Facing My Own Unoriginality

I am, in short, unoriginal. Sad. Very sad. Somebody drove that point home pretty painfully tonight, whether intentionally or not. I think he meant no harm. I hope he meant to help. And if realizations lead to growth, then it did help.

I've always feared being unoriginal...boring. I knew my intellect was capable of a lot and my imagination felt active. I "imagined" all kinds of things when I was a kid. I played Superman, Dracula, and other characters. I loved fighting dragons and jumping over lava pits. I imagined having all kinds of magical powers and made potions out of yard findings that did all sorts of things and wanted to be a wizard more than anything. And yet, I don't know if I thought up NEW magical powers or fantastic adventures. I borrowed existing ones from movies I'd seen or, more commonly as a youngster, books I'd read. It's what kids do, right? Unoriginal, but understandable.

I wrote a story when I was in early elementary school. I illustrated the book myself in my own juvenile artistry. Mom seemed so proud of it, and she said we could look into publishing it. But somewhere in the back of my mind, I wondered how similar my story was to the one we'd been read a long time ago in school but the details of which I'd forgotten. Unoriginal.

I wrote another story in grade school about some kids in Nightmare Town, I believe the oh-so-original name was, and they had a pet bundog (cross between a bunny and a dog). There were cliches of cobwebbed chandeliers. I wrote a chapter about a terrible encounter with a bull that maimed the bundog. The bull encounter was also, if I remember right, my own variation on a story I'd read or heard. Unoriginal.

I loved designing houses on modeling software in my early teens, but I recognized I am not an artist, and so despite the fact that I really enjoyed doing it, I also knew I would need design training to fix that feeling that they were never "quite right", and I didn't have enough interest to go through such training (my interest was more in math and writing and piano anyway), and I didn't want to do what I recognized was a very amateur effort, so I just stopped. I loved making mazes as a child. But I made them so hard and so big that nobody wanted to do them. So I stopped. I loved making up math problems. See the two sentences previous to the last. I loved making up games. But I either lacked the resources to create board games or they were other games my friends didn't want to learn because they liked Tag and Kick the Can and didn't want to learn my new games with weird rules. So I stopped.

Tonight, I was asked, as part of a personality assessment, to make up a story about the stocking hanging from the mantle (yeah, from Christmas) and a Chinese-style lantern ball. I didn't want to. I hate being on the spot. I hate improv for that reason. I stopped enjoying making up stories long ago, I think, and now I was wondering why. It could be for a lot of reasons, as I look back at my life, but the reason apparently did not matter. I was deemed non-creative, too focused on "what is" to really act and create "what could be", which I had claimed was my focus, therefore supporting his assertion that I am, in fact, an S, and not an N, something he was sure of already and about which I have more to say in another post.

I was faced with the uncomfortable but recurring fear of unoriginality or lack of creativity. Creativity and originality may be separate things, but this is my emotional reaction here, and my insecurity or fear is kind of around both, never mind rationale.

In this moment when I felt like my originality was challenged, I realized that my "imagination" consisted less of new creations than piecing other stuff together. I've never felt like much of a "creator" despite wanting to be more of one. I've mostly been a tweaker. A conglomerator. A refiner. Even my imagined beasts and made-up creatures were really just bits and pieces of existing real and fantastic creatures thrown together. I was always a bit disappointed with myself for not inventing new and fabulous monsters and stories only pure imagination could muster. I realized, even as a child, that though I deeply desired to invent new creatures nobody could possibly have imagined, or invent new superpowers nobody had ever dared to dream of, I just couldn't seem to muster them. Though I occasionally came up with things I wasn't sure I'd seen or heard of before, I felt mostly stuck inside the lines of my own experience and knowledge, and that frustrated me. Unoriginal. Confirmed.

I sat there after refusing to make up a story about a sock and a light and facing the accusation of not creating anything new. When asked to name the last thing I had created, I just vaguely mentioned writing. What kinds? Ideas. Poetry? No, I haven't written poetry in a long time. Stories? No, I focused my writing on introspection. This quiz seemed hellbent on proving my lack of N-type creativity...and maybe it did so.

I remembered that even one of my most cathartic expressions, playing piano, is unoriginal. I never learned theory. I never learned composition. I can't improv. I have to learn what's written. It's unoriginal. One of my favorite hobbies, photography, is simply taking what already exists and capturing it from my perspective. Nothing new. Unoriginal.

So I wonder: how much of my refusal to "pretend" to be original doing such things as improv or writing poetry when I'd rather be studying abnormal psychology or talking about issues or playing strategy games with friends stems from my belief that very little in life is actually original except for people themselves? I think I developed a belief, somewhere along the way, that very few people, even among the most creative minds and artists, ever create anything that is actually completely original. All most people's originality amounts to is already-used colors, thoughts, ideas, and textures, reorganized to their own understanding or feeling and expressed with their personal style. Could it be that originality is found not in the uniqueness of the materials or parts but in the beauty or uniqueness of individual expression? Perhaps what makes it meaningful is that "it" came from that person, and the message or emotion they are conveying, not that nobody has ever done something similar before?

Have I let my fear of unoriginality and my belief that nothing is original paralyze me into refusing to express my own imagination because it would never be truly original anyway, so why express it except to people who already know me personally? Would I actually be capable of creating richly layered and meaningful tales, new to the world, but don't because I've stifled that kind of creativity enough to snuff it out? Or is it that my creativity is not in the fantasy realm, or story-telling, or physical arts, but in my presentation of my ideas and thoughts? Or is it that my creativity is not, in fact, creativity, and I would do well to accept that I am not, in fact, a "creator", and stop wasting energy on wishing I had gifts I never had, and focus on my true strengths and contributions? Could I not come up with "things I have created" because I'm too demanding on myself that the things I've created be original, and if they're not, then they're not worth mentioning? Or could it be that my fear of unoriginality is not just a fear but is, in fact, reality?

I'm still not convinced most people who fancy themselves to be "original" truly are so. I still think most are simply taking their own life experience, their own perspectives, their own dreams, other people's characters, society's accumulated lore and spirituality and mysticism, and reorganizing it with their own flare. Maybe that's all originality is? Although, I do have to say, I love the way Douglas Adams and Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (AKA Lewis Carroll) made up words:

"The mattress flolloped around. This is a thing that only live mattresses in swamps are able to do, which is why the word is not in more common usage."

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

And the creatures Jim Henson came up with are amazing. That, I suppose, is creativity. That is originality. And that is the kind which, to my frustration, seems to elude me. OK, so whether I'm incapable or I'm stifled by inhibition, I'm unoriginal. Ouch.

As for creativity, I suppose I find some comfort in remembering that when I was younger, I did make up and expand rules for games. I wrote a lot. I drew pictures which were basically boring but were reflections of me, with each blade of grass or each leaf on a tree individually drawn. I made treasure maps on islands with volcanoes and traps and enemies. I thought of what kinds of secret passageways my house would have. I imagined creatures with wings and magical powers. I pretended I was on safaris in my backyard. I doodled geometric shapes and little people climbing the letters of my book covers, sliding down them, showering in them, etc. I made radio "commercials" with my best friend. I made make-shift radio shows on a tape recorder I never played for anyone. I made crappy pottery in art class and sewed crooked bean bags to juggle at home. I wrote software for school and coded in HTML for fun in my spare time when the internet was but a babe. Most of the material may have been borrowed or mimicked in some way, and much was reality-based or "concrete" in some way, but I was always trying, always imagining, however limited the imagination may have been. OK, so I have been creative in some ways in the past. Yet I find a little sadness in wondering if that stopped and when & why.

Then I remember: just the other day, I was imagining what kind of secret passageways my house would have or what elements I want in my indoor/outdoor water garden, though I've not put any designs on paper. I write my strange dreams. I write my personal thoughts in my online journal, often trying to capture the emotion though rarely actually succeeding in a way others would be moved by. I've altered some of my photos digitally just enough that they're beyond the realm of actual perception but look closer to how I saw them in my mind's eye. I think of my own (admittedly untested) theories about things from religious paradox to interpersonal communication to the reasons for evolution of "gay culture" to where it is now. Then hope for my own creativity (however unrefined, and whether "concrete" or "abstract") is slightly, ever-so-slightly, rekindled.

Even if I'm unoriginal, I find something comforting in the words of Move On from Sunday in the Park with George:

Dot: Are you working on something new?
George: No.
Dot: That is not like you, George.
George: I've nothing to say.
Dot: You have many things...
George: Well, nothing that's not been said.
Dot: Said by you, though, George?