"It's hopeless. I can hear all this great music in my head but my stupid hands can't keep up."
– Phillip J Fry.

Plato's idea of an “imitation of an imitation” strikes a chord with me because of a memory I have from childhood. As a kid, I had a lot of artistic friends and influences. I was really enthralled with the way certain people managed to make completely fantastic things with just a pencil and paper. One of my first babysitters, Jen, was an art student and a good teacher. She was one of the first people to tell me that all I needed to create art was practice. She got me canvases from The Art Store and let me use her oil paints.

I still have the biggest painting I did with her, which is: A unicorn jumping through the air in front of three giant flowers. There is possibly a stream on the ground. It's not a very good picture. I remember constantly being frustrated at that age because my idea of what good art was did not match up with my personal ability to create it. I had, well... stupid hands.

That's my strongest memory of that type of frustration, but of course it still happens to me all the time. I can imagine what I want to draw, but my hands can't always put it onto paper. I dream about writing something beautiful and then can't remember what I was trying to say. It's mostly annoying because it makes you really aware of how your talent stacks up against your expectations, so you're constantly disappointed in yourself.

I took Plato's idea to mean that there's nothing more pure than a concept, and that all concepts are changed in execution.