Sunday, August 9, 2009

WTF, Yacht?

(I found this image of YACHT, a Portland band, on Lost at E Minor, a site I go to daily for art related news)

Ok I'm usually not that paranoid, but when I have a new great idea and suddenly see, oh, a few weeks later, that same idea done by someone more famous than I, the wheels in my head start turning... Is this coincidence, some cosmically woven universal plane of thought that can be reached by many at the same time--the sharing of ideas without being verbally or visually inspired???? Or is it just theft, the stealing of intellectual property from some unsuspecting nobody... that has led the band YACHT to steal my creative GENIUS and use it for their own mediocre artistic endeavors????!!!
Whether it be the universal ebb and flow, the Tao if you will, or just some random awful chance that an idea formed in my own little head, transformed through my little obedient fingers into a paper image that holds an entire train of thought in the form of squiggly ink-drawn lines could have been stolen and duplicated, slightly modified, by someone with a larger fan-base, nay, a fan-base at all and therefore rendering my own idea as unoriginal! What am I to do??? Is there any justice? It may not be a big deal to anyone else, or even to my own career, but the principle of it all just baffles me. How can anyone ever get proper recognition of having an idea "first".... I mean, we all know the tragic story of Tesla's uphill battle with being taken seriously, only to have his ideas be realized and produced once he was 6 feet under the ground! And if there is no way to claim an idea as being the first of its kind, then why do we give recognition, why do we seek recognition at all? Shouldn't the thought of someone else having the same crazy idea as you be a comfort and not a burden-- a reinforcement of one's own sanity?
This could mean that I really am a part of something greater than I can comprehend, and that any fame I acheive during this lifetime is really unsubstantial when it comes to the meaning of life! Or, it could just mean that no matter who you are, famous or not, some other jack ass will come along and take what little pride you may hold on to, "I won first place in the spelling bee in 1984" "My old boyfriend dedicated his novel to me" or even "I make a pie that no one else can top", that jack ass will sweep down to your little circle and snatch that tiny molecule that you hold on to as "a great idea" and show you that you are not unique, you are not original, and any dumb sap who thinks he or she is a god full of untouchable genius, will one day find out that he/she is actually the same as Boris from Russia or Susan from Mexico or John from 300 years ago!
Well, as you might recall from a post a few weeks ago, I find this image to be eerily similar to my own... and yet, I ask again, what can I do but sit here and gripe about on my blog?

(Censored Eyes, copyright LA John-- oh what's the f**ckin use...)

Maybe I should stop putting my work on sites like Threadless and Illustration Mundo until I am rich and famous and have a lot more power than I do today.... but that obviously would do more harm than good in the long run. I will simply shoot them an email confronting them about the ordeal and asking for an explanation. Maybe I function on the same brain wave as them, because as I am realizing more and more I am not original, and neither are you.

4 comments:

  1. Baby it is a triangle over someones crotch, get over it. I do the same thing with half of my sandwitch everyday at lunch. And no you are not special or oringal to the whole world only to the people who love you, like me.
    I like the energy though,
    KEEP KICKIN ASS !!!
    Your friend Pope Linous Maximus III

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  2. Naked people with their naughty bits obscured -- that goes back to the bible. People are going to be tempted to print/photograph/draw nudity. And then they're going to be tempted to edit that nudity so that they don't have to defend it agaist prudes. Meh. You'll have to work a lot harder than that to prove that their photo was "inspired" off your work.

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  3. That YACHT photo dates back to April, while your drawing was classified as "New Work" in mid-July.
    Important info in this case.

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  4. This photo shoot occured quite some time before your idea. Though it seems strange that one would take such offense at such a seemingly general idea that has ostensibly been used before, regardless.

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