Food For Thought – Striving for ultimate ‘uniqueness’
As of late, some artists have been highly concerned with the individuality of other producer’s tracks and I would like to open up a new chapter. Let’s talk about uniqueness and, in particular, the way our thinking is controlled by it…
It’s safe to say that we live in a time in which every individual feels the urge to distinguish themselves… In one way or another we strive to be unique.
One of the ‘symptoms’ of this notion is the type of clothing that people wear to festivals. People put on the most ridiculous outfits to stand out. Afraid to be obscured by the masses, they go above and beyond to be noticed – they want to be stared at to feel certainty that they are noticed as a unique individual.
Another example of the many symptoms is the aliases that artists choose for themselves. Artists too are indoctrinated in very ‘uniqueness-thinking’. The alias is essential for an artist because it tells outsiders who they are and what kind of music they make. The alias is part of their identity and must be unique in order for it to not become confused with others.
Nowadays, copying the name of another artist is therefore dubbed a ‘sin’, because it challenges the other artists’ sense of individuality. No longer is the creator the only individual with this unique alias, but he now needs to share it with someone else…
This protectiveness over one’s unique identity expands outside the boundaries of names. We’ve experienced plenty of battles over artists blaming one another for copying their creations. In a world where inimitability is no big deal, one can imagine that an artist sees this as a compliment that his work gets copied, but in our world this is a huge insult because it is an attack on the uniqueness of the track.
The point I’m trying to make here is that we live in a time were we put all our effort into being unique. This is an sich not a problem, but we are no longer aware that we’re captured by a way of thinking that recognises uniqueness as an achievement; as a goal. It has become extremely hard to imagine that an act that challenges uniqueness is not a sin for artists. Let me provide a different perspective.
Really, what is uniqueness? And most importantly, can we actually achieve it?
Every invention, every creation, every act of humans ever made is not an outburst of uniqueness, but a composition of past experiences. Every outfit is created out of inspiration from the past. Every painting inspired upon another. Every track artists compose is an arrangement of sounds heard in the past. Every name is based on others that came before…
We live in a world that strives for uniqueness and therefore does no longer want to acknowledge that no artefact is ever unique. How deeply we strive to be unique, we always end up being a composition of past experiences.
Striving for uniqueness is a conjure trick of the mind to let us believe that out of 8 billion people we matter. That we actually are unique. And looking at past happenings in our scene… This scene too is indoctrinated by believing that uniqueness is the ultimate achievement of an artist. Because, without the uniqueness the artist is but one of many others… A spell of sin.