We are unique individuals by birthright and yet we spend most of our time trying to be identical (everyone in this season's colour, watching the same TV shows and movies, and more alarmingly, thinking the same way) - perhaps because we fear rejection by our peers and the threat of being truly alone in the world.
But the unique adds to the sum total of the world. The 'different' doesn't have to amount to pretentious elitism - it's all a question of our viewpoint being informed by previous exposure. Once we give the 'different' (that which is borne of experimentation and a desire to veer from the norm/standard) a chance, we retrain our brains to accept a wider palette of possibilities. We appreciate more. The world becomes a bigger place.
My first exposure to a novel/original way of thinking/expressing was through Dr Seuss. My bedtime stories were Green Eggs and Ham and The Cat in the Hat, when I'd out-grown Noddy. I'm sure that helped me appreciate Salvador Dali's Metamorphosis of Narcissus, which I'd seen reproduced in a children's encyclopaedia, aged 10. Not realising the dangerous world I was delving into, I borrowed books on Surrealism from the library. Magritte, Delvaux and Tanning wowed me. Duchamps and De Beuys followed. I read Slaughterhouse-5 and Naked Lunch not much older than 11 or 12, and neither killed or seriously maimed me (sly ref. to the latest call to ban 'violent' video games, mimicking the way people tried to ban heavy metal back in the 80s when a couple of young fans killed themselves while listening to Black Sabbath).
We should stop fearing the new. Nobody would enjoy knitting or sheep-shagging if those concepts hadn't first been introduced to the world by brave souls intent on ruffling our feathers. When Radiohead released the incandescent Kid A and its sister album, Amnesiac, critics called both pretentious, because they dared to veer from the standard guitar-bass-drums format. Thom and the lads produced two things of beauty in the process but I still catch critics sneering at either/both now. Whether that's through narrowmindedness in their taste (i.e. they only like - or think they like - one or two types of music) or the fact that they only played the records once and didn't give them time to sink in and make sense, I don't know, but I object to people snearing at brave experimentation when it is, in all fields of endeavour, that which pushes things forward. Producing more of the same may be fun when it works ('Only By The Night' by Kings of Leon springs to mind as a classy reworking of the standard rock format) but effectively it only moves us round in circles, a soundtrack to lives ghost-lived. True creativity resides in reaching for something brand new.
But the unique adds to the sum total of the world. The 'different' doesn't have to amount to pretentious elitism - it's all a question of our viewpoint being informed by previous exposure. Once we give the 'different' (that which is borne of experimentation and a desire to veer from the norm/standard) a chance, we retrain our brains to accept a wider palette of possibilities. We appreciate more. The world becomes a bigger place.
My first exposure to a novel/original way of thinking/expressing was through Dr Seuss. My bedtime stories were Green Eggs and Ham and The Cat in the Hat, when I'd out-grown Noddy. I'm sure that helped me appreciate Salvador Dali's Metamorphosis of Narcissus, which I'd seen reproduced in a children's encyclopaedia, aged 10. Not realising the dangerous world I was delving into, I borrowed books on Surrealism from the library. Magritte, Delvaux and Tanning wowed me. Duchamps and De Beuys followed. I read Slaughterhouse-5 and Naked Lunch not much older than 11 or 12, and neither killed or seriously maimed me (sly ref. to the latest call to ban 'violent' video games, mimicking the way people tried to ban heavy metal back in the 80s when a couple of young fans killed themselves while listening to Black Sabbath).
We should stop fearing the new. Nobody would enjoy knitting or sheep-shagging if those concepts hadn't first been introduced to the world by brave souls intent on ruffling our feathers. When Radiohead released the incandescent Kid A and its sister album, Amnesiac, critics called both pretentious, because they dared to veer from the standard guitar-bass-drums format. Thom and the lads produced two things of beauty in the process but I still catch critics sneering at either/both now. Whether that's through narrowmindedness in their taste (i.e. they only like - or think they like - one or two types of music) or the fact that they only played the records once and didn't give them time to sink in and make sense, I don't know, but I object to people snearing at brave experimentation when it is, in all fields of endeavour, that which pushes things forward. Producing more of the same may be fun when it works ('Only By The Night' by Kings of Leon springs to mind as a classy reworking of the standard rock format) but effectively it only moves us round in circles, a soundtrack to lives ghost-lived. True creativity resides in reaching for something brand new.