Borrowing

Tomorrow, I’m discussing this article from Harper’s. The students in my class have done a variety of writing assignments. Now, they are blogging, and I want them to think about the things we do as creators. About copyright. And borrowing. And stealing. Plagiarizing. But how anything: an image, a poem, a news article, a quotation—you name it—can be used as the spring-loaded diving board that will plunge us into the wetness of creativity. (And yes. Creativity is never dry for me. It’s always moist. Clearly, I’m not a Lacanian.)

I have been writing non-stop for days. Okay. I have stopped. To sleep. Or read. In the past month, I’ve read close to a dozen books, and this new influx of material is primordial broth from which I expect to make some piquant soup. I feel as if I’m replenishing myself after a long, draining winter that buried me.

I meant to write about this article when it first came out. I know I mentioned it to friends, especially Liza, whose logo should be recognizable. It’s Molotov Man. But when I looked at Molotov man today in preparation for teaching tomorrow, a different image popped into my head. The image of the Loyalist’s death from the Spanish Civil War.

Now. The question for me is this. Did I imagine that all by myself? Did someone suggest it to me? Did I have a conversation about this and I’ve forgotten? Or, could it be that seeing Pan’s Labyrinth in the meantime put this image front and center in my brain?

Russell Banks was here last week. He mentioned that he had just written a book that is set in 1936. Could the year 1936 have triggered the memory that made me pull the older image out of my memory vault? Or could it have been the photo of Mother Jones, who always reminds me of Emma Goldman, who went to Spain as an old woman to observe the Civil War?

How does memory and creativity work? What triggers one set of associations that leads to creation?

What do you think?

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