Creative imitation

Lately I’ve become rather enamoured of the idea of studying the masters. In my own art, I can tell that a lack of having studied other artists has stunted my artistic growth, and where I have studied the masters, I’ve gotten better. (The positive effect is more clear in my graphic design work, since I’ve consciously analyzed others’ work more often in that area.)

It’s one thing to appreciate a work as a viewer/reader/listener, but it’s quite another to come equipped with a scalpel and magnifying glass. I’ve felt like my efforts in music are rather stale and lifeless, marching along like drones to the clockwork beat of the meter, not brimful of life and breath and flow the way I’d like them to be. And I think that’s because I haven’t really studied other songs, except perhaps the hymns, because I’ve played them so often. And even then I don’t know that I’ve really picked them apart. Yesterday I checked out the vocal score to The Secret Garden from the library so I could get my hands dirty and figure out why the songs are so great and singable.

As a writer, I’ve noticed differences in the style between, say, Charlotte Brontë in Jane Eyre and Dan Yates in Angels Don’t Knock. I can perceive that they’re different, but I don’t exactly know how, and I don’t think I can until I start examining both texts in more detail. (Personally, I want my style to lean more towards Brontë’s, which will no doubt take a lot of work because I’m obviously not there yet. :))

Is imitation cheating? I don’t think so. Cheating is where you take someone else’s work wholesale and try to pawn it off as your own. Imitation is where you study someone else’s work for the purpose of improving your own art. Yes, there will be similarities (at least at first), and that’s okay. Didn’t Newton say something about standing on the shoulders of giants?

I second the idea that imitation isn’t cheating. Though I have little experience in music/art, I’ve definitely noticed this in my writing. My writing really started to improve when I began to analyze the techniques of other writers and imitate them in my own work. It’s like TS Eliot said; a sense of history is “nearly indispensable to anyone who would continue to be a poet beyond his twenty-fifth year.” Once we understand the techniques of the masters, we can more effectively use them in our own work, or play off of them. No need to reinvent the wheel with every writer . . . . I would imagine it is much the same in other arts.

. . . wait, you actually LIKE the songs of the Secret Garden musical? Interesting, but I must question your taste. I always found that musical . . . predictable and boring, I guess. My latest musical obsession is the Little Women musical. The slower songs are a little too sappy, but all the fast ones are good, and Prof. Bear’s songs rock, especially “How I Am.” I never really liked his character in the book, but this musical makes me love him. :D

*make that Prof. Bhaer . . . that’s what I get for trying to be phonetic.

Predictable and boring?!? :) The Secret Garden has some of the best songs out there, my friend. “Lily’s Eyes,” “Where in the World,” “The Girl I Mean to Be,” “Race You to the Top of the Morning” — they’re dramatic without being corny, and eminently singable. And the melodies are so memorable! Taste varies widely, I suppose. :)

Now that I’m nearing that 25 years old mark (well, I’ve still got two years left, but it’s closer than it’s ever been before), I’m noticing a change stirring within me. Almost like I’m growing up or something. ;) (Have I mentioned that Michelangelo sculpted his Pietà when he was only 24? Amazing.) But this is a topic for its own post, methinks. :)

Well, Eliot originally intended the comment to excuse Keats’ lack of tradition (since he died young). The point is that young artists can survive on passion and talent, but older writers need something more or they fade into obscurity.

True. And I personally think that having that tradition and sense of history enriches and deepens one’s own creativity, providing a wellspring from which real originality can be drawn. Sometimes in our quest for originality we think that we need to cut ourselves off from any possible “contaminations” (or at least I’ve thought this), so that the stream will be pure and untainted. I now think that’s hogwash. As I was reading this morning in The Spirit of Writing, all those influences enter into our mind and mulch. It’s kind of like a compost pile — what you put in certainly doesn’t look like what you get out of it. But you do get good dirt from which you can grow new plants.

I used to be a purist about writing styles as well, thinking it’s better for one to do little studying of others when trying to come up with one’s own. I still lean towards that notion, but we are nothing but a compilation of our experiences, everything affects what we do and how we do it.

Rather, I think it’s better to study techniques in a more objective fashion first (i.e. alliteration, hyperbole, voice, etc.) to get a handle on what they are and what they seem to be effective for. Then go to works that have used these for examples and then decide if that is something you enjoy doing and would help make whatever point you’re trying to make in your writing. In this way, I think it’s a familiarity of the the styles conceptual-wise that is most beneficial to a writer because they can reflect on style types learned rather than just the work of authors/orators. In this way, there really even isn’t any imitation since no writer can claim a language device as something that is his (in the sense of claiming his writing style as his).

As for imitation, I may be splitting hairs on definitions, but I think much in the way of imitation is sort of “cheating”. While it’s nice to appreciate a certain person’s style or approach to topics, trying to make one’s writing look like theirs seems to me to defeat the purpose of writing. That voice already exists. You can use language devices they used, but avoid using them just as they did. The reason voices like theirs became popular is because they tried something different, they broke away from mainstream techniques and from voices of previous writers. You may fail dismally in this course yourself, but at least you tried, and who knows. Maybe it’ll catch on (though you’ll probably have to die first).

How is it possible to study techniques without examples? And since these examples must be written by someone, you are always absorbing someone else’s style. There is no objective “neutral area” in language: it is all written by someone. Wouldn’t you rather study from the best rather than from the textbook writers? After, those who can, do; those who can’t, teach. Sure, we need to know the basic definitions of the words for the techniques, but even these techniques are part of someone else’s thinking.

And the best way to truly understand someone else’s technique is to imitate it: you will notice how your imititation is different from their original, how to improve your imitation, and thus understand more deeply how their work is constructed. Of course, the things you write in imitation are mostly practice.

Shaun: While it’s certainly possible to cut techniques away from the works they appear in and examine them objectively, I think something is lost in the process. Art (and I’ll use that in the general sense, including literature and music as well) is more than the sum of its parts. Personally, I’d rather learn a technique by seeing it in its real, live habitat, not locked up in a zoo. Take humans, for example: sure, you can learn a lot from a cadaver (how the bones fit together, where the muscles go, etc.), but to get a clear picture of what humans are really like (how they think, what they do, the whole picture and not just their physical makeup), you have to talk to a living, breathing human. Abstracted techniques are like cadavers as far as I’m concerned. Yes, there’s something to be learned, but the spirit and breath of writing (or art or music) is to be found in the real works, not in the scientifically categorized and subdivided and labeled specimens of techniques.

Now, if you’re imitating for the express purpose of leeching off another’s success, that’s obviously wrong. Like Liz said, imitation is primarily for use in practice, in honing your craft. I don’t see a true artist deciding, “Well, I really like Raphael’s Madonna of the Meadows, so I’m going to copy it. And then I’m going to sell it and become rich!” That’s what inferior moneyheaded fakes think. (And I think it’s okay to be snobby there. ;)) Real artists care about the art they create and have a vision of what they want to express. Copying could never satisfy the drive they have to make art. Never. It’s just a tool to help build up the skills so they can fully realize their artistic dreams.

I never said imitating a work, I was talking about imitating styles. Imitating an already existing work of art has another name: copying or plagiarism. That’s a completely different ballpark and is often just morally wrong, nevermind that it cheats the individual.

Also, one needs to be careful about using analogies to prove a point. I can come up with my own that clearly make me right and anyone else wrong. For example, the best way to understand something like a robot, and even to some levels a human, is to take it apart and (if possible) re-build it. Sure you know that it can move this way, perform that function, etc. but this is just empirical knowledge, which says nothing more than how it has worked, not how it works (though you can make some reasonably sound conjectures). A true master knows what the devices themselves are so he can use them, otherwise you’re kind of just stumbling around in the dark not knowing what you’re doing. I think this it what made the masters who they were.

Devices are what drive the machine, and while the machine is larger than the sum of its parts, it is still on a level just its parts put together. Things like satire, irony, alliteration, ethos, logos, pathos, and so forth are strictly neutral concepts. No one has claim to them. They have fairly stringent definitions and if a piece of writing or whatever does not fit those criteria, it is not that device (i.e. you couldn’t argue that McCarthy ever used logos as his primary means of putting forth his ideas on communism).

Hence my claim. I never said one should not study these devices as used by others, in fact I stated quite the opposite. My only caveat was that you should study what the technique itself is, probably first so that you can recognize it. Learn the devices and then go to works to see how they are executed. Each artist tends to have his own way of weaving in various concepts and techniques, and sometimes these executions even vary from work to work under the same creator.

The advantage to putting a heavy emphasis to studying techniques outside of works is that you acquire the pieces yourself and can then use them to build something of your own. Another for instance, pointillism or cubism came about because the creators took from the library of devices they had and constructed them to form something entirely new. Had they instead spent their time just studying Michaelangelo, Leonardo, or Albrecht Altdorfer, they may not have been able to make the breakthroughs that they did. Studying the creators’ works will teach you how to create as they did, but studying the whats, whys, and hows behind the work itself will teach you how to create.

You are missing a key part of the definition of “copying or plagarism”: it is morally wrong to copy someone else’s work and pass it off as your own, without citation or acknowledgement. Those of us who practice imitating others work do so with the free admission that it is not our own, and would probably never presume to publish, hand in, or otherwise take credit for such work. The point is in the exercise of imitation, not in the end product.

Really, we’re getting at the same point. We both want to understand how various techniques are used in great works by great men (in the sense of humanity). However, we insist that you can learn this so much faster by doing than by studying. We advocate imitation as a means to better understand the “whats, whys, and hows behind the work,” getting our hands dirty in the creation of a work instead of observing it as an enigma from afar. To get inside of the brain of the artist, to see how others have played off this “library of devices,” only in a much more intimate setting than a textbook or classroom can afford. Imitation is the springboard to invention through understanding, not slavish copying.

And also, studying and imitation is not exclusive of original creation. We don’t spend all our time just imitating; instead, the two processes must be simultaneous. Study, imitate, learn, apply, create: all steps are important to the creation process, all happening simultaneously in a chaos of imagination.

(And I don’t mean to make imitation sound easy! It is hard work!)