On Life is a Fountain, which is where you are sort of supposed to be now, reading this, and maybe are, and maybe aren't, I have a page called:
When I created Life is a Fountain I made a lot of pages that had to do with the things I have always written about. There are pages for Bob Dylan, and for Libraries, for Books, and Music, and for Animals, and Nature, and Politics. But "Stolen" was new. Stolen was a little shady. Stolen was about how, if I'm not going to be famous (and I'm not), if I'm not going to be read by thousands (I'm not), if I'm not going to get any money for working at writing and art every week all week long (I'm not going to get any money), then I am free to help myself to the entire history of art right up until the present. I'm free to make whatever I like with all things created by other people.
I'm not talking about plagiarism. Even if I don't say that "Lucy" is by Charles Schulz, I am not passing it off as my own, and I have a reasonable assumption that you will understand the real creator of said character. But I have no real care about his credit, his co-option, or his estate's rights. On Stolen, all is grist for the mill.
I don't know who first said "Grist for the mill", but it's mine now!
This is an interesting question about Authorship, and copyright, and Capitalism. It is a real discussion about Art, and ethics, and fair use.
Sometimes I am very interested in it.
Sometimes I just want to put Daffy Duck at a check out desk at my library.
Funnily enough I have not put very much material yet on the "Stolen" page of Life is a Fountain. This is not because I have insufficient substance for the page. Rather it is because everything I have produced lately, in vast quantities, has belonged, exactly, there.
Daffy Duck waiting somewhat impatiently for someone at a desk at my library:
Lucy and Linus making their way through a Norman Rockwell painting:
A Donkey with low self esteem that I ran into on my creek yesterday morning. I think he found some thistle!
And finally, Totoro, delightfully standing in our Non Fiction section, waiting for me to shelve some books:
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