“When you’re building your own creation, nothing’s better than real, than a real imitation.” – Aimee Mann, Frankenstein

I’ve always found this song intriguing in different ways, and at different times. I think that property is the hallmark of an artistic creation that sits outside of time and space – something that expresses something that is part of the collective unconscious, something that has universality to it. Not universal appeal, but universality. We’ll save all that for another time.

Rather, the point I would like to try and discuss is the idea of the fine art of imitation. Walk into almost any museum and, if you happen to arrive on the right day or time, you’ll find people standing in front of masterpieces, quietly making a copy. This is a universal thing you are witnessing. Clearly it is not an attempt at forgery in broad daylight. Probably not something to sell. Just a student or otherwise trying to understand how someone else worked, thought, felt. It’s a form of study and practice via imitation.

I mean, how else would Victor Frankenstein be able to create life other than by trying to copy something alive? You think he would just be able to conjure up the idea of “man” all on his own? Please. Everyone is born into this world with an immense historical record upon which they draw, engage, coerce, combine, or conscript to achieve the idea in mind. Unless of course one would consider themselves some sort of prime mover, which delusions of grandeur aside, is not bloody likely.

So, I don’t get too hung up on creating a piece of furniture or other object in a manner, mode, means that somebody may have done in the past in an attempt at study, problem solving, or future adaptation. 

It perhaps goes without saying that just about any craft – woodworking, painting, songwriting, are both necessarily acts of originality and imitation, in various proportions at various times. I guess one could try and learn to paint or create objects out of deceased trees by taking nothing and no one prior into account at an attempt at pure originality, but that just seems implausible.

I mean, look at the world of science. Do you think for a second that Albert Einstein cooked up general and special relativity without any prior knowledge or building upon the existing literature? No, he did not. But he still saw something new and profound in what already existed, and then proved it, by Jove.

I think there are several different flavors of imitation or copying, if you will, such that they are done to learn, because someone wants something that looks like something they like, or to deceive.

Where I would draw the line, of course, is doing it as an act of pure deception. I’m not a magician. That’s not the game I’m playing. Now, I have made a number of things for myself over the years that are “exact” copies of something I’ve seen in a book, or museum, or TV program. Heck, good old Norm Abram made a nice living seeking out objects far and wide, making his own version of said objects to teach other people along the way. I don’t see anything wrong with that approach.

Now, if someone, say a potential customer, came to me and says to me, she says, ‘can you make me something that looks like this?’, if I think I can do it and produce said piece at a level which I would be comfortable with, I probably will. Will it be the exact same thing? Nope. Will it be mistaken for a prior master’s works? Hell no. I ain’t that good. It’s an interpretation through my own hands and process, judgement and mistakes. An act of putting the pieces together. But it will be a real imitation. Just be honest about it and don’t claim credits for said object beyond what your own hands created. 

Perhaps it’s best to give Ms. Mann the last word.

“But at least it’s my own creation, and it’s better than real it’s a real imitation.”