Steal ideas from the past, not from the person sitting next to you.

Everybody builds on what came before, and work from another time or place gets transformed on the way to you, because you cannot copy a context you never lived in. Taking from the person beside you is different in kind: same room, same audience, same moment, and they will recognise it immediately. The distance is what turns influence into something of your own.

Go looking in old records, old films and old books rather than at whatever is doing well this week. When something in a friend’s work appeals to you, ask what it is doing and find your own version of that. If you borrow directly, say so.