The Mystery of Creativity

Of course, 9 will forver insist that he's the one who wanted Murfy's fLaW to cover "Careless Whispers" waaay before Seether recorded their amazing cover. But really, it was my idea. Anyway, as much as it pinched to see that Seether had done so well with what I thought was a creatively unique concept no other rock band could come up with, I was willing to accept it as a coincidence until I saw this.

Now, the youtube jury is still out on whether this is a nice video (personally, I LOVE IT), but I think everyone is willing to agree that they've never seen anything quite like it, right?

WRONG!

Behold a video I made last year for an online competition. Coincidence...? I think not!

Anyway, despite all that has been said in this post, I have nothing against Seether. I'm a big fan. I still believe that they must have a mind-reading machine with which they steal poorly executed ideas and improve on them for commercial success. Of course, one could also postulate that I have a time-machine which I used to travel forwards through time, steal ideas and then quickly release them in shabby style so that people would think I had them first!

And of course, anyone reading this post will probably realise that this train of thought is totally un-original and stolen in large part from a fake argument that occurred after Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics, and Drew of Left Handed Comics happened to draw comics that had similar punchlines.

Talking about webcomics, one may notice that the comic today (oh! That's our news! We are going to devolve this blog into a comic!) may bear a not-so slight resemblance to Tim Buckley's Ctrl+Alt+Del sillies series. Well, that's because I stole his style since it seemed easy for a non artistic person to duplicate.

Now, the thing is you probably didn't notice this stole style thing because:

1. You're not reading this blog


2. The artwork ain't that great


3. The joke ain't that funny

BUT, what that means is that I'm successfully creative because I stole his idea and repackaged it with considerably less talent. Thus, no one will KNOW I stole the idea. They will think I'm being creative! Which brings us to today's lesson:

1. Steal ideas.


2. Ensure you have as little talent as possible, so that by the time you execute the idea, no one will link your idea to the original.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how to be creative.

(And if you'd like to read the hilarious book where I learnt all this, its by Scott Adams The Joy of Work: Dilbert's Guide to Finding Happiness at the Expense of Your Co-Workers)