Imitation is an exercise in finding one’s voice

Make something in the style of an artist you admire.¹ Don’t worry about “originality.” Pete Seeger said Woody Guthrie taught him to no worry about being original.² Say it again.

!Great genial power, one would almost say, consists in not being original at all —Ralph Waldo Emerson

!Some writers confuse authenticity … with originality —W. H. Auden

!Originality, personality, or style can neither be encouraged nor prevented —Lou Harrison

Imitation is how we learn, and it is how we were encouraged to learn a children.³ By imitating, we inherit.⁴ We develop our own voices because we are influenced by other artists.⁵

!Those who do not want to imitate anything —Salvador Dalí

Billy Collins, speaking to poets, makes a distinction between your material, which is deep within you, and your voice, which “is lying in other people’s poetry.” He then says to look for those poets that make you feel jealous. These are your influences.⁶ [[ Who are the songwriters that make me feel jealous? ]]

!But the one thing that you have that nobody else has is you —Neil Gaiman

Imitation helped Jeff Tweedy write a lot of songs that might not have otherwise made it through the “dense, neurotic thicket of self-doubt and insecurity that defined my own self-image.”¹

!At the end of the copy you will find yourself

!Only copy things that really, truly move you

Conan O’Brien shares that many comedians have tried to emulate their heroes and haven’t quite nailed it, but in so doing, they develop their own thing.⁷

!Everything that needs to be said