The phone call?

It wasn’t anyone I knew.

The caller may have called me “mate” a couple of times but he was from my printer supplier wanting to know if I needed more ink.

Before he mentioned his company or ink, though, I knew it wasn’t anyone I knew.

It’s intriguing how we know who’s calling within a few words (unless they’re pretending to be someone else)  – we recognise so many people’s authentic voice.  As I picked up the phone, I’d been thinking about authentic voices as a metaphor the art we produce from our lives.

There’s an interesting line dividing plagiarism and imitation from innovation and uniqueness.  Those who charge people with plagiarism most likely overlook where they themselves got an idea from.  Whether it be a thought, movement, composition, musical riff, way of delivery, they all began with things other people have created, the artefacts they’ve left behind.

It’s what we go on to make and produce from these that often becomes exciting – and the more we mix things up, the more amazing the creation.  I’ve still got my vinyl copy of Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells from the beginning of the 1970s.  Oldfield’s ability to combine contemporary and classical music was nothing short of brilliant, and took the musical world and markets by storm (mind you, not so many people have heard of Hergest Ridge his follow up album, which I also have – here’s the first google suggestion, but this is the one you want).  But Oldfield  began by learning his music from others like everyone else.

Steven Covey held that to find our voices and to help others find theirs is the most important life-habit we can develop.  We learn from others but then we have to develop our own voice.  None of us can share a voice with others, but we can harmonise.

There are lots of things we have to wrestle with if we are to hear our own voice and develop it – pressure to: fit in, to pass an exam, to get a job, to keep a job, to avoid conflict, to avoid hard work, the belief that the chance has been missed, that now is not the right time, others do it the right way, there’s only one way to do it, it would never work, you have to be born talented, fear of failure … .

But finding our authentic voice is not only possible, it’s essential.  Your take on things, the way you combine ideas from many different places in a way no one else has thought of maybe just what the world needs – at least someone’s world, but possibly more more than one person’s world.

And who knows, someone may be waiting for someone like you to to do that thing you do, so they can take this and make something from this and other places you’d not even thought of.