"Words are only words but we turn them into gifts... then we seem confused as their meaning slowly shifts"

There Are Voices: a new poem

There Are Voices

 

There are voices I hear

That tell me what’s true

They whisper like water

They whisper of you

 

There are voices I hear

That weren’t there before

That speak of forgiveness

Like it was a law

 

I deny what I hear

With the strength of youth

That is no longer mine

 

And I’m living proof

That the voices I hear

Are no-one’s but mine

So I live out my life

Where the bright stars shine

 

I live out my life where

The past is subdued

The heart is at rest but

The dreams are still crude

 

I live out my life while

Your legs are open

Your spell still intact though

Your heart was broken

 

I live out my life where

The voices console

Instead of torment  

 

                   Where

     a person is whole

©2009 Dave Tutin

A breeze of history...

Leonard Cohen is in the news again. And deservedly so.

But if you are intrigued by his new album Live In London or any of his more recent works like Ten New Songs or Dear Heather, you should backtrack.

Check out an album from 1974 called New Skin For The Old Ceremony.

Among other brilliant songs it includes Chelsea Hotel #2:

"I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel

You were talking so brave and so sweet

Giving me head on the unmade bed

While the limousines wait in the street

Those were the reasons

That was New York

We were running for the money and the flesh

That was called love

For the workers in song

Probably still is for those of them left..."

Oddly enough, Leonard did perform this song at both concerts I've seen during his ongoing world tour (Montreal and New York) but it does not appear on Live In London. Maybe he knew I was in the audience!

From the outside looking in

I am not anti-advertising. How could I be when that industry was so good to me for so long? But I have to say that the ad business of today is a far cry from the one I joined.

I find it fascinating that people who have spent their careers getting people to change - change the brand of toothpaste they buy or switch the brand of car they drive or add a new brand to their list of options for insurance - seem totally unable to deal with change when it affects them.

(Actually they've always struggled with anything affecting themselves. It's always been a joke within the ad business that the worst ads are those an agency creates to "sell" the agency. It would be a funny joke if it weren't totally true. When the agency is the product the very worst ideas get approved. And nobody knows why.)

The problem the agencies face today is that what they used to do doesn't work any more. America is not clustered around the TV every night watching one of three networks. Life was simple back then. The number of products to choose from was smaller, the chance for real improvement in a product category was greater, and the number of people your TV spot reached was incredible.

That's all gone.

These days, advertising performs a different job. We have so much more information at our fingertips than ever before - we can compare products side by side at myriad sites on the Internet. And heaven help the marketer who stretches the truth as they did in the past. Lies are uncovered at megabytes per second.

Today we need information. It can and should still be presented in an entertaining way - that just helps us to remember what we hear and see. And stops life from getting boring (Direct Marketing folks please take note.)

Statements of the blindingly obvious are instantly forgotten amid the noise of so many messages - another problem that's grown over time.

But anyway, I didn't mean for this to be a long piece, so I'll get to the point. This was prompted by an article I read this morning about the recent conference of The Association of American Advertising Agencies - or, as we in the business have called it for years, the 4As.

The mind-numbingly meaningless "news" coming out of this conference is that the association plans to change its name. It wants to be officially known as the 4As.

Why? Because the word American is no longer relevant because marketers operate globally.

And the word advertising is no longer relevant because ad agencies do so much more than they used to.

I had to read the piece twice just to make sure these idiots were serious. Sadly they were. Faced with a world that is changing faster than most marketers can keep up with, faced with marketers who are changing way faster than most agencies can keep up with, this is the best they can do? Change their name to one the industry has always used. That's the kind of change the ad world has always been good at. The superficial kind.

The association is American. And there's nothing wrong with American-based agencies being proud of that fact. Their clients have been doing business globally for decades. It's only now a problem? Please!

And whatever an agency does it's all ultimately advertising. But that word is suddenly a problem? Please!

I know there are some really smart people in the advertising world. I can only assume they are so afraid for their jobs right now that they are keeping a low profile. I hope they re-emerge soon or the rift that exists right now between the agencies, which don't seem to have any truly brilliant ideas any more, and their clients, who are much more accepting of how we've all changed and are looking for help as much as ever, will only get wider and wider.

And obviously the Association of American Advertising Agencies cannot address this problem until it decides what to call itself. Ay Ay Ay Ay.

Manny's New York closes: the official end of an era

My friend (and producer of Raised In Vain) Craig sent me this copy of the signed pic of Dylan that has been on the wall at Manny's Music on 48th Street in New York for many years.

Manny's opened in 1935 and is now closing. 

Actually, Manny's 'closed' back in 1999 when it became part of Sam Ash and hasn't been the same since. Nonetheless, 48th Street without a Manny's sign will be a very different place.

These days Dylan's advice to "keep one eye closed at all cost" seems oddly appropriate. With both eyes open you see a lot you'd rather not see.

Beware the sound of opening doors

I know I said I'd be writing about our move to New Mexico and the new situation we find ourselves in, but something's been playing on my mind for a long time now and I feel I have to write it down.

I have been extremely fortunate in my life to have had several mentors. There was the teacher who recognized that I was simply not good at the academic thing but that I might have talents that were worth encouraging. I brought him some of my writings...I called it poetry. He read it. Carefully. He was impressed that I had actually written something without being told to as a school project. But once he was over that surprise he read it all again. That was when he said to me, "These seem more like song lyrics than poetry."  I immediately started taking a new interest in the songs I was hearing and quite soon after this I harassed my parents into letting me have a guitar. My dad even organized lessons with a young man he knew at work - Norman - who was into Johnny Cash and Buddy Holly. I got the hang of some Cash tunes pretty fast - and around this time I discovered Bob Dylan, so the lineage made sense - but I never did tune in to Buddy Holly. Those chords were so difficult! To this day I cannot play a strong E flat. And some of the others seemed like torture. Buddy was a chord master! I think I understood even then that the brilliance of Dylan was to say so much with so little.

Anyway, that was all a digression. The mentors that came later were just as important. There was the man who was the global creative head of the ad agency I ended up working for in London. He showed me that there was a whole world waiting to be explored - that I didn't have to stay in England just because I was born there.

Then there were other mentors as I journeyed around the world. One in particular was so important to me that even the fact that he said the most upsetting and disappointing thing to me - the real subject of this piece - could not destroy our friendship that has lasted to this day. And why no names have been, or will be, mentioned here.

What did he say that was so powerful I'm writing about it nearly twenty years later? The story goes like this.

I was feeling under-appreciated. I had been working my ass off and achieving a better than average amount of success as defined by the advertising business at the time. I had been creating some award winning work, keeping my clients happy and helping to bring in new business for the agency. But I was also realizing that many people around me were earning significantly more than I was. Ah the disease of greed that is the advertising world!

I decided I had enough stored up points to play a risky game. I wrote a letter of resignation and sent it to my mentor. I said I had been offered a higher paying position with an agency that shared a client with us. That would be the one place, I reasoned, they would not want me to go to.

I say it was a risky game for the simple reason I had no such offer. And the fact that I lied to my mentor has troubled me to this day. So, mentor, I'm sorry.

I timed my letter well. He had left the office for his weekend home by the time it arrived on his assistant's desk on Friday afternoon. I knew she would open it and that she would call him. And she did.

I got a call back within an hour. He said he was pretending the letter of resignation did not exist, I was to report to his office on Monday morning and we were going to "sort things out."

I went home triumphant. It had worked.

Sure enough on Monday morning all sorts of added incentives were laid at my feet. My salary increased of course and not by some insignificant amount. I was given a new, fancy title. And I was, for the first time, given stock options.

The first thing I had to do when I left his office was go find out what a stock option was!

But all this reward and recognition came at a price. And that's what has stayed with me all this time. I learned what a stock option was very quickly. But I have never learned why my mentor said what he did as he offered me all the stuff I felt I'd earned with my hard work and perseverance.

As he outlined the new deal he looked me hard in the eye and said words to the effect of "this comes with a condition. You are one of us now. I know you are very well liked by the people who work for you but you must separate yourself from them and take a management point of view from now on."

At the time I just nodded, took the money and ran. What else would a young, single man in Manhattan do?

But those words have echoed in my brain so many times since. And as I read every day now of the stupidity of the men and women (usually men!) running our major financial institutions - thinking that an entire month can just disappear from the books, or that we'll believe any of another dozen reasons why a bank that needed billions in bail-out funds is suddenly profitable again - I keep coming back to them.

"You are one of us now".

I do not like this man any less for those words he said all those years ago. We all do what we think we need to do to survive, to stay employed and feed our families. But I also think he hit the nail on the head when it comes to what ails our country, indeed the financial world. 

It's still them and us. But who is who?

The guys pulling down multi-million dollar bonuses as their companies fail think they deserve the money. Because they are "us". And we don't get it because we are still "them".

I never turned my back on the people who I was privileged to manage. I know it was their talents that made me look even better than I could have been on my own. I never did truly adopt the "management point of view" and that's probably why I no longer work for a global advertising agency.

But I have to wonder if this is not the truth behind the differences between the Bush and Obama administrations. I don't think, as a candidate, Barack Obama ever intended to adopt the "management point of view", so ineloquently summed up by Bush whenever he refused to give a detailed answer to a question, instead simply stating "This is hard work" or "I'm the decider". 

President Obama...I hope you never stop seeing yourself, paradoxically, as "them" - because in Washington, as on Wall Street and Madison Avenue, "us" is not the inclusive word it may seem.

A very simple message to Dick Cheney

The argument is not, and never should be, about how effective torture was at getting information out of our captives. It is about whether your willingness to authorize and encourage torture on behalf of all Americans was a war crime.

Asking for memos to be released that show how useful torture was is just another way in which you are admitting your guilt.

Which I am happy to watch you do. Prosecutions or no, history will record you as a despicable torturer - a man unfit ever to have held the office of Vice President.

Cars worth singing about.

I just read this great piece about how cars and driving were once so much a part of the American experience that great songs were written about them. Give it a read.

www.cnn.com/2009/US/04/12/greene.car.songs/index.html

It's so true.

If I wrote a song today that included the words "I feel so alive behind the wheel of my FX45" I'd get laughed at. Actually it would be a lie because I just traded my FX45 for the new FX50S. And it's disqualified because it's not an American machine.

Leonard Cohen wrote...

"It's coming from the silence on the dock of the bay

From the brave, the bold, the battered heart of Chevrolet

Democracy is coming to the USA"

This was the last, great mention of an American carmaker in song that I can remember. And it ain't exactly positive!

Maybe what Detroit needs is not so much an infusion of cash but to relearn its own history. It needs to start making - and naming - cars worth singing about!

You live and learn (thanks Bill!)

Our new house has wood-burning fireplaces in the main room, the master bedroom and even one outside. But city boy here had major trouble getting the logs to burn! So I did what I always do at times like this - I consulted the Internet. I found many suggestions and ideas, as always. But the best was this:

Throw out your ideas on how to light fires. Instead, put the coal, or logs if for a wood fire straight onto the grate WITH NO PAPER. Then put the large kindling on top of that, then the medium, finally the small kindling on the very top, again, WITH NO PAPER. Just put 1/2 a firelighter on the top, or a 1/4 if you are as tight as me.

Advantages; 
1 Fire lights quicker and cleaner with less smoke emitted. 
2. If the fire doesn’t catch, instead of having the filthy job of demolishing part burnt fire, and rebuilding it, you simply put another handful of small kindling on top, throw on another bit of firelighter, and off you go.

Paper is filthy stuff, and the flakes of ash choke the fire.

Bill Wight. Founder, Guild of Master Sweeps, UK.

The Guild of Master Sweeps! You can't beat that Ms Poppins.

"Even if your watch is full of diamonds the hour is still 60 minutes" - R. Fulghum

I've had to do a bit of catching up on world events recently. Getting Dish TV service here in the desert took two visits from technicians. Simple phone service from Qwest was a nightmare, taking ten days from the time of order. And The New York Times finally got delivered after two phone calls and three days later than ordered. But finally, I feel connected to the world again.

And what a world.

Forget the ridiculous comments about Michelle Obama "touching" the Queen. That's just classic backward looking British stupidity. Look at what these two human beings have achieved.

First, they have made us realize (hopefully) that we can never again elect an idiot like George Bush.

Second, Barack has illustrated with superb grace and eloquence the difference between a politician and a statesman. (Which explains my first point).

Third, and this is the real reason behind this post, I hope America realizes that it has an enormous task at hand. WE MUST NOW LIVE UP TO THESE PEOPLE.

We are lucky beyond belief that a man and woman such as these were there in our hour of need. They are restoring everything that was once valued and valuable about this country.

We must now deserve them. 

To the professional liars, the cheats, the tricksters, the get-rich-at-any-cost crowd, the big business execs who have lost touch with humanity and sanity, the peddlers of drugs nobody needs, the peddlers of drugs aimed at destroying the fabric of society, I say stop. Stop and listen to your President as he talks of integrity, honesty, responsibility and diplomacy.

He is the man I always hoped he was. And his wife is a treasure in her own right.

Don't arrogantly think they "represent" this country. This country must change to meet their standards.

Wow...what a trip

So, we are safely in our new home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I'll be writing about the weirder aspects of the move very soon. But for now we are enjoying our new life, the amazing views, the really cool people we've already met and the incredible peace and quiet! These are the Sangre de Cristo mountains - the view we wake up to each morning.