Variations on a theme...

As you know (if you're more than an occasional visitor to this blog), it is during my run every night that I process my day; where I file things away, discard those things that I know are of no use and cogitate on the expreiences I've had and the decisions I've made. I think I've said before that it is my segue into settling down for the night. It's my way of drawing a line under the day. I often think of things on my run that invariably find their way into this blog.

Tonight was an exception. My run seemed to whizz by before I'd had the chance to think of anything. I certainly did not whizz by; judging by my pityful average pace of 5'45"/km over 4.29 km in 24'42" I did anything but whizz by. And whatever had occupied my mind during the run had escaped into the ether by the time I finished. What could I blog about tonight? There wasn't an original thought in my head. I had writer's block.

In 1820 Niccolo Paganini published 24 Caprices for violin. The last, Caprice No 24, has captivated audiences and composers ever since. Franz Liszt based his Grandes Études de Paganini on it, Brahms' Paganini Variations, Rachmaninov's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and Lloyd Webber's Variations were also based on it. Other composers from Schumann to Rochberg have all written variations on it.

Clearly there is nothing wrong with developing someone else's original idea. In his book Impro, Keith Johnstone explores spontaneity, making the point that the more effort actors put into trying to be original the less spontaneous and truthful they become. "An artist who is inspired is being obvious. He's not making any decisions, he's not weighing one idea against another. He's accepting his first thoughts."

Mozart said of his ideas, "Why my productions take from my hand that particular form and style that makes them Mozartish, and different from the works of other composers, is probably owing to the same cause which renders my nose so large or so aquiline, or in short, makes it Mozart's, and different from those of other people. For I really do not study or aim at any originality."

And so it is with writing; very often the best writing flows like a stream of consciousness. The transfer from thought to written page seems effortless. Is writers' block no more than censorship? Do we not jettison certain thoughts bacause they are too obvious as we strive to be more original? Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch, author and literary critic, argued that there are only 7 basic plots, everything else is a variation upon them. If this is so then originality was sated a long time a go. Why bother to force feed it any more?

The blogoshere does not so much depend upon original ideas but upon the repetition, extension and development of ideas or memes. And as those memes spread via linkage from website to website so they develop and grow. Our blog culture is enriched not by a few original ideas but by their development and the variations that spring from them, in much the same way that our culture has been greatly enriched by all the variations based upon Paganini's Caprice No 24, especially Rachmaninov's quite brilliant Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.