When Your Idea Has Been Done

"Except for the camper and the trucks, it could be two hundred years ago, he's pretty sure." - Stephen Graham Jones, 'The Only Good Indians'

Oct 11, 2023

But first, your weekly Vine: Monday was Chapter 27: “An Accounting of the TVA At Vine.” Tuesday was Chapter 28: “Squatters At The Butler House.” Today is Chapter 29: “Mary Wife Of Vine.” Remember to check out the audiobook/podcast if you haven’t already, and sign up for the newsletter!

Remember in Mad Men, when Pete Campbell indignantly protests that he’s a man with ideas, too, you know, he thought direct mail advertising all by himself, before he knew someone else had already invented it? It’s an unimportant scene, season one or two, but it always stuck with me. First, perfect thing for Pete to be mad about. Second, I totally sympathize, dude.

My idea, for the record: to write a horror novel in third person, but have some chapters where the entity/ghost/monster’s perspective. It would probably shift from third person in these chapters, either to first or second person. The story would feel very much like the main characters’ story, but it would really be the entity/ghost/monster’s. Of course, last week, I started reading Stephen Graham Jones’s The Only Good Indians, and it’s honestly not spoiling anything (grow up) to say some chapters are from the entity’s perspective. It’s the entity’s story as much as the human characters’ story.

This isn’t a big deal. This doesn’t mean I can’t do my thing. This book probably isn’t the first time someone’s done this (movies have monster POV shots all the time).

But of course my first thought was damn.

Hey, speaking of DAMN:

Pretty sick track, huh? That’s Anomalie, all the way back in March 2020, laying the groundwork for what would become Polyphia’s “The Audacity.” It’s a wild ride of a song that seems so divorced from guitar playing in its core writing that I’m not surprised the idea had its genesis elsewhere. A little shocking, though, how much of the track is Anomalie’s writing, but the band brings themselves to the track with shredding, thumping and fingerstyle picking, a little slap bass, and the impossible rudiments of Hell’s Own Drummer, Clay Aeschliman. Anomalie can’t do all that in his bedroom during lockdown. Here’s the full band version for comparison:

Looking around, I can’t find the story of how Polyphia and Anomalie got together, the conversations around ownership of the song, or how Anomalie feels about the final version that made it to Remember That You Will Die. I should be able to track this down, but 1) it’s not a big deal for my overall point 2) this is a free blog 3) it is late Tuesday night and I would like to go watch Columbo with my wife.

Let’s be charitable and assume a harmonious collab: Polyphia was thinking “we’d really like a funky, arrhythmic, proggy keyboard song to round out the album.” They asked Anomalie if they could develop the song. Everyone has a wonderful time in the studio. The album comes out. A year a later, some dipshit with a blog is like “hey guys I’ve been listening to Anomalie lately and you should really check out this track featuring India Carney.”

The end result is that “The Audacity” is unmistakably an Anomalie song—I cannot stress enough how much I don’t understand how a person just thinks to put those chords in that order with excuse me what’s the count—but with unmistakable Polyphia vibes. Scott and Tim both have their own idiosyncratic styles of guitar playing (with traceable lineages), and the two Clays are seasoned enough at beatmaking behind nutso guitars that you really feel like the song took the journey it was supposed to.

Here’s Polyphia playing “The Fucking Audacity” live, sans keyboard except for a light click track outlining chords. It’s safe to say they can rip the track.

Bringing this all back to writing: you can’t be precious with ideas. You already know this, long-time reader of this blog, but ideas don’t make fiction or poetry go. Execution is what makes anything worth reading (don’t use that as an excuse to click out of this tab). You shouldn’t steal ideas, you should shoot for originality as much as you can, but is there even such a thing as a purely new idea? Everything has a lineage.

What you do when you see an idea you’ve already thought of in the wild, or you see something in a book you’d like to imitate, is you figure out how you are going to approach it. I reject the idea that every writer needs to “find their voice” or whatever, but you do settle on stylistic habits. You settle on themes and character archetypes you like to explore. Sure, you try to make every book different. But you’re you, you can’t help being you. Embrace your own inner weirdo, and then write your own thing with the thing. One thing Bob’s mentioned on The Line Break, which I wholeheartedly endorse and will paraphrase, is to find the work that already exists that you want your work to be in conversation with.

One last songwriting anecdote: back in high school, Brendan, Spencer, and I had a rule never to use “L-shaped chord progressions” in our songs. The short version of this is no I-IV-V, aka C-F-G, aka most every song that’s ever been written. It forced us to be more original, sure, but sometimes to a point where the songs didn’t make sense, like on a the-sonic-vibrations-hitting-my-ears-are-uncanny-and-unpleasant level. The first time Brendan and Spencer wrote a song with a I-IV-V verse and a vi-V-IV chorus? I walked into practice like “damn that is a good-ass song,” only to immediately learn it was heavy-scare-quotes “writing like everyone else.” No it wasn’t. It was us.

Not to be Potter Stewart, but you’ll know in your heart when you’re ripping someone off vs. when you’re making something your own. Bend and twist and distort any idea until the execution could’ve only come from your head. It’s a really rewarding process.

After all, it’s important to remember to have fun with art. Like this guy: