Original Ideas?

There are none.

To the left is a photo of me executing what I thought was a very original idea, an act where I pour booze from my bra (it's hidden in there) into a martini shaker and shake up a martini. I was heartbroken to realize I was not the first to think that up. My lovely queer burlesque friends each cited an example of someone they knew or had seen somewhere doing something the same as that.

In art, I learned in undergrad, there is nothing original. Even things that one thinks are highly completely new ideas are not. And the few that seem like they are? Well, those are pretty rare. And probably are not new. The mythos of originality runs deep. I just googled "originality in art" and there are all sorts of quotes from various famous artists and writers talking about how originality is the goal.

It's pretty hard when you have an idea and think that it's brilliant and has come only from you to imagine that someone else could have thought it up. I think as human beings, we're so ego-driven that we want to think that we are each a precious diamond. Even I think that--some of the reason why I did someone else's act last year (yes, on purpose. Yes, to be an asshole.) was because there had been a few incidents of She Who Must Not Be Named and her ladies doing songs and acts that were so similar to songs and acts that I had done--and emailed her about a few years back--that I got really angry and ripped off one of her famous acts on purpose.

I'm not saying it was mature or even advisable.

Sidenotes: She nearly cut me with her eyes when she came backstage--at a show that was not hers. Talk about entitlement--and had an extremely drunken diva fit. Oh, and then her posse came over to me after the show (the dickhead husband of another performer who I actually find to be lovely. Her husband? Another story...) and told me I was "not classy."
But back to the originality story. Yes, I did that on purpose. Yes, it was not what the burlesque world thinks is "right" (unless you're already famous and doing an "homage" on a national stage). But really? Do I not get credit for figuring out the act? And the rehearsals it took and the costuming I made? (This was a particularly complicated technical problem...) Does that not make it mine on some level? And I have heard that this particular act was already being done elsewhere, just not by anyone famous. Why does one person have the right to claim that over other people and call it hers?

And do I deny the other performers who had the same idea as me the right to have their moment with the same idea?

All interesting questions to ponder in the world on burlesque. As far as that one act goes, I haven't done it again--SWMNBN scared me enough when she came storming backstage that I haven't. But that does not mean that I might not in the future.