Text = Remix

Hey Adam, great remix! But, I sure hope you are not going to try and take credit for this all by yourself.

You know I think, it’s an absolute farce to think that any work can be credited to any individual. As you noted, to say that George Lucas created Star Wars is not entirely accurate as he just remixed it. Yeah, some remixes are a little more obvious than others but we as individuals within civilization have always been networked and stealing data, despite the recent assumption that networking and data sharing are a new digital enterprise. Pretty much any play of Shakespeare’s is borrowed from the work of another, and even Shakespeare’s work is borrowed by contemporary producers: Taming of the Shrew is My Fair Lady; Romeo and Juliette is Westside Story and Hamlet is The Lion King. Good God even The Flinstones borrowed from The Honeymooners and the former was watched by highly impressionable kids that later evolved into kleptomaniacs quite honestly!

I think such deception is essentially a product of liberalism and capitalism. The sacrosanct notion of the individual within liberalism, as a separate entity, autonomous and distinct from others, is a capitalist construct to insure that intellectual property, just like private property, remains in the control of only certain individuals rather than within the entire culture that it is produced. And we are so possessive of our private property that we put fences around even our intellectual property and tell other’s not to trespass or use this property without our express permission or payment of some royalty, which is so hypocritical because there was never any payment sent to the author, or all authors of a culture, upon which the huge foundation of one’s private intellectual property is built.

The thing is I think this private intellectual property belongs to a living language, and its temporary reflection of recorded text, and not to any one individual. And, it’s ridiculous to think that one can stop the progression of ideas, by patents and copyrights, and disallow others to build upon what everyone built up. While, I do agree there has to be some acknowledgement, and reward, for building higher upon a civilisation’s work—or another musicians for that matter—I can’t help but believe that to have one’s work stolen is a great compliment. And, if one is so brash as to steal a work and claim it as their own, I can’t help but believe that the person from whom the stolen work is said to “originate” is far worse claiming the work as their own, in the first place, and further feigning injustice when it too is stolen. I think it’s a profound change in perspective, and the progressive outlook of a civilization, when it realizes language doesn’t serve an individual so much as a civilization serves a language. Individuals die, in their service to language, and the language lives on as long as there is someone to carry it forth. It rules supremely over us as it absolutely governs what it is that we as a civilization can and cannot do. Can we steal from each other and produce greater works? Yes, and here is the language—in song, in plays, engineering, philosophy, etc– to prove it, as has always been done!

…but, should I feel the same way if I developed a cure for cancer? How about if I wrote a hit song? Again, why shouldn’t I, and wouldn’t we all be doing a lot better if everyone else did as well? Crazy to believe that there are other currencies in this world other than money and all of them are important but maybe we mistakenly prioritize some over others.