Jeremy Messersmith Gets Me Going Again

Jeremy Messersmith loves to get me going on the topic of creativity, originality, copyright. He likes to say that there’s no such thing as originality or individual creativity, or that copyright is an outmoded concept, and then see how long it makes me rant. I’m sure this is a fun game for Jeremy. Here’s an exchange we had on our Facebook pages, with a comment from our friend Andy Thompson sprinkled in between. Andy may be leaning towards the copyright side of the argument because he recently became a father of twins. (Congratulations, Andy!)

The more I think about Andy’s remark about contradictions making democracy “work,” the more fascinated I am by it. This seems like something worthy of more discussion.

(The article in the link, for those who want to skip it, starts out promisingly as a discussion of how one might explains the ideas of creativity and originality to a sympathetic Martian. Unfortunately, explaining these concepts to a human, much less a Martian, proves too challenging to the author of the article (understandably,) and he gives up in a muddle about halfway through. The Martian’s confusion parallels the readers, at least in my case.)

Jeremy: I read this and immediately thought of you. The whole “explaining something to a martian” has a nice simplicity to it. http://www.locusmag.com/Perspectives/2011/03/cory-doctorow-explaining-creativity-to-a-martian/

Andy: Two thoughts after reading that piece: 1) Perhaps it’s all the inherent contradictions and conflict that make copyright “work.” In the way that democracy “works.” 2) Can’t it all be boiled down to the simple fact that people gots to eat?

Dan: We do accept contradictions in a lot of our important beliefs. Freedom of speech is precious to us, except when it shades into “fighting words.” How can you tell which is which? “I knows it when I sees it.” We acknowledge the importance of states’ rights, except when a strong Federal gov is needed to get things done fairly throughout the Union.

These contradictions are okay. We live with them every day, even when they are sometimes muddled and confusing. So I think Andy is right to imply that the inherent contradictions in the concept of copyright are okay.

As for the author of the article: he kinda punts about halfway through, when he realizes there’s no way to rigorously define creativity. We knows it when we sees it. Nobody listens to Bach and says, “Yeah, but he’s just weaving together an amalgam of ideas which were in the air at the time.” No. People listen to Bach and say, “This is so wonderful, it makes me feel so great, I may be an atheist, but thank you God for Bach!” As the character in The Social Network might say, “If you guys were the inventors of ‘The Well-Tempered Clavier,’ you’d have invented “The Well-Tempered Clavier.’ ” Of course Bach was using the infrastructure but that doesn’t address the hard-to-shake feeling that something original and amazing and personal to Bach is happening in his music that makes it so great.

If we can agree that certain incredibly brilliant artists like Bach or Brahms or Haydn create work that is in some way their own and in some way original to them, then we can also agree that the rest of us artists are probably on a spectrum from that exalted point to the other end, where sit the copiers, the followers, the wannabes, the epigones. And I think it’s okay to have a set of ground rules that say, generally, “We need to reward the Bachs of the world for their creativity, because we want as much of it to happen as possible! And we’ll have to have that same set of ground rules reward the artists who are not quite as brilliant and original as Bach, but maybe it’ll reward them and protect their work a little less.” And so on, down to not rewarding people who are plainly copying the work of others.

And how will we decide who is who? I think unfortunately, we knows it when we sees it.

Whew!

Oh P.S., I fear that it would take a lifetime to explain us to a Martian, much less get hir up to speed on our cultural artifacts! That would be a very devoted Martian anthropologist.