milking & churning

At it again. Another talk and lesson to prepare. How do I make the topic fresh and relevant, especially if said topic has been hashed and re-hashed? Yeah, dilemma. It's all been said before.

I've been hitting my files and researching ideas. Reading what others have said, certainly. But in the end, like it always does, it will come down to my own take, my own thoughts and words or it will not fly.

In other words, I milk a lot of cows but I churn my own butter. Yup.

Ok, this then. It's fitting. From "Do I Repeat Myself? The problem of the 'already said'”:

Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.

Originality, after all, includes not only saying something for the first time, but re-saying (in a worthy new way) the already said: rearranging an old tune in a different key, to a different rhythm, perhaps on a different instrument. Has that been said before? No matter: on with the story!
Whole article found here: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/08/do-i-repeat-myself/8572/

Oh, and this, too: http://tmiesen.com/tag/creativity/

People think creativity is like that; “creative” people are able to invent something new and original.
Well, I’ve got a sad story to tell you: Nothing is original. Everything is a mutation of a previous idea; it came from somewhere. It’s a recombination of previous words, objects, and technology to build something different.

and later:

Nobody has experienced the world in exactly the same way. Anything you make, everything you do, and any ideas you think of are combinations of every bit of the world that you’ve ever encountered. Nobody has been subjected to the same stimuli. Nobody has had the exact same conversation with the same person, and nobody has devoured the exact same media, pop culture, and advertising as everyone else. Your creative output is defined by your past. It’s only fitting that creative things come in many different forms.