I have two questions:
I. Do you need to be original to be creative?
II. Do you need to be creative to be original?
I’d say this.
Originality is an ingredient in the kind of creativity that has true appeal, but you cant practice being original.
Yes, you do need to be creative to be original, to organize a unique life experience that you steal from.
As I mentioned in other threads, you should read the essay by Mark Twain called Corn Pone Opinions. It details how all opinions stem from other opinions already expressed.
Its all been said before. Nothing new under the sun.
Ever single experience and moment of life is just as ‘original’ as any other. This has precisely nothing to do with art, which is the subversion of pre-existing traditions, and always has been.
I know, that means that art must have always existed. And life.
The obsession with originality is very much an ‘artist as individual’ concept, one that can be traced back through romanticism into the Enlightenment, via the Renaissance all the way back at least to the Greeks. It happens to be bunkum. All art involves language. All language involves socialisation. One has to learn to paint.
Originality and creativity are two completely different phenomenon but they seeem to be one in diferent forms that is purely due to our perception. An act not out of reaction but action is creativity.
Creativity is much more closely related to insight but basically the creativity we see is just a reaction.
Another important query is that whether creativity is real or is it just a word to describe a phenomena that is not really creativity if thats the case then what is true creativity - (Einstien’s Relativity ??? Quantum mechanics ??? Calculus ??? or Even Math itself ???)
Can we not see that all these arent creativity but can be vaguely attributed to originality as all these are just a reaction.
Can we ever be creative ??? Basically the mind is memory and all our actions are a result of that memory, a reaction from that memory is all we endeavour and this can never be creativity and as a matter of fact our mind can only function in the realm of the known and all resulting thought is another form or a mix of existing phenomena and this is clearly not creativity but we can say that these are original in it that no body else had contrived so before.
Stop thinking and we can hope for some creativity…
In the arts, such as music for example, I see a lot of people concerned with being creative or original, and the truth is, it has probably already been done, what is important and what we lack in the musical world is not originality but honesty. The music seems contrived, and not real.
I think it is better to strive for honesty in expression than originality in expression, you touch more people that way. Being impressive is like, “whatever” but being inspired is like, “wow.”
That is how I look at art, who cares if it has been done, what matters is if it has deepth and real meaning.