Life Operating Manual

Ursula K Le Guin's Wizard of Earthsea impressed upon me the idea of words, the essence of words, as magic - as items of power. A brilliant story with a thread of understanding about the world we live in told through a completely other world. It made an impact early enough that I didn't understand "genre" so I could appreciate the work without knowing what I "should" or shouldn't like.

She also over her long career has written insightful pieces on the writing process, (a few words to a young writer, here 1968 rejection letter), creativity and Taoism (she has translated Lao Tzu -  saying:  “The Tao Te Ching is partly in prose, partly in verse; but as we define poetry now, not by rhyme and meter but as a patterned intensity of language, the whole thing is poetry. I wanted to catch that poetry, its terse, strange beauty. Most translations have caught meanings in their net, but prosily, letting the beauty slip through. And in poetry, beauty is no ornament; it is the meaning. It is the truth".

Here is her talking in 1975 at Worldcon.

Some of this is collected in Words Are My Matter: Writings About Life and Books, 2000-2016.

The piece (extracts below) on literature as a manual for life is worth the price of the book alone, if you measure such things in dollars and gold. Neil Gamain's commencement speech chimes although David Ogilvy takes the creativity for business much to Le Guin's despair I expect. The book reviews Le Guin gives are of more interest if you are a Le Guin fan.

The Operating Instructions (talk given at Oregon Literary Arts meeting in 2002)

"A poet has been appointed ambassador. A playwright is elected president. Construction workers stand in line with office managers to buy a new novel. Adults seek moral guidance and intellectual challenge in stories about warrior monkeys, one-eyed giants, and crazy knights who fight windmills. Literacy is considered a beginning, not an end. . . . Well, maybe in some other country, but not this one. In America the imagination is generally looked on as something that might be useful when the TV is out of order. Poetry and plays have no relation to practical politics. ...


... Literacy is so you can read the operating instructions. I think the imagination is the single most useful tool mankind possesses. It beats the opposable thumb. I can imagine living without my thumbs, but not without my imagination. I hear voices agreeing with me. “Yes, yes!” they cry. “The creative imagination is a tremendous plus in business! We value creativity, we reward it!” In the marketplace, the word creativity has come to mean the generation of ideas applicable to practical strategies to make larger profits. This reduction has gone on so long that the word creative can hardly be degraded further. I don’t use it any more, yielding it to capitalists and academics to abuse as they like. But they can’t have imagination. Imagination is not a means of making money. It has no place in the vocabulary of profit-making. It is not a weapon, though all weapons originate from it, and their use, or non-use, depends on it, as with all tools and their uses. The imagination is an essential tool of the mind, a fundamental way of thinking, an indispensable means of becoming and remaining human. We have to learn to use it, and how to use it, like any other tool. Children have imagination to start with, as they have body, intellect, the capacity for language: things essential to their humanity, things they need to learn how to use, how to use well. ...

Through story, every culture defines itself and teaches its children how to be people and members of their people—Hmong, !Kung, Hopi, Quechua, French, Californian. . . .

.... Literature remains comparatively, and amazingly, honest and reliable. ...

...Incoherent and commercialised and worm-eaten ... and hype and blather as it is, electronic publication offers those who read a strong new means of active community. The technology is not what matters. Words are what matter. The sharing of words. The activation of imagination through the reading of words. The reason literacy is important is that literature is the operating instructions. The best manual we have. The most useful guide to the country we’re visiting, life...."

Cross fertilise. Read about the autistic mind here and ideas on the arts here. On investing try a thought on stock valuations. 

** according to the Nerdist, the Ghibli film didn't use much of Le Guin's source material at all, but it did bring father and son back together again, so there is that.

Trustees Wanted

Yellow Earth Theatre (YET) are looking for Trustees for their board. As are Company Three and Kali.

It's a wonderful opportunity to help a small charitable arts company. You will pick up non-executive boards skills as well as expertise in working on strategic matters and under a charitable framework.

Most suited for those with a London base or regularly access to London. Woman, BME and other diversity actively encouraged to apply. YET is a theatre company with an East Asian focus.

If interested, best next step is to have an informal chat with Artistic Director Kumiko Mendl  (Kumiko at yellowearth.org)  and, or, the Chair Wai Yun Moon (or even me!)

YET have recently been given core funding (National Portfolio Organisation funding, NPO) from the Arts Council of England (ACE). It's a great moment to help YET scale and leverage to the next level. If that doesn't too much like business consultant speak gone through a mangle (am not feeling sharp enough to express it better).

Please share for those who might be interested. Further information can be found here.

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Company Three creates a space in which young people can talk to adults, and in which adults will really listen. Originally formed as Islington Community Theatre in 2008, we are a company of 75 young people aged 11-19.  We make theatre through long-term, intensive collaboration between our members and professional theatre-makers.  They are also looking for trustees (deadline 18 Sep)

Black American Experience

Required reading on the Black American experience. Much like how I advocate that Naoki Higashida is essential reading for insights into the autistic mind. Ta-Nehisi Coates memoir form book, written as a letter to his son,  BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME is a moving, gut wrenching lived experience of the black experience in America. It is seen through the lens of one's (black) body not being safe in America.

Rick Riordan (yes of Percy Jackson, children book fame - don't knock it until you have 86m books in print) has written a review from a considered white man's view point.  I'm not white, and I don't think I could put it as well as Rick, so I will borrow steal some of his review below and then present two passages from the early part of Coates book.

From Riordan "This is not a book written to explain the African American experience to white people (or as Coates likes to say, people who believe they are white.) As a middle-aged white guy, I am in no way the intended audience for this book. Perhaps that's what made it such an enlightening read for me. There was no sugar-coating, no careful racial diplomacy, no worry about mediating opinions to cater to what white people might be able to hear. It was just a heartfelt, raw, painful and honest letter from a father to a son, laying plain Coates' worry, anger, frustration, and fear for his son's future in light of Coates' own past and the world his son will grow up in. (There again: I almost said 'the world he will inherit,' but Coates would be quick to point out that this is white thinking. We grow up believing we can inherit the future of our country, whereas African Americans grow up hearing a very different message.)

Coates' most powerful assertion: doing violence to the African American body is an American legacy and tradition. It is not a failure of the system. It is part of the system. As much as may have changed in the past decades, the past centuries, the basic fear of African American parents remains: that their children can be snatched away, brutalized, killed for the smallest of reasons or no reason at all, and too often this violence is never addressed as anything more than an unavoidable force of nature like a hurricane.

We all tend to gravitate toward books that reflect our own experience, toward characters who look and act the way we do. I believe many white readers, if they are honest with themselves, will think, If I'm a white person, why should I read a book about African Americans? That doesn't have anything to do with me. Whites have the privilege of not thinking about race until some violence flares up on the news, and then we think of the issue as a fire to put out, not a sign of some endemic problem.  [My emphasis] ...African Americans don't have the luxury of thinking about race only when it suits them. It is an omnipresent fact of life and death. It makes their experience of American society fundamentally different and exponentially more complicated. That's exactly why I'd recommend this book to white readers. Our bubble can be pretty thick. It is important for us to step outside ourselves."

Coates an impromptu speech below post Trump election (day after).

I can put this down on the journey to be being woke.  The book is short, two afternoons reading max. Slip inside the black American experience. I don't think you will see the USA in the same light ever again.

Below are two passages from Coates, and a YouTube taking Q&A post his nook on the Howard Uni campus.

"Perhaps there has been, at some point in history, some great power whose elevation was exempt from the violent exploitation of other human bodies. If there has been, I have yet to discover it. But this banality of violence can never excuse America, because America makes no claim to the banal. America believes itself exceptional, the greatest and noblest nation ever to exist, a lone champion standing between the white city of democracy and the terrorists, despots, barbarians, and other enemies of civilization. One cannot, at once, claim to be superhuman and then plead mortal error. I propose to take our countrymen’s claims of American exceptionalism seriously, which is to say I propose subjecting our country to an exceptional moral standard. This is difficult because there exists, all around us, an apparatus urging us to accept American innocence at face value and not to inquire too much. And it is so easy to look away, to live with the fruits of our history and to ignore the great evil done in all of our names. But you and I have never truly had that luxury. I think you know. I write you in your fifteenth year. I am writing you because this was the year you saw Eric Garner choked to death for selling cigarettes [BY: see wiki here and see Guardian video clip here]; because you know now that Renisha McBride was shot for seeking help [BY: wiki here, Guardian article here on the conviction], that John Crawford was shot down for browsing in a department store. [BY: Guardian video footage here and wiki here]. And you have seen men in uniform drive by and murder Tamir Rice, a twelve-year-old child whom they were oath-bound to protect [BY:  Wiki here and Guardian video footage here]. And you have seen men in the same uniforms pummel Marlene Pinnock, someone’s grandmother, on the side of a road [BY: LA Times article here] . And you know now, if you did not before, that the police departments of your country have been endowed with the authority to destroy your body. It does not matter if the destruction is the result of an unfortunate overreaction. It does not matter if it originates in a misunderstanding. It does not matter if the destruction springs from a foolish policy. Sell cigarettes without the proper authority and your body can be destroyed. Resent the people trying to entrap your body and it can be destroyed. Turn into a dark stairwell and your body can be destroyed. The destroyers will rarely be held accountable. Mostly they will receive pensions. And destruction is merely the superlative form of a dominion whose prerogatives include friskings, detainings, beatings, and humiliations. All of this is common to black people. And all of this is old for black people. No one is held responsible. There is nothing uniquely evil in these destroyers or even in this moment. The destroyers are merely men enforcing the whims of our country, correctly interpreting its heritage and legacy. It is hard to face this. But all our phrasing—race relations, racial chasm, racial justice, racial profiling, white privilege, even white supremacy—serves to obscure that racism is a visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth. You must never look away from this. You must always remember that the sociology, the history, the economics, the graphs, the charts, the regressions all land, with great violence, upon the body..."

"...How could the schools? Algebra, Biology, and English were not subjects so much as opportunities to better discipline the body, to practice writing between the lines, copying the directions legibly, memorizing theorems extracted from the world they were created to represent. All of it felt so distant to me. I remember sitting in my seventh-grade French class and not having any idea why I was there. I did not know any French people, and nothing around me suggested I ever would. France was a rock rotating in another galaxy, around another sun, in another sky that I would never cross. Why, precisely, was I sitting in this classroom? The question was never answered. I was a curious boy, but the schools were not concerned with curiosity. They were concerned with compliance. I loved a few of my teachers. But I cannot say that I truly believed any of them. Some years after I’d left school, after I’d dropped out of college, I heard a few lines from Nas that struck me: Ecstasy, coke, you say it’s love, it is poison Schools where I learn they should be burned, it is poison That was exactly how I felt back then. I sensed the schools were hiding something, drugging us with false morality so that we would not see, so that we did not ask: Why—for us and only us—is the other side of free will and free spirits an assault upon our bodies? This is not a hyperbolic concern. When our elders presented school to us, they did not present it as a place of high learning but as a means of escape from death and penal warehousing. Fully 60 percent of all young black men who drop out of high school will go to jail. This should disgrace the country. But it does not, and while I couldn’t crunch the numbers or plumb the history back then, I sensed that the fear that marked West Baltimore could not be explained by the schools. Schools did not reveal truths, they concealed them. Perhaps they must be burned away so that the heart of this thing might be known. Unfit for the schools, and in good measure wanting..."

This makes Beyonce individually (through the influence she wields which I mention here) and the Black Lives Matter movement one of the most important movements in the USA today.

Studio Space at Somerset House Studios

Working artists/writers in need of a studio in London consider applying to Somerset House Studios. Apply here.

"Somerset House Studios is devised for artists who are pushing bold ideas, engaging with urgent issues,  pioneering new technologies, and are fully committed to exploring the potential afforded by making work within a highly selective multi-disciplinary community that feeds a public programme. Applications are welcome across all disciplines including but not limited to visual art, music and composition, performance, dance and live art, fiction and non-fiction writers, fashion, film and those working at the intersection of art and technology.  The overall balance of artists is an important factor in selecting new residents."

Guidelines are here.

"The main objective of Somerset House Studios is to support practicing artists, makers and thinkers to work. Artists pay rent for their residency but rent is controlled by Somerset House to ensure it remains as low as possible. We use the term residency rather than lease as we offer more than just space. We offer opportunities to make work, develop engagement skills for working with young people and a burgeoning programme of professional development opportunities. And the Studios office is always open for informal advice and support. Artists must propose a focus for the term they wish to be resident at the Studios as part of their application. "

Men and Girls Dance

A person moves in joy, speaks with smiles and wonder. A joy shared, a joy watched is a joy more than doubled, it gains more than numbers know. This is Men and Girls Dance by Fevered Sleep at Tate Britain (end 6 Aug). A joyful modern dance reimagined in the Tate Britain galleries.

There is obvious joy and wonder. There is a level of knowingness as well. Newspapers allude to the media and tabloid coverage.

Both girls and the men speak in observation of one another. In observation of us. 

A male dancer sits with one of the girls and describes what he can see: the creases on her knuckles,  her hair... she describes the same: the uneven hairs on the back of his neck, his heart beat...  “I can see her looking at me” he says. Turning to us: “and I can see you looking at me.”

The joy and kindness in the dance, and the observations speak to the play we'd like with our children; fathers with daughters, friends with girls.  It pushes back against media hysteria.

There is kindness. There is joy. There is dance with girl and boy. @feveredsleep go see @tate #dance #theatre #art #children pic.twitter.com/2DXXHKyuaI

— Benjamin Yeoh (@benyeohben) August 4, 2017

But here, I think is where the personal plays in. I do not hold that type of fear. I think we need to play - play in the street - fall down - stand up - dig, throw, eat mud (benefits of mud play).  I believe our fear of abduction, our sense of the risk is misplaced against the chances of a car accident, and the more common dangers of life.

The flip side is those who do worry about abuse and neglect of our children. I'm unsure if they will be comforted by the joy here.  Perhaps they should be.

The Tate, modern dance are still in the main middle class and elite pursuits though we ever strive for fairness and access.

The type of people who are in the Tate, who go to dance are at very low risk for this type of abuse (NSPCC references pdf).   I doubt you can have a life well lived without risk, and this risk is tiny with the typical white family unit, with an available mother (no drugs, no poverty, employed, no mental illness and decent socail support) 

Looking at the audience and the average Tate goer on the day, I'm unsure if this is reaching a non-white, non-ABC audience. Perhaps the Lates are better attended.   That's a wider question on diversity and the wider reach of Art or not.  Then again, we won't have an audience if we don't have a dance at all. This is a tangential thought... back to the work...

This is not to detract from the piece itself. I was worried if a babbling ASD boy would intersect poorly, but he didn't.  Although he did provide a running commentary of underground train lines and some movement mimicry.

In the end, I do find the piece a dance of wonder, a dance of joy.  A movement relationship spoken in kindness and in fun.  Despite the media, despite the risks of today;

men and girls can dance, can be, can look, can see

and we can watch them

and feel their joy. 

Weekly Summary

This week we've looked at Nassim Taleb's life lessons, David Oglivy on advertising, the World War I painter-poet David Jones, a technical study on Global Fund Manager performances, the bucket makers of Japan and Lewis Hyde's work on gifting.

There is an Arts stream, Investing stream and Photography stream.  As well as personal and a couple of projects. Check below for the links.

Nassim Taleb's life lessons commencement address.
https://www.thendobetter.com/investing/2017/8/1/nassim-taleb-commencement-address

A study on Global Equity Fund Managers beating benchmark returns
https://www.thendobetter.com/investing/2017/7/26/global-equity-active-manager-performance-academic-study

Circular giving parallels to circular economy and Lewis Hyde's work.
https://www.thendobetter.com/arts/2017/7/30/gift-giving-a-work-of-art-is-a-gift

$5k award for artists/writers with children.
https://www.thendobetter.com/arts/2017/8/3/award-application-artists-writers-with-children

David Ogilvy on (1) advertising and (2) management.
https://www.thendobetter.com/arts/2017/7/28/david-ogilvy-on-adverstising
https://www.thendobetter.com/investing/2017/7/29/oglivy-principles-of-management

The work of painter-poet David Jones
https://www.thendobetter.com/arts/2017/8/4/david-jones-works-grow-over-time

A visit to one of the last traditional bucket makers in Japan
https://www.thendobetter.com/arts/2017/7/29/last-makers-in-kyoto

Image of the week
Children of the Wana tribe in Sulawesi, Indonesia.
https://www.thendobetter.com/photography/2017/7/30/cigarette-smoking-sulawesi-indonesia

David Jones. Works grow over time.

I'm reading over writing I did 10 years and I'm amazed on what still seems relevant. It reminds me of some Ernest Hemingway (attrib) advice (commented on here and book here), don't compete with living writers. It's the dead ones that matter.

My neighbour and friend at Harvard, who was training to be a priest (and now is a wonderful priest - what makes an impact in Church work today - must be a whole other series of thoughts) gave me a book on David Jones.

Jones’ poems In Parenthesis and Anathemata are great works I come back to time and again (poetry foundation page here). They are not easy first reading but very rewarding.

letter to Colin Hughes on his work.  

The way the works grow on me... 

(or am I growing up? cf. Mark Twain (attrib)   - "When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years." 

 ...over time intrigues me in a world of seemingly ever faster, more connected instant media.  

[As an aside, Mark Zuckerberg in a remarkable letter that alters Facebook's fundamental purpose (at least articulated by him) does acknowledge some of these factors about connection and echo chambers. ]

David Jones was also a brilliant visual artist.

from his manuscript for In Parenthesis.  

He is known as a painter-poet.

From In Parenthesis, part 7

And to Private Ball it came as if a rigid beam of great weight
flailed about his calves, caught from behind by ballista-baulk
let fly or aft-beam slewed to clout gunnel-walker
below below below.
When golden vanities make about,
you’ve got no legs to stand on.
He thought it disproportionate in its violence considering
the fragility of us.
The warm fluid percolates between his toes and his left boot
fills, as when you tread in a puddle–he crawled away in the
opposite direction.

David Jones was born in south-east London to a Welsh father and a London-born mother. As his father had been discouraged from speaking Welsh as a child, David Jones did not speak the language. Yet Wales, Welsh and Welsh mythology would remain a significant component artistic influence.

He studied at Camberwell College of Arts, where his work was described as ‘leaving everything out except the magic.’ He enlisted at the beginning of World War One, serving from 1915 to 1918. He served longer on the Western Front than any other major war poet in the UK. This shaped his whole life.

He had traumatic breakdowns through out his life. Certain breakdowns would then make turning points in his artistic practice.

(C) David Jones estate, Tate collection

Jones also made beautiful type and engravings and post-war David Jones became a Roman Catholic. His Christianity would become increasingly important in his art. Post war, he came under the influence of Eric Gill, a religious artist.

TS Elliot and other poets of the period considered Jones work important.I believe if you compare In Parenthesis and Anathemata to Elliot's work you can see why.It must be someone's PhD thesis or more.

More recently In Parenthesis was turned into an opera by Iain Bell and WNO with Librettists Emma Jenkins and David Antrobus  (I'm not jealous, honest). It has also been a recording made a while back at the BBC.

Gift giving. A work of art is a gift.

Lewis Hyde’s The Gift which is  “a brilliantly argued defence of the importance of creativity in our increasingly money-orientated society”.

“The problem is that wealth ceases to move freely when all things are counted and priced. It may accumulate in great heaps, but fewer and fewer people can afford to enjoy it."

Hyde argues that “a work of art is a gift, not a commodity” or, it works in two economies “a market economy” and “a gift economy”.  Lewis Hyde's site. 

Art can survive without the market (cave paintings? what about a time before the market - or has there always been a market for art) but where there is no gift there is no art.

“The art that matters to us – moves the heart, or revives the soul, or delights the senses, or offers courage for the living – that art work is received by us, as a gift is received. Even if we have paid a fee at the door, when we are touched by a work of art something comes to us which has nothing to do with the price…

…our sense of harmony can hear the harmonies Mozart heard. We may not have the power to profess our gifts as the artist does, and yet we come to recognise, and in a sense to receive, the endowments of our being through the agency of his creation.”

His book goes on to explore this often through anthropological studies.

He only briefly mentions a few downfalls of gifts: gifts that leave an oppressive sense of obligation, gifts that manipulate or humiliate, the tragedy of the commons  (the sea is a gift of fish that everyone takes from and so depletes).  On this, Hyde's book, Common as Air, is a  defense of our "cultural commons," that vast store of ideas, inventions, and art that we have inherited from the past and continue to enrich in the present.

This conjures two thoughts in my mind.

Why do characters give what they give in plays? They almost always are trying to do something with their gift, they want something or they are trying to manipulate… if we see someone giving something – we know there is meaning behind it. Occasionally, we know the meaning but the character does not, a form of irony. Some times it is symbolical. Rarely is a major gift meaningless and if it is, often, we are disappointed.

The other thought is this sense of obligation. There was someone I liked a lot once. She told me gift giving for Maoris was reciprocal, if you gave there was a circle so you would give back.  This is called Koha  (The koha reflects the mana of both the giver and the recipient, reflecting what the giver is able to give, and the esteem they hold of the person they are making the gift to - and hence plays an important part in cementing good relations, and is taken very seriously).

"Circular giving differs from reciprocal giving in several ways. First, when the gift moves in a circle no one ever receives it from the same person he gives it to...When the gift moves in a circle its motion is beyond the control of the personal ego, and so each bearer must be a part of the group and each donation is an act of social faith.”  (Lewis Hyde)

For a wonderful period of time, it was a circle of joy. Wild flowers unexpectedly sprinkled in a room begat jelly babies hanging from a door frame begat surprises in your post box. Then the weight of life cracked the circle.

I didn’t notice (my Dad was dying, a reasonable excuse) and thus the weight of my gifts created an unwanted and unhappy sense of obligation. Or even an unwanted sense of memory.

I think this is one reason ex-lovers (or ex-friends even) find it hard to give each other simple things - or anything at all. All their exchanges are weighted with memory and symbols. The same for story.

Do subscribe to my weekly blog digest below.  

Last bucketwrights in Kyoto. Okeyasan. Cooper.

We are called playwrights – like shipwrights – this naming suggests we playwrights are craftsmen. Practical before “artistic” although there is much art in a beautifully wrought ship. The name cartwright is passed down the generations in England. (I wrote the bluk of this post in 2006, and I think the bucket maker below is still alive) I believe the craft is called Oke and the makers are called okeyasan. In England, we used to call them coopers. 

Perhaps this is one reason why I have always felt an affinity for craftsmen and artisans.

In Japan, before machines, before plastic, buckets were made by hand.

These were small tub buckets for washing, large barrel buckets for making pickles, special well buckets for shrines and holy water, all forms of buckets.

No nails are used. Special tools place the pieces of wood to exact shape, so that they can slot together to produce a water tight bucket. Added strength is given by a bamboo or copper ring.

The wood is specially chosen, the right type of cedar or cypress is chosen, and all the elements are crafted by hand.

I was led to this craft by Diane Durston who wrote Old Kyoto, a guide to traditional shops and inns in Kyoto. Sadly the bucket maker that Diane knew had passed away a few years ago, and he had no family or apprentice to pass his craft down to. However I was determined to find a craftsman if I could.

After asking at the beautiful inn, Shiraume, where we were staying we found that there was a bucket maker left in Gion, Okesho.

Armed with a phrasebook, we found the shop. At first, I found out a little about what all the buckets were used for from the old lady who ran the front of the shop.  In my stilted Japanese, it was difficult. So she called out to her son (I presume) who appeared from the workshop.

I learned some of the Japanese names for the wood and we chose a small rice bucket and sushi tray to buy. My interest sparked an invite to look at his workshop and he showed us some of the process that goes into splitting, planning and joining the wood.

He makes his own tools (see image above) – as is the way of many Japanese craftsmen – and the craft is hundreds of years old. I asked him how many hand made bucket shops were left. He thought perhaps two or three.

And how many people who still knew how to make buckets? He thought: Only five.

Only five people left who know this craft. In one more generation, the craft will probably be lost and there will be no more hand made buckets. (I'm hoping there are more, maybe outside Kyoto. certainly, there are some made by machines of a similar style.) 

I note this maker seems to be taking on apprentices and moving the form into a wider art form / craft form. So perhaps there is hope it won't die out. I also note his youtube video has only been watched about 13,000 times vs Beyonce with an instagram at over 10m.  

It reminds me of a variant of a quote that I heard attributed to Warren Buffet: "Capitalism has been one of the greatest forces for good, but it has left people behind. We need to make sure we address those left behind."

Progress and technology makes crafts like bucket making obsolete. These crafts are left behind, but I do feel humanity will be less rich if we can not somehow keep some of this alive, perhaps I'm too naive still.

There is another maker, I see from here and his video is below.

David Ogilvy. On Advertising.

David Ogilvy "it proves two things (A) at 25 I was brilliantly clever and (B) I have learned nothing new in the subsequent 27 years"

Every advertisement must tell the whole sales story, because the public does not read advertisements in series.

The copy must be human and very simple, keyed right down to its market - a market in which self-conscious artwork and fine language serve only to make buyers wary.

Every word in the copy must count... cliches must give way to facts, and empty exhortations to alluring offers. Facetiousness in advertising is a device dear to the amateur but anathema to the advertising agent, who knows that permanent success has rarely been built on frivolity and that people do not buy from clowns.

Superlatives belong to the marketplace and have no place in a serious advertisement; they lead readers to discount the realism of very claim.

Apparently, monotony of treatment must be tolerated, because only the manufacturer reads all his own advertisements.

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More on David Ogilvy on the Ogilvy site and this memo is from his "Unpublished David Ogilvy"
"

In 1948, he founded the New York-based ad agency Hewitt, Ogilvy, Benson & Mather (which eventually became Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide), with the financial backing of London agency Mather & Crowther. He had never written an advertisement in his life.

Thirty-three years later, he sent the following memo to one of his partners:

Will Any Agency Hire This Man?

He is 38, and unemployed. He dropped out of college. 
He has been a cook, a salesman, a diplomatist and a farmer. 
He knows nothing about marketing and had never written any copy. 
He professes to be interested in advertising as a career (at the age of 38!) and is ready to go to work for $5,000 a year.

I doubt if any American agency will hire him.

However, a London agency did hire him. Three years later he became the most famous copywriter in the world, and in due course built the tenth biggest agency in the world.

The moral: it sometimes pays an agency to be imaginative and unorthodox in hiring."

I do wonder if there's much room for this imaginative hiring nowadays.

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Image source: By Advertising Hall of fame - Advertising Hall of fame, Copyrighted free use, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1479510