Today was another pretty low-key day. First up we had a meeting with Chris Hall, CEO of BBDO Atlanta. He was very nice and down-to-earth, and he managed to cover a lot even though we didn’t have much time to talk to him. Basically he had three take-away lessons for us, the first of which being that creative communication means more effectiveness. Studies show that creative campaigns are eleven times more effective than traditional or unimaginative campaigns, and most of the winners here at Cannes have results to back up their creative work. His second point was that we are living in a golden age of creativity in which the possibilities for both production and consumption are limitless. Lastly, Mr. Hall talked about the importance of collaboration, and how great work is a team sport. It was a good, if brief, talk.
After the meeting I ate a quick lunch and then headed to the best seminar I’ve seen all week. Patti Smith came as part of Grey’s Music Legends series, and she blew everybody else I’ve seen here out of the water. I’ve been really excited about this all week and it lived up to my expectations. Pretty much the whole time she was talking, and especially when she sang at the end, I had goosebumps. All week I’ve been stimulated by the stuff I’ve seen, but I can’t say that anything moved me. Patti Smith moved me. It was a shot in the arm to remember how much more important music and literature are to me than advertising – and not just to me, but how much more important those things are in an overall sense. Listening to her was like reading Rilke or Buber, and that’s saying a lot from me.
It was amazing to hear her stories about living in the Hotel Chelsea in the sixties, and all the experiences she had with people like Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. Listening to her talk about that time made me somehow heartsick for Bob Dylan, and I’m not sure how to really articulate that emotion any better. She talked about how Jim Morrison was really the first person to combine poetry and rock n’ roll, rather than Dylan or Leonard Cohen. There were people fusing music and poetry before Morrison, like jazz musicians, or Kerouac improvising to the piano, or even William Blake’s song-like poetry. But Morrison was a performer and a poet in a way that no one else before him had been because he was able to commune with his audience so well. She talked a lot, too, about why music and poetry work so well together. While poetry is the most beautiful of all art forms (which is a sentiment I agree with), it can also be one of the least accessible. Music makes the poetry available to people, it mixes the primal with the sublime. Patti said that her music was known for the clashing of the two and I love that notion.
I also really liked something she mentioned at the beginning of the seminar, about how when she attends concerts, she feels no division between herself and the stage. She feels admiration for the performer, but also love and unity. This is one of my favorite feelings in the world and I was so glad to hear her voice it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been to see bands whose music I live with every day and felt the same way, felt as if the band and I and the rest of the audience were just together. As if our emotions became one for just that small space of time. It’s kind of like when you hear a song and you think that surely the person who wrote it was inside your head.
Towards the end of the seminar she told us about a conversation she’d had with Allen Ginsberg about bloodlines. Everyone has two: the genealogical and the intellectual. Ginsberg felt that Whitman and Blake were his brothers, and he loved those men and lived with them in a very real way. When Ginsberg died, a portrait of William Blake was hanging on the wall above his head. Patti talked about visiting the graves of the poets she’s loved most just to say thank you to them. I think anyone who loves literature, or any art really, can appreciate this feeling. Writers like Emily Dickinson or Charlotte Bronte are just as much a part of my blood as my own mother and father are. I’ve learned so much from them and many others that I do feel a certain tenderness to and familiarity with them, and I feel thankful for the things I’ve learned.
She closed with the last letter she ever wrote to her longtime friend Robert Mapplethorpe. The letter was an excerpt from her memoir Just Kids, which recounts their time together in the late sixties in New York City. It was quietly beautiful in its sorrow, and now I can’t wait to read Just Kids when I get home, because Patti writes about that kind of sorrow so well. After she read the letter she sang for us, and everyone had goosebumps, and we gave her a standing ovation at the end. Truly the most amazing thing I’ve seen here. I felt that I was in the presence of a legend during her seminar much more so than with Robert Redford. He seemed more like just a very interesting person whom you’d love to have a drink with, while Patti Smith seemed like someone you’d want to spend years of your life learning from. It was nothing short of incredible. After that we did a little goofing off in Cannes and then headed home – I honestly don’t think any other seminar could have topped Patti, so I decided not to attend any more. Besides, I’m getting awfully sick of seminars. Towards the end of the week I began to notice that everyone’s messages kind of merged, and I’m having trouble telling one seminar apart from another. Tomorrow is the last day and I believe I’ll only be attending the awards show at night. I can’t believe how fast this week flew by!
No comments:
Post a Comment