Originality: A Falsehood,
A Goal
Or, Everything
(Nothing) is Original
There’s a self-aggrandizing belief in all of us that we
are original, that we can create something original. “Original”
is a little arrogance we indulge ourselves. Every quip we make, face we give,
and dance we release has been done before. How many times have I said something
I thought was insanely clever, only to hear it uttered by several other women
in the weeks after? There is an essential egotistical quality to everything we
do- as though we were the first and the last, as though we have done something
groundbreaking. What a shallow snorkel into the human mind tells us is that we
largely know what we have been exposed to. I am able to repeat something in a
particular manner (either verbatim or slightly modified) because I have seen it
or heard it before. Yet part of my human egoism is that I claim it in this
moment to be mine. To be new. To be brave.
There are some, in our history, who have contributed to
humanity, either through philosophy, math, the arts, or other discoveries, who
have done something completely new. I suppose we all are, on some level,
originals. I am the only Poonam Dubal Desai, in that, while I may share
similarities with others across time, I am uniquely here, uniquely me, uniquely
in this time period. At the same time, so many aspects of my personality, of my
face, of my thoughts and ideas are shared with so many in this moment in time,
but also across time. I say something funny, but it’s been said a thousand
times before in a thousand different ways. I say something sad, and it’s been
echoed in the past like a wolf howling into a cold canyon.
There may be something original, but there
is nothing new. There is only an endless folding in of ideas into a batter
that’s been mixing. There is a thread woven, cut apart, rewoven, again and
again and again. And yet that particular batter, that particular cloth tastes,
looks slightly different, doesn’t it? Because it’s here and now. Not there and
then.
Are we blank mannequins with lithographed layers of
personality, words, thoughts, and experiences? Or are we all reconstituted
mosaic tiles, creating new pictures with each new life, but using the same bits
of glass? I am a three dimensional masterpiece of psychological, emotional, and
physical breadth. Perhaps there will be another like me. But there’s not one
now. There is no one else now.
A Person, In Tile (Poonam Desai, 2016)
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