One of the realizations as an artist or a creator is that you are not here to adore or respect anyone else's work. You have a job and it is to constantly look for raw materials amongst all the resources life throws at you and use them to express what You feel.
The French call it Bricolage or "the construction or creation of a work from a diverse range of things that happen to be available"
You might respect a Bob Dylan, a Rothko, a Coppolla or a Rushdie and it might have its place. But respect and adoration is not creation. To create you need to pick things apart and be more interested in what might be of use to what you want to express. The legends might lead the way and be the giants that you step on to go higher. But the work you got to do doesn't involve staring at them from the ground.
I'm an artist man, give me a tuba and I'll get you something out of it - John Lennon
And we are all looking for a tuba to make the sound that echoes the depth of what we want to say.
I am hard pressed to think if true creatives really respect each other in the same idolatry sense that others do. The relationship can be that of amusement or rivalry but to be idolatry is to disrespect one's own capacities and to hang your shoes pre-maturely.
To idolate is to see a hierarchy of yourself to be on a lower rung than that of your heroes. But even more than that, to simply spend your life idolating is to not live your own life fully, as Seneca puts it in his angry rant to Lucillus:
This is why I look on people like this as a spiritless lot - the people who are forever acting as interpreters and never as creators, always lurking in someone else's shadow. They never venture to do for themselves the things they have spent such a long time learning. They exercise their memories on things that are not their own. It is one thing however, to remember, another to know. To remember is to safeguard something entrusted to your memory, whereas to know, by contrast, is actually to make each item your own, and not to be dependent on some original and be constantly looking to see what the master said.....Let's have some difference between you and the books! How much longer are you going to be a pupil? From now on do some teaching as well. Why, after all, should I listen to what I can read for myself? 'The living voice counts for a great deal'. Not when it is just acting in a kind of secretarial capacity, making itself an instrument for what others have to say. - Seneca
In a culture of follows and likes, manufactured and shoved down our throats and up our bottoms, its hard to take the time and respect that we need to believe in ourselves to create something unique. We spend more time consuming than with ourselves. We have all the tools in the world to broadcast but are numb to what we want to say.
The uniqueness of your soul can come through only when you listen to it and tend to it and express it.
Do what nobody else can do, except for you - Wim Wenders
I believe what Wim means here is to learn from everyone else but use it to the service of You. In doing so you create that which nobody else can.
It doesn't matter how great someone is or was that you can replicate. We are not here to amplify other's lives, rather pick pieces of them and amplify our own lived reality.
A man who follows someone else not only does not find anything, he is not even looking......The men who pioneered the old routes are leaders, not our masters. Truth lies open to everyone. - Seneca
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