On the Shoulders of Humans

Recently, I've been taking in the Polish National Ballet's rendition of Dracula. Very quickly, it has become one of those pieces of art that has left me at a total loss for how its creation was even possible. If I stay at this level of the illusion, I'm at risk of feeling that it is pointless to make art myself, because I could never create an original piece anywhere near as great (as similar pieces have done to me in the past).

Luckily, it reminded me of an important point that is best to keep in mind when running into this. Not only were there dozens & dozens of experts that took months & months to create this together, but they were all standing on the shoulders of humans - (While the phrase, "...If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants." is evocatively poetic, it would be more accurate to describe it as standing on the untold multitude of people that inspiration was drawn from).

The creative process does not start from nothing, and often some of the most famous works are explicitly refrencing, twisting, or retelling something already existing. As an example, what many consider the greatest novel of the modernist era, James Joyce's Ulysses (1922), is deeply connected to Homer's Odyssey, the ancient Greek classic. Tarkovsky's Stalker (1979), was in turn inspired by Roadside Picnic (Strugatsky & Strugatsky 1972). When writers aren't drawing inspiration from previous material, they are often drawing directly from their own life experience, such as Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), and Harper Lee's, To Kill a Mockingbird (1960). The image of an artist drawing something out of the aether to create something truly original is an unrealistic ideal to try to hold yourself to.

Now, to return to Dracula we can take apart the full production, piece by piece to see the mountain of inspirations that a single piece of art can stand on. To start, the story is of course directly taken from Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897), which draws inspiration from prexisting vampiric folklore, as well as numerous other sources as argued by scholars.

The score is not an original specifically made for this production; it is arranged from the composistions of Wojciech Kilar, including his score of Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992).

To move into a broader realm now, the set design, costuming, choreography, performances, technical attributes, staging, production, and so much more are the result of skills and techniques being passed down and developed for centuries, with the contemporary practitioners indiviudally having decades of personal experience in their crafts.

Human experience, as far as we know, does not arise in a vacuum. So, if something seems impossible, break it down into parts and slowly build understanding to see the secret history within it - that all things are standing upon.