On Firsts - Teshale

Someone told me recently-- I think it may have been my brother-- a statistic he'd heard. The statistic was something like this: Imagine a hundred random people. 70 of those people have probably had a good idea recently-- but only one of them will actually try to make it happen. I have no idea if this statistic is true, but it sounds good and it's a good jumping-off point for my post.

People love being first, especially Americans. Often it doesn't really matter how or what or what's involved, just that we're #1. After all, if you're not first, you're last. One of the conflicts in the new movie The Social Network is about determining who was the first person to create Facebook. (More specifically the conflict is about who should get all the money Facebook generates, for being the first person to think of it.)

As a child, I equated being first (as in being the first thing encountered) with being best. 8-year-old me thought Joe Cocker's version of "With A Little Help From My Friends" was the original version, for instance, and that the Beatles' version was distinctly inferior for it. But why should being first be all that impressive? Being the first person to think of something doesn't necessarily mean that your idea is the best. It doesn't necessarily even mean your idea is good.

Being first, I think, means there are no expectations, because there's nothing to compare to. Moreover, if you are first, and acknowledged as first, then--however crappy your idea was-- being first means you've thought of something nobody else did. Nowadays, genuine, insightful originality is something that is often hard to come by (discussed in an earlier post). Being "first" often seems to be conflated with originality, and more indirectly, some sort of intangible genius or intelligence others don't possess. Very, very occasionally people are just not ready to understand how influential or excellent someone is until much later on; but in my experience, the people who actually say some variant on "People just don't understand the genius of my original idea" are not actually all that smart.

Ultimately, I think being the first person to think of something doesn't matter as much as putting that idea into practice, or making that idea work on some real-world plane. I, for instance, thought to myself last year "Wouldn't it be cool to write a story where you had some kind of device that could get you into people's memories, and there was a guy who spied for a company by using the machine? But then one day he has to get into the mind of a family member? And then the family member's mind is unstable, so he might be stuck there forever if he doesn't find what he's looking for, and even forget who he is? Kinda like The Cell, but more about the nature of memory and how you are what you remember, so maybe a Cell meets Memento kind of thing. Yeah, I should totally write that."

You may see a problem.

This happens quite often (not my getting Incepted, but different people having strikingly similar ideas). You see it with people suing J.K. Rowling, for instance, or any other successful authors or filmmakers or TV writers for "stealing their ideas." If I were to ask you to name a book about a skinny English boy with dark hair and glasses finding out he was the world's greatest wizard and having adventures and an owl and a scar, what would you name? Probably not The Books of Magic by Neil Gaiman , even though that series came out in the 80s. Does that mean J.K. Rowling stole the idea from him? If you were to read both books, I'd wager you would say no. It's a cliche, yes, but what is original is the artist's interpretation of the idea, not the idea. 99 out of 100 times, the idea is the easy part. Actually figuring out how the thing would work in real life is much harder. Granted, this whole "idea is less important than the manifestation" thing treads very murky waters when your idea concerns relatively tangible things, like windshield wipers or the double helix...especially when you've been discussing your great ideas with other people, James Watson. As an aspiring author, I can tell you that I have no shortage of ideas for stories, but I very often struggle with how to actually make these ideas work on a page without sounding like crap. If an idea is stolen, in my opinion it's often this latter part, the method, that is lifted-- in order to claim the genius that someone's hard work created, to claim the glory of being First without realizing why being First is impressive at all.

When I became older, oddly enough, I started to become dismissive of simply being First. I would think to myself "Psh. I could do better than that," but would never actually do better. I am often afraid of being the First, because outside of sports, being the First rarely (if ever) means being perfect. It's very easy-- for me, at least-- to get stuck in a cycle of thinking "I want to be the very best (like no one ever was)," and letting fear of being imperfect overwhelm me. Ultimately, though, I've realized this dismissive attitude is futile, and also will generate me no money whatsoever. Nobody criticized The Wright Brothers for having a really wobbly first flight. The Russians didn't think "Man, if we put a dude on the moon...we'd do it way better" as they quietly sipped their tiny cups of tea mixed with vodka in Leningrad and Moscow. People revered Zefram Cochrane not because the Phoenix was flawless, because it wasn't; it was because he was the first human to invent warp drive.

So, I guess, here's to being first. It doesn't mean you're the best. It rarely means you're the best. But hopefully it means you're always getting better. And if you'll allow me to abuse one more cliche, I'll leave you with the words of that guy who was first at, like, a jillion things, Isaac Newton:"If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants".



Just kidding. We're number 1!