Daniel the Songwriter

Daniel amused himself today by composing some vulgar songs.

While we were grocery shopping at Target in the afternoon, he started to sing out, loud and proud: "Strawberry mucous! Strawberry mucous! Everybody likes to eat it! Strawberry mucous!"

And then at dinner last night, he altered a bump-ditty from the Disney Jr. cable channel (the original features some of the 101 Dalmations learning "This is how you learn to wipe your paws"). His new appropriation featured the lyrics, "Barf, barf, barf your paws... this is how you learn to barf your paws."

It made my think about the accusations of plagiarism against Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, and countless others. People who write songs know that songwriting is more of a exchange with a greater tradition of continuity than individual, hermetic works of untainted inspiration. We want to copyright ideas so we can hold them and cash in on them forever, but in exchange for a livelihood, we're damming the collective flow of creativity.

And, yeah, I thought... yuck.