There was a Sufi story the gist of which was about imitating a master when studying under them even if you didn’t understand why they did what they did. There are things you can learn from imitation that might not make sense immediately, maybe after some months or years it’ll make sense. The guy I studied piano with as a young man played the piano without any upper body movement (not the way I naturally play) and sometimes I tried imitating him;  It changed my internal experience. Sometimes people imitating other artists they admire, I get it. It’s only weird if they don’t eventually drop it and move on to their own thing.

I was struck by that when I found this youtube clip of the amazing man Marty Feldman. This clip performed in 1969 and 1970 made me wonder if Eric Idle was a fan because it resembled one of his famous characters….but I could be wrong.