“Good artists copy. Great artists steal” — we’ve all heard it a million times. Steve Jobs stole the phrase outright from Picasso. And he was right to do so. Copying slavishly is easy — heck, that’s all ChatGPT does. But to steal something means you take it — and make it your own.
It’s a beautiful moment when something inspires us to create. A transcendent work of art, an inspiring song, a beautiful poem, a simply clever turn of phrase — that moment in life when you come across something so resonant that you can’t help but have two simultaneous thoughts: this makes me want to create something beautiful / I could never create something so beautiful.
When I was younger, I was taught that all art and human creativity is part of a conversation that stretches back through time — and I took that to mean that in order to meaningfully contribute to that conversation, I had to understand what the context of what I would ‘say’ would mean… Which meant that I’d assigned myself the task of understanding the whole of human history and artistic movements going back thousands of years before I could even get started. If I didn’t, I thought, then all I would be contributing would be just ignorant noise.
This was a mistake, and one of my few regrets. I hope this helps you shortcut that process.
With the wisdom of age, I realized a couple of things. Number one:
No one knows the whole conversation of art.
There’s simply too much to know. All the great artists you love? They only knew a tiny piece of it. Now, don’t let this be a barrier to taking the effort to dig in and do some learning — when you find something that inspires or touches your soul, respond to it. Let it drive you to make something. But then, find out: Who made it? Why? What were they thinking? Were they responding to something else? You just might find even more art that changes the way you see the world, yourself, and your place in it.
Number two:
No one else sees what you see.
You are irreplaceable, infinitely unique. You may be imitated, but never duplicated. No one will ever truly be in your head, or in your shoes. What you see is true. And if it’s true for you, it’s probably true for a lot of other people too, even if they might now know it yet.
So, back to stealing.
The first rule of creativity is: Be inspired. And when you find something that touches your one wild and immutable soul, let it drive you to create something too. The second rule of creativity: Imitate slavishly. Try to sound like your favorite writers. Duplicate the style of your favorite artists. Sing like your favorite singer. Internalize it, embody it, own it. Then comes the most important step, rule number three: Keep going. And going. And going. Don’t stop at imitation. Keep variating. Truly make it your own. Mess around. Get bored. Tweak, fiddle, and play. Don’t do it for approval, do it because you want to. Do it for the goddamn joy of it. Build castles in the sandbox of your mind, knock them down, and start over again. What else are you going to do? Watch Sora videos? And the comes the best part, step four: Make something you, and make something new. It’s the rule that you don’t have to worry about, because if you followed rules 1-3, this one writes itself. The simple act of play, of change, of the seat blood and tears you put into that variation will inevitably lead to something truly different, and something that only you could have created.
So trust in the process. Be inspired by what moves you, imitate the parts you love, iterate over and over, and then, you’ll truly be an innovator — and inspire the next wave of joy, creation, and change in those that are moved by you.
Be Inspired -> Imitate -> Iterate -> Innovate
There is a Hebrew word, “Shiklul,” which means, in essence, to endlessly iterate towards a perfection that can never be reached. Like asymptotic refinement, it’s a curve that can never reach 0, but gets closer and closer towards infinity. It’s the process our brains use to learn how to do anything, from speech, to movement, to writing a sonnet.
Don’t be afraid of overworking something – just keep going.
If you have one takeaway from this article, let it be this: you have the potential in you to make something great. Don’t be afraid to imitate. Just keep going, and going and going. And one day, you will inevitably create something truly new, and irreplaceably you.