ONE SET OF RULES

Ideas in the world of literature are fair game. Someone said that once, and the copyright laws recognise the inability of regulations to prevent ideas travelling from one imagination to another. That's why lawyers are called in to dispute cases where the copyright law cannot reach. That suggests there's a real difficulty with the concept of ideas belonging - to one person or a company.

Then, when the ideas are released into the world, then you can't legislate for the influence of those ideas. They will travel in all directions and influence all manner of people. It will sometimes look like copying and we've been taught in school that copying is bad. But sometimes it will not look like copying exactly but something else, something more creative. It's a minefield for the creative imagination out there.

That's why I referenced Bob Dylan recently on this blog. He has been charged by voices in the media with several counts of plagiarism and he has defended himself saying that it makes no sense for his critics to be arguing in that way because all writers borrow from what is there and in their borrowing they then make the material theirs. I sort of go along with that in writing; not the simple reproduction of another's words and sentences and passing them off as one's own, but the using of another's ideas to create something that is different and your own. That, it seems to me, is at the very essence of what being creative is. There's been this shift in art and literature in the past hundred years or so to an impossible notion, that an 'artist' must be completely original, when at the root of every book and artwork, at the very heart, lies someone else's idea. And now we struggle whenever the root of a particular book or artwork is uncovered, whenever the creative process (still not fully understood) is laid bare.

There I go defending Dylan again. But then I read that there are reports that Dylan took umbridge at another songwriter having borrowed from his lyrics. The claim is that Darius Rucker of 'Hootie and the Blowfish' used some of Dylan's songlyrics on their hit 'Only Wanna Be With You' and that Dylan apparently settled out of court with the band. These are just reports, as far as I can tell, but if true they rather undermine Dylan's stance re the plagiarism claims made against him. There should only be one set of rules and those rules for everyone... allowing for differences between the culture of strict crediting of sources in academic writing and the non-referencing of ideas and sources in 'art' and 'literature'.

I was in a writing group for a while and once we were asked if there were ideas we had, pieces we had written that we felt weren't working and that we'd be prepared to let someone else have a go at. Very few of the group participated and there was a feeling that their ideas were somehow precious (because scarce?). I couldn't make sense of the fear these group members had. I gave something I had written to another writer. She then produced a neat story out of it and then began the talk of how she would thereafter enter the piece into competitions. She thought I would have a claim on the piece. She had not used any of the words of my story, but she had used some of the ideas. I told her that I had no claim on any part of what she had written. It was her story and not mine. All the words were hers (in that she had arranged them in the order they had) and she had made the ideas hers with what she had done with them. She thought I was being very generous; I thought it was logical and nothing to do with any generosity in me. That's how ideas work and how they travel. Was I jealous that she had made a cracking piece out of something of mine? Not a bit, because I genuinely had let go of the ideas when I had given them over for her use. I think that's how ideas in art and literature operate naturally and at all sorts of levels.

When writers have to acknowledge that all of their ideas have a root in something else, it seems to me crazy that they get so protective (and dare I say it, dog-in-the-manger) about their ideas. Copyright was put in place to give 'originators' of 'original' work the chance to make some profit from their efforts; it was not put in place to restrict the movement of ideas. Indeed, when the copyright laws were being drawn up, it was recognised that to restrict the movement of ideas was a negative thing. I think, philosophically, that makes sense.

I DON'T DO POLITICS, BUT...

Just saw on the BBC something of SNP's kick-off Party Political Broadcast for the move towards the big vote to separate Scotland from England. There was very little content beyond big Al announcing that we will all be thinking about the implications over the next few years (shouldn't it be a couple of years rather than a few?). The bigger part of the broadcast was a musical number... a classical rendition of 'Let's Work Together' with lots of advert-style shots of people smiling and playing and getting on.

Is it just me, or is this choice of song a little bit of an own goal by the SNP... 'United we stand, divided we fall... let's work together'! Divided from England we fall? Don't think that was what they were intending. Is this the level of things we can look forward to under a an SNP led drive towards nationalism? A bit botched I think. But it made me laugh...

THE ONLY CERTAINTY

THE CERTAINTY OF DOUBT

I recall as a teenager being a little envious of those of my peers who were churchgoers and who believed beyond all doubt. They seemed fixed and certain and on such certainties was built their whole lives and their own complete happiness (it seemed complete to me). My life is built on ‘less stable’ foundations. I could not believe then, riddled as I was with doubt; I still can’t – and now I wonder at the whole idea of certainty in anything.

Someone tells me something is wrong and I wonder by whose decree it is wrong and wonder then at the whole notion of right and wrong and think of determinism in its strict philosophical sense and in the impossibility of escaping it. How can anything be wrong in an absolute sense if determinism is right?

Then a scientist tells me that plagiarism is wrong, and the certainty of her belief is, I think, something unscientific! She says it is morally wrong and in every way wrong. She does not enter into debate on the subject but pronounces from on high, the high of the moral highground. And I am surprised at a scientist’s unwillingness to remain open… open to the possibility of something wrong in her own thinking.

Neuroscience is something new, a study that is in its infancy with many ‘charlatan’ minds professing to have discovered some wonder in the working of the brain, and with some genuinely clever souls discovering the same or a little different but discovering nevertheless. The truth is, (and there’s a sort of certainty in that perhaps) that we do not yet fully understand how the brain works, how consciousness works, how thinking works and how imagining works. We are only just beginning on that journey of discovery. But already there is enough for us to understand that the certainties we hold may not be so certain as we once thought.

There was a time when the educated people believed the world to be flat. Their conviction was unshakeable. It took journeys of discovery to prove otherwise and a whole revolution in thinking. And what have we learned from this? Some of us laugh at the idea that anyone could ever have believed the world flat; some of us don’t laugh. But, at the risk of repeating myself, what is there here to learn? To doubt; to keep an open mind; to always question; to always be trying to understand; to never be so certain that you throw stones based on that certainty. Isn’t that part of what we think of as the scientific mind, a willingness to remain open to all possibilities?

There are many raised voices that cry out that plagiarism is wrong. Some educated voices; some not so educated. The cry out even in the face of evidence that it is a natural part of art, the imitative element in creativity, the process by which many of our revered writers, painters and thinkers have grown. I am not saying with any certainty that plagiarism is right; but I am at least questioning what it is and why it is that it has been so much a natural part of the cultural development of our species. Who is there who never knew a book and wanted to write? If there is sense in not having, each one of us, to reinvent the wheel, then where is the sense in condemning the borrowing of creative ideas in art? I only ask the questions, from a habit of doubting and a stubborn desire for certainty.