Exhausted Originality

Katherine Carleton of Orchestras Canada said to me yesterday, "You have to ask, has someone else already done this? And yes well, you might as well just stay in bed."
With the ability to access hundreds of years of cultural products and new information and creations by the second, as artists we've got to wonder, "Am I really still making something unique? Have I exhausted my originality?"
I'm wondering this, and I keep wondering this as eight women report on this year's CCA policy conference. Eight women reporting on one conference, and we've all got to be original. As a blogger it's a task, but as an artist, in a world with hundreds, thousands of other enormously creative people, does the buck ever stop?