the pelican

once more with feeling

the words of others

where did that come from?

so many influences. written heard watched viewed.

who said what in what context where did i get that from when why how?

i am a plagiarist.

well my ego is, that's for sure.

as a kid, growing up, so many times i lifted bits and pieces, good turns of phrase, song lyrics, always absorbing everything like a sponge. sometimes it was conscious and deliberate. often it wasn't. often it just seemed natural. couldn't tell cliché from saying from quote from song.

writing papers and things in high school, grabbing stuff out of books for reports, sometimes they got credit, sometimes they didn't. i was a word thief. an idea thief.

but heh heh at least i had good taste. or so i thought.

well when it is conscious and deliberate, i guess the harsh reality of it is i consider that stealing. when it is unconscious, i suppose i consider that more of an influence.

once, as an adult, was in the midst of a long argument in a newsgroup. the only newsgroup really that i'd ever been much involved in. a philosophy newsgroup. and i got into this battle, this ever so typical battle, this trap of nonsense, the socialist/capitalist dichotomy thang, and in my ego's need to be right, i started stealing from old schoolwork, and at one point in the discussion, one particular post, think i directly swiped a couple paragraphs from an old school book.

some kind of desperation. can't really explain it. no excuse for it. the shame of it still plagues me, five or six years later. a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. and i knew it at the time, or at least realized it almost immediately after i'd done it.

and it started a panic in me that sparked one of my great schizophrenic events. it wasn't long before everything was talking to me again. guess that event just cranked up my fear full volume. fear that i was inauthentic. a fraud.

it was all about self-doubt that pushed me to a moment of cheating. believing that someone else would have to speak for me somehow. as if i was incapable of saying things myself. it was out of fear. and the need to have all the answers. the right answer. to be right. ego. pure ego.

funny though, about a year and half ago or so, my sis and i started a little very short-lived bloggy, and i did a little review of the da vinci code, and about three or four days later, i found large chunks of my little review almost word for word in someone else's blog. but i didn't get upset, or feel cheated. it kind of tickled. flattered maybe. it was kind of funny.

and guess maybe i had a certain amount of compassion for him because i understood from whence that sort of need arises.

but i didn't get all I ME MINE about it all. no squawking about intellectual property. that's just me. i realize many people do feel afraid of things being stolen. i do not grip my words so tightly. perhaps that is not wise. i don't really know.

with so much information coming in from so many places, often it does seem impossible to track what came from where, what sparked which thing, which phrase or word of piece came from whence.

how easily you can watch it in others. hearing people repeat what they just read in the paper or just heard on the radio or just watched on television. how much influence these things have on us. the brainwashing. the manipulations. the creation of reality. the spin. the view presented.

how quickly we latch onto things.

how easily a mind is influenced. swayed.

but when i did it consciously, that was different.

sometimes i find myself searching for words of wisdom. and always know it when i find it, because it speaks to my heart. rings in my chest. tingles.

but if know it when i find it, why search for it? why not just say it myself? why not know it? why look for something to say it for me that is essentially already in me?

ever know a quote-a-holic? the answer to everything is a freaking quote.

i've been one. heck i am one sometimes. every discussion i find myself saying, aristotle said this, or william james said that, jung was all about this, and it's because of hegel that marx said that and on and on an on it goes. endlessly.

sometimes it might seem like name-dropping. yet it doesn't seem right to discuss ideas without giving credit. but sometimes it seems as though that creates an artificial authority somehow. so and so said that, so it carries weight and clout and truth and worth.

sometimes i doubt my ability to think for myself.

sometimes i think i am a just a complete phoney.

sometimes i doubt absolutely everything.

sometimes i think i am just a combination of things and there is no me.

and maybe that's about right, really.

yet my ego has some desire to believe it is unique and special and that it must create something of pure original thought.

how many books how many films how many things are all the same darn pattern, same story, same trip, same kind of journey, it's all been done before. a hero with a thousand faces. just so many archetypes. so many patterns. so many combinations.

but whose words are these? how did i come to be? am i not the sum of everything i have read and heard and experienced and learned and shared and eaten and processed and regurgitated?

everything is inter-connected.

inter-dependent.

intertwined.

juxtaposed.

within a certain context.

what can be separated out and held out, isolated as the original? chicken or egg? what is truth and what is fiction?

my brain hurts.

but my heart knows.

just need to listen to it more.

posted by: limine at 17:33 | link | comments (10) |

Comments:

#1  27 February 2005 - 05:57

 

i've always loved being plagiarized even when it's hurt. my idea, still with me i guess, it that anything stolen from me is already obsolete, i've already moved on. in the corporate workplace i encouraged people to steal my code and everyone did, it surely was not a good thing for my abortive career, yet still, that this pervasive theft occurred thrilled me even more, because code operates, it enacts consciousness in a primitive way, so much more powerfully if more trivially than prose. this was a long time ago; i wonder if some animate germ persists even now. i believe it does, perhaps a single routine: in this way i am immortal.

Anonymous

#2  27 February 2005 - 07:28

 

yeah. guess that i feel that once i've said it, or written it, whatever, that it's "out there" and has a life of its own. memetic sort of theory, maybe?

limine

#3  27 February 2005 - 15:22

 

congrats on featured post. this one is deep, and i wish there was space left in my head for a good comment because you've posed some excellent questions here, and i have to teach about plagiarism.

i'll have to come back to this in a few weeks. great post!

InMyLife

#4  27 February 2005 - 17:29

 

i was just thinking about this the other day. That our belief is basically a unique permutation of the influence of people we look up to.

And in my opinion, it doesn't really matter if the idea is yours or his or hers, yeah, i don't care too much about being plagiarised either. I think what's really important is knowing the essence of it.

milktea

#5  27 February 2005 - 21:58

 

two things:

one, i always wanted to be a quote-aholic, but i have this problem remembering quotes. i can't remember jokes either. i have a hard time remembering the titles of books that i'm reading. heck, i can barely remember the lyrics from my favorite songs. i hum a lot.

two, all words are begged, borrowed, stolen. but, don't horde them. if you give them back, wrapped in a just a bit of yourself, then it's ok.

JoeSchmuck

#6  28 February 2005 - 05:02

 

Believe it was Picasso who said Bad artists copy. Good artists steal. that is the extent of my quotes unless you want to hear something from southpark. Whatever it takes your posts never cease to pocess something i wish i had and am not even capable of imitating.

rustymadgal

#7  28 February 2005 - 10:21

 

rustymadgal came up with the quote I was gonna use so you see, we're all in this together. i think the difference between plagiarism and quoting is plagiarism is when you steal something for personal, monetary gain and quoting is when you use another's thought to either process one of yr own or as an aid in explaining to someone else. sure, we're all products of all we've seen, heard etc but we're not the END product, not if we bring something to the table. The fact that yr even concerned about it shows that yr bringing original thought to the situation. and do you mind if I use 'my brain hurts but my heart knows?'

timbyrnes

#8  28 February 2005 - 14:05

 

use on, Tim. feel free.

thank you everybody for all the kind words.

limine

#9  28 February 2005 - 16:50

 

well despite all the confusion of too many ideas postmodern will there ever be any original idea again (?!) craziness, i suspect (or like to tell myself) that all the little pieces of stolen stories/ideas _do_ become quite new when they are incorporated into your little lived tale, never before known contexts (well i guess one can't know for sure) of your memory, freshly made up as you go along...

bashyrhead

#10  03 March 2005 - 15:08

 

Great blog!

Tinaliac2001

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