Nothing New

If you've ever written a piece of fiction you probably realize how hard it is to come up with a plot nobody has thought of before. It's nearly impossible. The best we can hope for is to put a new spin on something. And there's nothing wrong with that.

If you see a lot of movies you probably realize you've seen the story before, just a different location, time and characters. Supposedly there are only seven plots and everything else is just a variation. That's why we're so seldom surprised by an ending.

Our hero has a problem. Hero tries to solve the problem. Villain or circumstance tries to stop her/him. He/she succeeds or doesn't.

It's the same with music. After all, after hundreds of years of tunes how do you come up with a new one? For instance, a lot of the music from Star Trek and Star Wars is based, and not too loosely, on The Planets, by Holst. At the end of the Jupiter Suite you hear the Star Trek theme loud and clear. The haunting and scary music of Jaws can be heard in the famous 4th movement of The New World Symphony by Dvorák and the Rocky theme borrowed from a piece by Brahms. So what you say? You're right, so what. There just really is nothing new under the sun.

The real genius of creative people is how they make it seem new.