Great art comes from a place of community and inspiration, not isolation.
While derivative art could be argued as too much inspiration, isolation doesn’t automatically lead to originality.
Isolation—keeping yourself apart from others — gives you the space *to create*, but it doesn’t give you the creative juice.
A great place of inspiration can be outside your medium/industry.
Creative sparks come from all around us. Nature. Work that inspires you, Songs you sing and hear. Books you read.
Past and present are all swirling around into a spark of insight.
I crave isolation. I crave having more time and space to sit (or stand) with myself and work on all the ideas running through my head.
But if I stopped reading, if I stopped listening to music and podcasts. And, more broadly, if I stopped observing the world around me, and instead only focused on output—cranking out my stuff—my ideas would dry up quickly.
Art is a two-way street. It influences both ways. It connects, at least in passing. Your art has the potential to influence thousands of others, and mine has that same potential too. If your work speaks to me, then sprinkles of its influence can be seen in my own work.
Influence begets influence begets influence. On and on. And at each turn, we make each other better.
That’s why consuming great work might just be as important as creating our own work.
But we need both. Learning and doing. Otherwise, we are just always consuming, or always focusing on ourselves. Not to mention pulling from the same (crusty) influences from our past.
STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1796
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