play in it. It’s a collaborative process which I really enjoy as I like to work with directors to create. And those who provide the props, set, lighting and sound all come together to help me create. And I hope that there’s enough of me within that character so that my creativity gets its chance to shine.

I am beginning to think now though that there are no new ideas. I look at fashion currently and apparently we’ve gone back to the time of the early 2000s. It’s not new, it’s recycled. And I look at our politics and again we’re stuck in Thatcherism and New Labour on either side of the divide. There’s nothing new, just yearning for the old. And I feel this in my bones. I feel like I don’t have any new ideas and nothing I create is truly new. And if I want to try and for example write my own play, it will be impacted upon by what I’ve witnessed before. I genuinely would steal ideas from all outlets to come up with ‘my’ idea. I try not to feel that bad about it though. I remember Elvis Costello actually defended Olivia Rodrigo from plagiarism by saying:

It’s how rock ‘n’ roll works. You take the broken pieces of another thrill and make a brand new toy. That’s what I did.

elvis costello

Even Mark Twain said all of this, a long time ago:

There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.

mark twain – mark twain’s own autobiography: the chapters from the north american review