Aesthetics and originality

I have been thinking about Walter Benjamin´s notion of aesthetic aura and why /un/original pieces of art, for example paintings are or are not of such a value as the original ones. The thing that everything todays is basically simulacrum is inevitabel. Even those painting were done based on some kind of copying, plagiarism, although involuntary or unintentional. it is impossible to paing anything and have no inspiration. What makes pieces of art valuable? If inspiration, and thus copying in a way is inevitable, why should we care about the the fact that everything is basically a copy of a copy? I think that there is a fine line between simularcum and originality, if any of both, the former or the latter can exist independently and absolutely. Everything is in a way inspired by some other thing, but everything is original in a way. Anything I do can be copied to a certain degree and there always will be something that refuses to be copied, maybe because it is not seen. This is the case with original paintings. One may make a copy or a photocopy but there is something that makes the original a original because we do not know what is withing and thus we cannot copy it. take us humans for example. We are all simulacra to a certain voluntary/involuntery, (un) intentional degree. The more we give ourselves to the copying of others the less original we are and vica versa the more we let ourselves be independent on anything and listen to our hearts, our conscience and our creativity, the more original we will be. No way is absolute, noone is totally independently creative and noone can be totally unoriginal. The answer is choice again. We need to accept that all we do is in a way influenced by others, as John Donne says:

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.

We should acknowledge also that although we resemble other people we are original in a way and should dig deep to find this originality and not bury it in the influence of others so that we let ourselves be inspired but do not let ourselves to become only another copy of a copy of a copy…

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