A Twitter thread (now lost to the sands of time, and Twitter’s link format) from Dev Samadar last week (last week of January 2017) caught my eye, and I’m leaving it here as a reminder for myself first.*
To make truly original art, like original science, you have to traverse to the absolute edges of what is known now, and to get to the edge you have to traverse through what is known now. This is how science works too. The R. P. Feynman said that he thought he invented something, but it was done 500 years ago, then he thought he invented something, but it was done 200 years ago, then something else but it was done 50 years ago, so he was catching up! Then he did something that was done just a few years prior… finally he got to the edge and he discovered something that was discovered by him that very day, by him. And it was original.
Point is, if gave up, he would have never gotten there. So don’t worry about originality. Picasso didn’t get original till late in his life.
Kinda reminds me of the Helsinki bus station theory.
*I took a few liberties with the capitalization and punctuation.
