Steal like an artist
Austin Kleon
Co jsem si z knihy odnesl?
- „Creativity is undetected plagiarism“
- Every new idea is just a mashup or a remix of one or more previous ideas.
- School is one thing. Education is another. The two don’t always overlap.
- It’s in the act of making things and doing our work that we figure out who we are.
- Jak vypadá hodnotově založené kradení nápadů.
- “The manifesto is this: Draw the art you want to see, start the business you want to run, play the music you want to hear, write the books you want to read, build the products you want to use—do the work you want to see done.”
- We don’t know where we get our ideas from. What we do know is that we do not get them from our laptops.
- “The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life.”
- “Distance and difference are the secret tonic of creativity. When we get home, home is still the same. But something in our mind has been changed, and that changes everything.
Genalogy of ideas
A good example is genetics. You have a mother and you have a father. You possess features from both of them, but the sum of you is bigger than their parts. You’re a remix of your mom and dad and all of your ancestors.
Just as you have a familial genealogy, you also have a genealogy of ideas. You don’t get to pick your family, but you can pick your teachers and you can pick your friends and you can pick the music you listen to and you can pick the books you read and you can pick the movies you see. You are, in fact, a mashup of what you choose to let into your life.
Garbage in, garbage out
Your job is to collect good ideas. The more good ideas you collect, the more you can choose from to be influenced by.
“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.” —Jim Jarmusch
Please note that books are but one of many sources of inspiration. So write your essays, but do not forget to go out and do what you love. That's where inspiration comes from.
Thefts for later
Keep a swipe file. It’s just what it sounds like—a file to keep track of the stuff you’ve swiped from others. It can be digital or analog—it doesn’t matter what form it takes, as long as it works. You can keep a scrapbook and cut and paste things into it, or you can just take pictures of things with your camera phone. See something worth stealing? Put it in the swipe file. Need a little inspiration? Open up the swipe file.
“It is better to take what does not belong to you than to let it lie around neglected.” —Mark Twain
Fake it till you make it
I love this phrase. There are two ways to read it:
1. Pretend to be something you’re not until you are—fake it until you’re successful, until everybody sees you the way you want them to;
2. Pretend to be making something until you actually make something. I love both readings—you have to dress for the job you want, not the job you have, and you have to start doing the work you want to be doing.
The point is: All the world’s a stage. Creative work is a kind of theater. The stage is your studio, your desk, or your workstation. The costume is your outfit—your painting pants, your business suit, or that funny hat that helps you think. The props are your materials, your tools, and your medium. The script is just plain old time. An hour here, or an hour there—just time measured out for things to happen.
Ethical stealing
The not so secret formula
It’s a two-step process. Step one, “do good work,” is incredibly hard. There are no shortcuts. Make stuff every day. Know you’re going to suck for a while. Fail. Get better. Step two, “share it with people,” was really hard up until about ten years ago or so. Now, it’s very simple: “Put your stuff on the Internet.”
