The Urge To Echo Existing Ideas

Writing this from Brazil.

I've been noticing a pattern in the way I consume content, regardless of the medium. Music, visuals, concepts, artists, projects. Sometimes consciously, sometimes casually. Almost every time a piece of content catches my attention, the same thought appears almost immediately: "Oh... I could do that."

My brain immediately maps the thing. I see the necessary tools. I see the process ahead. I see the decisions that would need to be made. Within seconds, it becomes technically viable. No longer hypothetical. Achievable.

Sometimes I can see it fitting into the direction my project could take. Other times, it clearly doesn't, and the thought quickly fades. That's an important distinction. I can understand how something works, imagine how I'd approach it, and still have no reason to pursue it. Being able to make something doesn't mean it's worth making.

I suspect this is one small part of how trends spread. Once something becomes visible, people can study it, understand how it works, and imagine making their own version.

In my own creative process, I've found that making decisions at the right time tends to lead to better outcomes. It's something I'm actively working on. For me, the problem is rarely acting on every impulse. Most of the time, I don't. The difficulty is what happens when I haven't decided what to do with an idea. It lingers, half-formed, somewhere in the back of my mind, not developed enough to become anything but not dismissed enough to leave me alone. That's where creative noise creeps in, taking up mental space without producing anything tangible.

It can trigger guilt, mild frustration, or the sense that I don't have a clear direction for my work. There are many paths I could take, and that abundance isn't inherently negative. The problem is letting too many possibilities remain unresolved, as if each one still demands a decision from me.

For a long time, I thought this was simply a lack of clarity. I thought that if I were truly aligned with myself, these impulses wouldn't appear. But the impulses themselves may not be a sign of misalignment. This may simply be how I engage with creative input. I don't just consume and move on. I try to understand how things work. I reverse-engineer them.

Have you ever caught yourself trying to figure out how a sound was made, whether at a live concert or while casually listening to music? Yeah, that's me. Probably a lot of you, too.

Everything is material before it has meaning. That initial reaction isn't necessarily a desire to imitate. It's a recognition that I can trace a path from what I'm seeing to something I could make.

Instead of letting ideas orbit indefinitely, I'm trying to decide more quickly whether they deserve my attention. When that reflex kicks in, I ask myself:

- Does it connect emotionally with what I'm trying to express right now?

- Does it fit the broader narrative I'm building?

- Can it be developed further, or is it just a brief, interesting moment?

- Could it offer a useful break from my usual creative patterns, or would it only distract?

If it doesn't belong in my work right now, I can let it go. If it does, it earns my attention.

I won't always make these decisions cleanly. Some ideas will still linger, and I'll overthink them. That's fine. The goal isn't to stop the initial impulse. It's to stop treating every possibility as an open decision. The world will keep producing things that make me think, "Oh... I could do that." The real work is deciding which of those possibilities actually belong in my work.

That is where identity is built.

Quick plug: I released a track titled "Identity" last week.

Thank you for reading "Inside The Mind Of An Artist".

Until next time,

Vítor