Life is a journey, so it is said. I was speaking to someone recently whose philosophy about creativity was that everything that we create is based on a memory. We are not inventing something new--only remembering something from another time and place, or perhaps an alternate reality. The wheels in my brain whirl like crazy to think about that. There had to be a first, an original.
I think about my children singing along to the cover of a song that I know as an original years ago. Even if I like the cover, I am saddened to think that my teens will only know the cover as their original. Thank goodness for iTunes because I make them listen to the classic and learn the names of artists like Simon and Garfunkel. They invariably like the cover better, but that's okay. I imagine we are destined to reinvent over and over again.