Signs

I found Jonathan Lethem's article, a different take on the idea of plagarism, very enjoyable. You can find it here:
http://www.harpers.org/TheEcstasyOfInfluence.html
I especially enjoyed the section called "Surrounded by Signs," in which this sentence appears: "We're surrounded by signs; our imperative is to ignore none of them." (An idea borrowed from from Steve Erickson's novel Our Ecstatic Days.)

This brings to mind Italo Calvino's story "A Sign in Space," in which our narrator describes how he made the first sign ever to exist in space:
"...It's easy for you young ones to talk, but in that period I didn't have any examples to follow, I couldn't say I'll make it the same or I'll make it different, there were no things to copy, nobody knew what a line was, straight or curved, or even a dot, or a protuberance or a cavity. I conceived the idea of making a sign, that's true enough, or rather, I conceived the idea of considering a sign a something that I felt like making, so when, at that point in space and not in another, I made something, meaning to make it a sign, it turned out that I really had made a sign, after all." It soon comes to pass that another space traveller starts following behind, and confounding things by making his own space graffiti, and erasing the inspired handiwork of the narrator.

I think Lethem is correct in observing that many artists - any discipline - fail to acknowledge the degree to which they are influenced by other artists and the culture as a whole, instead attributing their work to some private, inner spring of inspiration. As he points out, many artists are drawn to their pursuits first by falling in love with the art... someone else's creation. I find that comforting. It makes the whole thing seem a little less solitary.