If you can't do it with a thrift shop guitar, buzzing amp, and your dilettante girlfriend on drums, don't bother. Unless you do it because you can't NOT do it, surrender now. If you're not creating because you can't find the time or energy or space, your equipment or resources aren't up to the task of your grand vision, then give up. You're a fraud.
But, if your writing/art/music/dance/acting teacher thinks you can't but think you must, you may just be onto something: Maybe not yet, but eventually.
Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to. Jim Jarmusch
In an interview for German television in 2001, Laurie Anderson answers the question Why are you creative? like this: ☛ It's really simple: it makes me laugh. ☛ It makes me feel like I can change things. ☛ It means something different everyday. ☛ What it actually means? I don't really know. ☛ I probably trust laughter more than anything that goes on in my mind. ☛ If I really am laughing, I'm thinking there's something here that is physical as well as mental. See and hear Laurie here.
An argument could be made that Picasso was the swaggeringest, sword swinging art pirate in history. I'd make it. The little man painted his own alternate reality with himself as its solar center. As an artist his fearlessness seemed to operate as if there were not a self-doubt cell in his brain.Everywhere he struck his creative pick axe he discoveredgold nuggets. And because of this, at any step of his career he could've stopped and simply stood in the glory and made a fortune doing endless variations from his pedestal. You could easily imagine assembly line Blue Period by Picasso™, or Surrealist Period™, or Cubist Period™, or a hundred other styles he invented that didn't have -ist names. He was possessed to paint by some devil inside and didn't stop until he died at the age of 91. In fact, some of the later years of his life were some of his most prolific (at least in terms of quantity). He painted exactly what he wanted and he made the world come with him. In other words, as an artist he was not only utterly risk averse, he was risk addicted. We are not like Picasso. If you're like me, sometimes when you do something well you're afraid to take the next step because you're sure it won't meet your expectation. Of you're too discouraged to take the next step because you're terrorized of failure, so instead of failing by admission you choose to fail by omission, by not working at all. So I've devised the Artist's Prayer: Choose a god, be it within or without, and promise to Him/Her to: I promise to take a small risk everyday. Draw the thing you don't want to draw. Play the solo you feel like you have no business playing. Write the scene/the character's voice you fear most. Etc, etc, etc. Whatever the feelings associated with it, accept them, feel them churning in your stomach or shrinking in your chest or drying your mouth or wherever and however you internalize it and understand it is not a bad feeling so much as an alive one. It is the cost of doing business. Feeling and sit in the feeling. Imagine that Picasso probably got turned on by such a feeling. Let the feelings rain down on you as you walk without an umbrella. Be the winner of you're own version of the wet t-shirt contest. Burn, baby, burn. And be proud that you did it all. Then, do it again tomorrow. We'll do it together. Hey, I love Picasso, but f**k him. In our own little universes, he's got nothing on us.
I was childish for so, so long: I walked around all the time wanting this and wanting that. 'I want to be happy.' 'I want to work better.' 'I want to improve my health.' 'I want to make a difference.' This, I believe, is the stance of childhood. The adult walks around, upright, deserving things. Because they do the right things and show up and make a difference, they deserve to be happy and work better. They deserve to make a difference. So wanting is useless. It's a hunger, and it's selfish. Don't want for peace; work toward it. Don't want for pain to be eased; work at easing it. Then you will be a deserving person, and the gifts of life appear.
Elizabeth Taylor, interview with James Grissom (1991)
