“grinding up” one’s influences, Hello. Reading an interesting article about where the ideas come from, I found that expresion I wrote on the tittle: "grinding up". I looked it up, but the problem is the meaning I found is motheing like "to pulverize", Which I don't think is correct. This is the paragraph: Echoing Einstein’s idea of “combinatory play” and artist Francis Bacon’s notion that original art is the product of finely “grinding up” one’s influences, Le Guin speaks to the combinatorial nature of the creative process: From the context I would say it is something like "to combine", but I don't know.