You get a springboard of an idea and sit down at the piano.
You write some words, edit them, reshuffle them, fit them to some chords, and play and replay, til the song has a familiar ring to it.
The next day it sounds even more familiar. And you're bothered. Did you write it, or was all your work just a remembering of a song you've heard somewhere?
Helen Keller once wrote a little story which seemed to just flow as easily as a dream. A beautiful little story, her friends and family were excited to publish it. Only then, the author of a nearly identical story stepped forward. Sentiment turned against Helen for what looked like blatant plagiarism. Sometime or other, Anne Sullivan must have read it to her, but the memory faded enough to blend in with knowledge and resurface as a seeming original thought.
So in my passive absorption of music, I hope my own personality continually gets in the way of what could otherwise be unwitting plagiarism.
Just before reading this, I was discussing with my brother the idea that all art is borrowed. Everything has been done before. All anyone can do is take bits and pieces from what they absorb around them and hope to present them in an order that is unlike what they have experienced before. Kind of depressing for the artist, but then also very liberating once realizing one's place in relation to the ultimate Creator.
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