Whither Answers?

Q: Whom are you imitating now?
A: Why do you always assume I am imitating someone?
Q: Because you don't really have a style of your own.
A: Is that so.
Q: Yes, & usually you're paying some kind of "homage" or otherwise emulating, if not outright ripping off, some writer or comedian or something like that you've seen.
A: That's not fair!
Q: Didn't you once want to be a writer?
A: I did.
Q: & didn't you find it hard, after every book or short story you read, not to write exactly like the author?
A: ...
Q: Didn't you?
A: ...all right, sometimes.
Q: Didn't you once say that you could never be a musician because all of your songs would sound like your favorite band of the moment?
A: I never said that!
Q: Really?
A: I never did!
Q: I feel certain you're the one I heard say that.
A: It wasn't me!
Q: Sorry about that. It certainly seems like something you'd say.
A: Not at all. I am nowhere near being a musician, so I'd never idly speculate on what kind of music I'd make if I were a musician.
Q: Hmm.
A: Unless it was the catchall "crappy music."
Q: Now you're just being self-deprecating.
A: Does deprecating mean "honest"?
Q: I'm still not convinced this blog entry is entirely original.
A: Of course it's not original! Everything's been done before!
Q: Right, but this particular style, a dialog framed as a "question/answer" session, which really isn't one, but which is rather just a conversation between two people, therefore subverting the format of the "question/answer" kind. I really think someone else has done it before.
A: I'm just surprised you don't know who.
Q: Ah, so you admit it?
A: As long as you don't know who it is, I'm admitting nothing. It's like if I were on a desert island or in some isolated place that had never heard of, say, the Beatles, I would totally sing their songs & pretend they were mine if they got me some prestige.
Q: This is prestigious, mocking me?
A: It has its charms.
Q: You're a fool. I knew all along.
A: You did?
Q: Of course. Donald Barthelme.
A: Damn.