living under a rock can totally help with originality/doing your own thing. i think its helped me. but how the heck do you write the music that you do, when i'm sure you have a library of music that is just like etched into your brain? even if you're not actively listening to anything, you've got to have so much up there that no amount of fasting could erase (and you wouldn't want to erase it, right? only create a good distance from it?). i'll write a chord progression and be like "what a cool original piece of music" and then realize right after that i subconsciously ripped something else off. so i guess question is: how to learn from and appreciation the music of our forefathers while also taking the baton and doing something wild and crazy?
when i was younger i had a weird condition where i had a 'mid-life crisis' every day