I don't think I'm following this thread very well.
It seems that whenever reading a poem that is brilliant and new and full of life, I'm in the presence of original thought--throughts not thunk before!
And certainly when hearing great musical works---they were certainly original---hadn't been in the world before. The first time I ever heard the Mozart clarinet concerto--Richard Stoltzman at the Kennedy Center---I was amazed at what Mozart had brought about two centuries ago. Something original came into being in the universe in that one work, for instance. It sure hadn't been there before. And so is true for all kinds of works of art.
So, I'm not following the debate on this thread at all. I see artists as being fountains of originality--and the problem is when art is unoriginal, cookie cutter art---duplication--nothing fresh--stale, humdrum, unemotional because overdone and hackneyed.
It seems the role of the artist (and I liked here the mentioning, too, of engineers who bring about so much that it new and original) is to take the time she/he lives in and to evoke works, whether written, musical, pictorial, staged, that respond to the time (or other times, who cares!) in an original way. "Make it new!"
OK. If I've completely missed the point of this thread, nothing original there! I'm pretty habitually off-track most of the time anyway.
Best regards,
WonderingWind
