CREDIT: RCA RECORDS
You are not original. Artistic powerhouse David Bowie has admitted to using ideas from artists in the past.

You are not original. This is what the vast majority of artists, be it rappers, writers or visual artists tenaciously resist.

The moment you're born into this world — the moment your senses are affected by your surroundings — you lose the right to call yourself an original. Everything you've experienced affects you in variable ways from that point forward. You are incapable of being an unbiased entity. When you're born, you hear the doctor's voice, feel your body against your mother's, smell the flowers sitting on the windowsill, taste the milk, see the ceiling of the room, and you are no longer a blank canvas.

As we continue to move through our lives, we soak in everything around us and add brush strokes to our proverbial canvas. When we went through a hard time in high school, that angsty band really carried you through. Stroke. The haunting photograph of a tragedy in the newspaper. Stroke. The book you've carried in your backpack for a year. Stroke. The first painting you saw at a gallery. Your wedding song. That magazine ad. Stroke, stroke, stroke.

Not even artistic style is exempt from the fact that it has been done, thought, felt before. You retain it all and the culmination becomes your ever-expanding arsenal of artistic reference for when it's your turn to create something. Wilson Mizner, an American playwright, said it best: “If you steal from one author, it's plagiarism; if you steal from many, it's research.” Even artistic powerhouses — David Bowie, Woody Allen, Kurt Vonnegut, Pablo Picasso — admit to using ideas from their predecessors. And now we draw from them.

There's a viral video infecting the Internet in which a boy freestyle raps and as his friend calls out the names of famous rappers, he changes his voice to impersonate them. The video, with over 15 million hits, has received an uproar of criticism saying that he's not talented because he's just copying those who really are. The Originals. But Drake and Lil Wayne have influences too. Those Originals were dipping into their pool of knowledge gained from others and summoning rappers from their pasts as well. This boy is able to imitate his idols, but furthermore, he will draw from all of these skills learnt from his favourites and remix them into his own creation. It won't be unique in the sense that it came only from him, but it will be the first time somebody has remixed history into this way.

Art is a continuous stream where drops are taken out and put back in, but it keeps flowing as a whole. A beautiful hybrid of what has been and what is to come. Nothing comes from nothing.
Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.