Originality: An Endangered Species?

With the monotony of the mainstream, it’s easy to get sucked into the argument that nothing is original anymore. That everything’s been done. But I argue, not so!

Though there is the insurgency of those who tend to play it safe and follow the herd, there is an equal amount of people who refuse to do so. They’ve been around for years. And their numbers are growing.

John Lennon. Pablo Picasso. Nikola Tesla. Charles Darwin.  All visionaries. None of which followed the “rules” but instead created their own. Groundbreakers that shaped the pathways of all who followed.

…There’s the Old School, and there’s the New School:

Here are just a few examples of some of my favorite New School-originals, but it seems like new ones are emerging daily!

Art: Banksy (super awesome and politicaly-charged graffiti), Miguel Calderon (abstract and haunting paintings),

Music: Animal Collective (unique and manic musicians), Joanna Newsom (polyrhythmic avant-garde harpist)

Literature: Kurt Vonnegut (satire with a very dark bite), Noam Chomsky (linguist and political dissident who doesn’t follow the rules, even in his 80s!), Hunter S. Thompson (you all know the name!)

Film: Charlie Kaufman (director of mind-altering character stories), Joon-ho Bong (check out “Tokyo!” and see what I mean), Michel Gondry (king of abstractidy in films and music videos)

And these just scratch the surface! So for those of you who hold firm to your claim that everything has been done, I say look around! Look at that crazy guy down the street with tin can cutouts as windchimes, at the musicians who create microphones out of old payphones (Japanther), at the writer who refuses to follow conventional grammar, the artist who sculpts faces out of phone books!

Keep a keen eye on the crazies, the chance-takers, because those are the ones on the front lines of change and discovery.

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