The importance of being honest...

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation"

Thus spake Oscar Wilde, one of the most multi-talented literary minds to grace the world, with a wit so ready, dry and vicious that, had his residence not been a nation where sarcasm was (and is) the national pastime, might have been outlowed. In fact, the Brits may have actually debated it over high tea (and on higher moral horses)

"I say! That chap Oscar... mighty indecent with his tongue!"

"Spot on, old boy... I would put that down to his Irish blood!"

"Well said, old chap, well said. Such high-handedness and condescency... no Englishman would indulge in it"

But well, the English are forgiven their ego, for they've given the world Cricket, English, Machester United, and Kiera Knightley.

Anyway, Oscar Wilde was referring, probably, to the oldest religion that mankind has been burdened with, that which installs another mortal as god. Imitation, they say, is the best form of flattery. Somehow the word flattery seems out of place when not in a romantic novel.

Or so popular perception goes. c'est la mode!

Who can claim here to be wholly genuine? What is man if not a product of his surroundings, and what are surroundings if not the product of the man that came before this one? In parts, everything is but a copy. This is particularly true of art, or anything creative in fact...

Of course, this doesn't excuse the multitude of Indian directors who say their winter releases are inspired by certain Hollywood blasts of the summer past. Or the prime time shows on Sun TV of which about the only safe assumption we can make is that they have worse costume designers than the ones on Vijay. Faithful reproducers all, but something always seems lost in translation.

That something, of course, is Inspiration. That is the proverbial spark to the cauldron of swimming, murky colors that is experience. We see, we imbibe, we not fully understand. Some things affect us more than others, and those are the first to go aflame. Any person, who in all innocence believes an idea to be genuine, says only because he cannot remember where he has seen its numerous, interwined parts before. The masterpiece, the piece de resistance - it is nothing but the most optimal permutation of ages past.

I believe that people are better off knowing they are not creators, but improvers. To do so takes a great deal of pressure off you, and gives you the freedom to experiment without limitations. The truly creative is one who has genuinely forgotten from where his work is inspired, for only by forgetting who we aren't, can we discover who we are.