11:04 p.m. - August 24, 2001
recyclable time
Has anybody else noticed the uncanny similarities between Richard Brautigan and Stephen Chbosky's writings? Plain language, almost trying too hard not to be pretentious, and very stream-of-consciousness- like. The two particular ones I was comparing were The Tokyo-Montana Express (Brautigan) and Perks Of Being A Wallflower (Chbosky). It just hit me all of a sudden. Brautigan came first, and anybody who picks up on that is going to automatically think Chbosky used him as an influence or is copying off of him, which is something I started thinking about when I had been writing this one song so long it started sounding like I'd heard it somewhere before, and was worried I was unwittingly copying the melody from somewhere else. Something people need to think about... every author or artist has not necessarily even HEARD of every single other author or artist in the world, let alone trying to emulate them. What if I had never heard of Beethoven and I wrote something with a melody that resembles parts of his Ninth Symphony? Granted, hardly anyone's never heard of Beethoven, but.. it happens :)

Either way, it worries me. I don't think Stephen Chbosky read a whole bunch of Brautigan's books and said suddenly, "Hey, I want to write just like him." It's not so foreign that two people would have such similar mind patterns. I'm worried that when I submit my compositions to college, they'll listen to it once and say.. 'oh.. that sounds exactly like so and so's such and such.' They'll think I plagiarized it, but it came out of my own head. It just came out of somebody else's first.

Someday we're going to hit a point where everything has been done already. There will be nothing new. No one will sit down and be able to even think a thought that somebody hasn't thought before. If I had to choose a time when I wanted to leave this earth for good, that would be it.

Of course, creation knows better than that. It probably has a plan to start over reality or open up new planes and dimensions once that happens.... I still can't wrap my mind around either the 'circle' concept of time or the 'forever' concept. The circle concept would say that creation would just start over, when there's nothing new to be had. Forever concept says there's always something new to be had. Maybe if something isn't around for a very, very long time it somehow becomes new again. Like recyclable time.

Recyclable time.

I can almost understand that.

previous - next