17. Struggling with authenticity
Is it plagiarism or inspiration?
Hello,
Welcome back to another edition of the newsletter, it’s great to have you here!
This week I was in Dublin working on an exciting project, seeing old friends and eating delicious food. (I’ll share a list of my favourite Dublin things with you soon).
This week I’m sharing my thoughts on my continual struggle to get a grips on social media, especially food content. If you’ve read my other work then you’ll know I find social media a challenge. At the moment I’m struggling to know whether the work I’m creating is authentic - is it my idea or am I copying it from something I’ve seen online?
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic too, so please leave a comment below!
Much love,
Cissy…xo
My friend Kitty Coles (food stylist, chef, cookbook author and writer for The Gloss Magazine) and I were chatting the other day. I’d sent her a screenshot of a well-known and beloved chef and food journalist who had recently published a recipe in a newspaper supplement that looked almost identical to a recipe I’d seen Kitty make and share on an online cooking platform. It’s likely this was mostly coincidence but it sparked our conversation to u-turn. Kitty admitted that she’d recently started muting a lot of food content creators on her Instagram feed as a way to block out the constant overdose of images that are likely to be (inadvertently) altering the way she writes, styles and cooks recipes. But also because she was tired of seeing her food styling duplicated by other creators. When I thought about it more, I asked myself, ‘if I were a writer and I enjoyed the work of another author, would I then copy that author’s work verbatim?’ No, probably not, as that would be classed as plagiarising. But when your career is based upon someone literally copying you, measurement for measurement, then this idea becomes slightly blurred. Don’t worry I’ll save the copyright and IP discussions for another time! I’m more interested in understanding how and to what extent social media scrolling is having an effect on our creativity and originality. Is authenticity too much of a struggle in this oversaturated world?
Firstly, I have to share how I came to think about this in more detail. It involves me holding my hands up, getting a little red in the cheeks and admitting to doing the exact thing Kitty is trying to avoid. Copycatting! Several weeks ago I walked past Café Deco in Bloomsbury. Having not yet had the chance to eat there, I took to gawking at all their delicious dishes on Instagram. One post was an image of a plated dessert; a fat spoonful of baked custard, with a finger of shortbread nestled up against it and then some jammy thick cuts of peach spilling over the top. Heavenly! After a few days of the image whirling around in my head, it became so overwhelming I thought, ‘Ok, I’ve got to make this!’.
However, it turned into quite a tumultuous task. I didn’t have Anna Higham’s beautiful book The Last Bite with me, which is where the recipe for the baked custard came from, according to the Café Deco team. My copy was tucked up in a cardboard box somewhere in the deep depths of my Dad’s attic (I’m between homes at the moment). As a solution I decided I’d just go to a book shop to get another copy. At the time I was in South London and on my way back to Oxford. On the way, I stopped in the bookshop in Paddington station. The book wasn’t there. I arrived in Oxford, and went to another bookshop. It wasn’t there either. Then another, then another. Finally, I got my hands on a copy! Throughout this day of searching, I didn’t once think to text Anna and ask her for the recipe. In retrospect I can only laugh at myself for my manic determination!
The next day, I cracked on making my shortbread, roasting my peaches and then making a baked custard. Would you believe that even after all that rigamarole the day before, I didn’t even use Anna’s recipe! That wasn’t even the biggest disaster. The biggest was over baking my custard. After spending a beautiful 30 degree summer day in the kitchen, with not much to show for it, I felt deflated. So, I tried it again (naturally). Again, it didn’t work. I got so worked up that nothing was going my way and the main reason was because I felt I’d wasted my time and money making something which wasn’t going to generate any content for Instagram.
On reflection, I can only feel slightly ashamed for being so beguiled by social media. I thought, ‘Wow! That was a really good example of becoming detached from your authentic self and the real reason you enjoy baking, which is to make, share and eat delicious food’. In the end, I did eat and enjoy the dessert I’d made, (even if it wasn’t quite how I envisioned it.
Recently I listened to an old Andrew Huberman interview with Rick Rubin (the American record producer). In the podcast Rubin discusses the ways he accesses his creative energy and where it comes from, which is the theme of his bestselling book, ‘The Creative Act: A Way of Being’. Serendipitously a clip from this podcast appeared on my algorithm. (World, are you trying to tell me something!?). In the clip he’s asked about writer’s block (skip to 30.00 in the video link). Rubin questions where a writer’s block comes from, suggesting it either comes from the fear of outside judgement, or the fear of self-judgement. He goes on to say that you should be creating art for yourself and compares it to a diary entry, saying ‘I can write a diary entry and you can’t tell me my diary entry wasn’t good enough […] no one else can judge it, it is my experience of life’. He goes on to say, ‘everything we make can be a personal reflection of who we are in that moment’ and it doesn’t have to be the best or the most perfect, it just has to be honest to where you are in that moment. Although Rubin here is challenging the idea of writer's block, I find it resonates with what I’ve been discussing here. It affirms and challenges how I felt trying to make that dessert. In that moment I wasn’t making it for me, I was making it for an audience and because of that I lost sight of what felt true to me and my creative energy. The same goes for Kitty’s decision to mute food related content creators. In the modern world it feels like we are constantly striving to make something for an audience (mostly one that lives inside our phones), to be liked and adored. In the process we jump onto trends and ride them out until the next one comes along.
If we all lived slightly more in tune to Rubin’s ethos, would we find it easier to create more meaningful and genuine ideas? Over the last few days I’ve been asking myself this whilst thinking back to my conversation with Kitty. What would happen if I starved myself of online food content? Well, I think I might lose a big source of inspiration, knowledge and support. Seeing how others cook and bake invigorates and challenges me. It makes me want to try new recipes and it sparks new ideas. However, the things I see are obviously slipping into my subconscious and mutating into a life of their own, bringing with them a pang of anxiety and self doubt. So maybe I should begin muting some of the thousands of food related images I see online. Who knows, it might help me get closer to my authentic self.
If you’re looking for something to make this Sunday, why not try my Greengage Clafoutis. The recipe can be found here on Nicola Lamb’s Kitchen Projects.
I do a lot of arts and crafts and I see so many wonderful things that people have created. I admit I do copy, but for me, it is just a process of self instruction. I learn something new and it doesn’t leave my house. More important, it starts as a copy and often grows from there, riffing into something new. As a little girl, the creative process came to me so naturally. I could make things out of materials from outside or little broken bits and pieces and be content for ages making thing. Now that I’m older I find it difficult to concentrate and just get going. Too many worries and other demands on my mind inhibited ability to just wander. So copying is my starting point into inspiration. I think it just gives me way to focus and an entry point into creativity. Long story short, I don’t think you need to mute your inspiration. Just put it away very often, so that you are *doing* much more than you are *perusing*
Thanks for this article! I’m in the midst of writing a book about Ukraine (that sentence even makes me feel uncomfortable - what do I know about writing books!) I rushed out and bought lots of other people’s books on the war. I wanted to learn from them. But I got too intimidated to read most of them. I didn’t want to be too influenced by someone else’s style. They all seemed like ‘proper’ works with huge historical context or specialist knowledge! But I should read them! Aaargh. Meanwhile your shortbread looks delicious… and I’m very glad you still post content!