During World War 2, my mum and sister were evacuated to Wales.
So my dad was living in the house on his own.
Because he was alone, he tended to go to bed early.
One night he was woken, about two in the morning.
By the sound of a piano playing.
Dad laid in bed for a minute, trying to work out what was happening.
Was the noise coming from inside or outside the house?
He knew they had an old upright piano in the front room.
But nobody used it.
And anyway, there wasn’t anyone in the house.
So he got up and went to the top of the stairs and looked over.
He could definitely hear piano sounds coming from the front room, downstairs.
But the piano wasn’t playing a tune.
Just strange collection of weird, discordant notes.
So he started to go downstairs.
As he got closer he could hear a strange wailing noise.
High pitched, like child in pain.
But not quite human.
He got to the bottom of the stairs and looked towards the living room.
Which was pitch black.
He put his head inside.
Nothing.
Except the jangling sounds coming from the piano.
And the high-pitched mournful wailing.
In the empty house.
In the dark.
At two in the morning.
The whole world was dead, except for this noise.
He walked over to the piano, and looked at the keys.
They were moving up and down.
Not in any order, just up and down.
And the echoey notes were playing.
And still, the high-pitched cries.
Then he opened the top of the piano and looked in.
A cat was walking up and down, inside the piano.
Trying to get out.
Crying in high-pitched voice.
So dad reached in, grabbed the cat, and put it outdoors.
Then he went back to bed and fell asleep.
See my dad was a policeman.
So it was his job to be rational in all situations.
Everything always had to have a logical explanation.
Personally, I don’t think I’d even have gotten downstairs.
I’d have been out the window and down the street, as soon as I heard the piano playing inside the empty house at two in the morning.
But then I’ve got a very vivid imagination.
And, luckily, I’ve got a job where that’s a good thing.
My dad trained himself out of having an imagination.
In his job, imagination was hindrance.
Imagination got in the way and clouded your mind.
So you had to learn to control it.
You don’t want to imagine things any other way than the simple facts.
And that’s really good advice for everyday life.
Imagining what your boss thinks of you, worrying what the client’s going to say, fretting over all the problems, all the things that might go wrong.
All of this can stop us doing great and exciting things.
But.
If we don’t imagine things how are we going to do our job?
How can we imagine a more creative kind of advertising?
A more exciting solution to any problem.
How can we imagine new ways to beat the competition?
Things that haven’t been tried yet.
I think we have to have imagination.
But we have to make sure imagination doesn’t have us.
We have to feed it, look after it, develop it.
Just like we would if we lived in Burma and needed an elephant to do our job.
It’s vital to us, but we have to be in control of it.
We have to make sure the elephant does what we tell it to.
We can’t let the elephant tell us to do.
That’s what happens if we let imagination get in control.
The good part of imagination is that you can take something and imagine what it would be like if it was more exciting.
The bad part of imagination is that you can take something and imagine what it would be like if it was more exciting.
In our business we need imagination.
As Rory Sutherland said, “It’s the job of advertising to make the new familiar, and the familiar new.”
And for that you need imagination.
Just remember, imagination makes a great servant and a lousy master.
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Another fantatic story with a good moral in it!
I would of went down stairs and then ran out! but then again I would have created a whole back story to the haunted piano.
You are the story maestro Dave. That would make a great short horror comedy film. Will you sell me the idea for ten bob?
dave
who is rory sutherland?
john o’d
dave
did your dad solve how the cat got in the piano?
john o’d (again)
http://ex-blank-page.blogspot.com/2010/01/in-reply-to-daves-great-posts-111112.html
Dave,
I think the thing about the greatest imaginations is that you can’t turn them off or on. You can try to spark them … but you don’t always have control.
But that’s what makes it fun.
- Christian
Dave, it’s this imagination amongst account men that keeps us awake at night. Unfortunately we tend to examine every single possible variable for failure, so that we are better armed should we be faced with it the next day. My boss states that this condition is called ‘Catastrophia’.
Nice one Dave.
I’ve just completed my submission for this year’s RA Summer Exhibition.
I think I’ve got a cat in hell’s chance.
I met a fellow artist who paints incredible abstract stuff and told him how I was bowled-over by watching 40 foot waves break at Aberdeen pier a few winters ago. The subject matter this year is ‘Raw’ and I was going to paint the scene I saw in my head in oils.
My friend said to me ‘Come on Kev, your skies and seas are great, just let yourself go on the canvas, forget about the harbour, forget about the illustration bit (the wave smashing on the promontary) and just paint with energy and don’t think about it.
To be honest, I was pretty naffed-off at his comments, but I knew he was right. There was no logical reason for him to be wrong other than the bag of worms in my head.
I had a sleepless night.
It disturbed me.
GOOD!
The next day (yesterday) I got up and just painted. slapped paint on not cosciously aware of what I was doing. I could feel the raw energy passing uncontrollably from hand to brush to great dollops of paint and I’ve ended up with a painting that’s peculiarly familiar. It’s me, and I’m going to enter it. My head is telling me “It’s crap, you painted it in an hour” but it doesn’t matter what my head tells me. The last painting I did that sold at an exhibition was painted in 15 minutes in oils with a haircomb. Everyone else is telling me they like this stuff when I just slap the paint on a canvas like a wild animal.
Your name in lights story has really helped me.
What is this insanity that holds us back?
It’s the old bogey man, Mr What will you think of me if I do this?
Maybe I should call it Cape Fear.
Ha!
Could this have anything to do with what holds us back?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0DUsGSMwZY
John,
If you don’t know Rory Sutherland, check out this link:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/rory_sutherland_life_lessons_from_an_ad_man.html
And apparently it was summer and my dad had left some windows ajar.
Kevin,
The insanity holding us back is society, specifically social norms.
It’s often the role of the artist to challenge and break social norms. And it’s typically the role of the advertising creative to create, reinforce and manipulate them.
The risk you take in going Pollock might be rewared with acclaim, fame and fortune. Or humiliation and scorn.
Surely that’s why the Turner prize is such fun? Is it Art or is it bollocks? Without people like yourself taking social risks by challenging the ‘insanity’ of social norms, we’d live in a pretty boring Artless world.
Hats off to you!
Hi Dave,
That’s a funny story. I wonder how the same events played out in the cats head. As far as I know animals don’t have imaginations so the whole thing was probably just a series of sensations. In fact the only thing the cat would have thought strange is the look on your Dads face when he opened the piano.
Your thoughts on imagination reminded me of a quote I saw on Tiny Buddha the other day.
“If you worry about what might be, and wonder what might have been, you will ignore what is.”
I think life is definitely better if you can live in the present and not imagine too much about what might or might not happen. It’s a lot easier said than done though.
I know my Elephant likes to wander.
One of the best print ads I ever saw ran years ago, and was for Kodak.
(I may have that wrong, it could have been someone like Olympus, so forgive my poor memory)
It featured four black squares with white type in the middle describing famous events
i.e.
‘Student lying in front of tank in Tiananmen square’
The headline read something like:
‘If you can picture it in your head, it was shot with a Kodak camera.’
Brilliant.
The pictures in your head are far more powerful than those on the printed page.
Thanks for that John W, and thanks for your encouragement Rick.
The RA will probably hate it, but who cares.
I’ll just have to wait til I’m dead.
On the theme of great servants and lousy masters, this reminds me
of some of those difficult times between account handlers and creatives
or agencies and clients. You can choose who is who:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qu9MptWyCB8&feature=related
Dave
Re: Rory Sutherland
Thanks for the link.
Rory IS good news. And he speakes ‘Petrus’.
Didn’t realise there was anybody left in the business who was fun anymore and still went to lunch.
John O’D
John,
I think Rory is the bastard love-child of Stephen Fry and Boris Johnson.
sorry rant
Ad was for Nikon and the headline read:
‘If you can picture it in your head it was probably taken with a Nikon.’
writer was a Richard Kelley.
see http://www.kelleywriter.com/
sorry again.
Smart Arse O’Driscoll
Thanks Smart Arse, you are indeed true to your name.
Still a great advert.
If only my memory was as powerful as the ad.
Rant
I maybe a bit of an arse but unfortunately I am not that smart.
Richard Kelley, who is a chum, showed me the ad and the commercial last year.
First time I had seen it.
I was impressed too.
o’d
John
I had a good look through his website. He seems an annoyingly talented man.
R
R
Re: The Kelley’s
It runs in the family. His brother John wasn’t too shabby at writing ads either.
jo’d
Hi Rant,
John O’Driscoll is being a little coy.
He was a creative director at CDP when it was one of, if not the, best agencies in the world.
Richard Kelley is the little brother of John Kelley, John O’D’s partner.
The two Johns won pretty much every award there is several times over.
Is he an arse?
Well, aren’t we all occasionally.
Is he smart?
Always.
Hi John & Dave
I feel a bit like a sparrow in the company of peacocks.
I had looked at John O’Driscoll’s site too, so knew he was also an annoyingly talented man. I never presumed for a moment he was an arse, only smart.
Hello Dave,
Hope you’re well. Yes, the two Johns were the biz weren’t they? Somone confused brother John and me in a Campaign article once and called John “porky”. I corrected it with a letter to the editor: He ain’t fat. He’s my brother. And put the the record straight that I was the chubby but better-looking one in the family.
Thanks for the nice comment Rant.
Best,
Richard.
Hi Richard,
For those too young to remember, there was a time when the Kelleys, the Delaneys, O’Driscoll and O’Donnell had almost complete domination over UK advertising.
In fact, in those days it was known as ‘THE MURPHIA’.
Jack
Like humans, some animals have an imagination, some don’t.
Dave, John O’D
CDP/BMP showreels circa 1979 are ‘the’ two reasons some people entered the crazy world of advertising.
Kevin
Painting fast captures the energy + sure beats hanging around watching it dry.
Christian
Whenever I let my imagination run riot cops with water cannon arrive and hose it down.
All
Elephants never forget, so speak kindly of them.
Jesus Christ, what a circle jerk!
Ciaran
was fun though wasn’t it ciaran.
just like the wank of old days.
ahhhhh!!!
o’d
John,
You’re right, and furthermore, just like the old days,
this old groupie just wanted to get his name on the
same page as the rock stars.
And you are right, it was fun.
Ciaran
Mc and O’D
… and you tell that to the kids today and they won’t believe you!
Dave, talking of Coy!
Have you seen Adland [the movie] yet?
Nicely done, with a cast you’re sure to recognize…
Just watched it Grilla.
Fantastic little film isn’t it.
I counted 41 ad references in it but I’m sure there’s more.
Great music too.
just watched it.
love it. I really do.
hats off to the team.