BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR...

TEMPTING FATE

The Taoists (well the Barefoot Doctor at least) insist that if you visualise something with enough conviction, then it will eventually manifest itself. Which is why it is always best to try and concentrate on good things, rather than bad. Contemplate wealth, abundance, happiness and fulfilment, and you will soon experience those very pleasurable things. Meditate on the dangers of being attacked by a slavering three-headed dog and you will soon find yourself an easily dispensed with extra in a low budget horror movie, with your life as the script.

It sounds like a rather fanciful notion, I know. But recent events would seem to suggest that it really works…

I spent the last six months of my last job sitting in my office wishing I was anywhere else. Anywhere. You could sense that doom was hiding, rather unsuccessfully with his big nose sticking out, just around the corner. I longed to be free from it all, to be doing something more interesting, more fulfilling. Anything. Anything at all. Like writing comedy, making films or maybe even …. playing guitar. (On the subject of which, I'm manfully struggling to learn Django's 1938 version of 'Les Yeux Noir' or 'Dark Eyes'. I've got the backing track (thanks Robin), I've got the tab… the only question is, have I got the patience? Or the dedication? Or the talent? There's an awful lot of notes in there, and even with the tab, getting the timing and the phrasing right is fairly mind boggling.)

Of course, rather than simply wishing I was somewhere else, I should have actually done something about it. Before they did it for me and gave me the heave-ho.

Looking back, I wonder why I was so unhappy. After all, I was paid well, and I worked with some really nice people - people who remain close and trusted friends. And I was supposedly in bloody advertising, for Christ's sake - a glamorous profession. What a lucky bastard. What a churlish bastard.

But, as much as I knew I should shut up and get on with it and be grateful for what I'd got, the truth is I was frustrated. Bored to bloody tears. I felt as if I'd no longer got the opportunity to do my job. I felt I rarely got the chance to use even an ounce of my talent. There simply wasn't much call for ideas and copywriting anymore. The clients could do all that (and art direct) themselves. With one hand tied behind their backs.

In all but a few agencies it seems to me that the 'glamour' - if it ever really existed for all but the very top echelon - has been replaced with mind-numbing drudgery, overseen by over-zealous bean counters. ('It's got to be a stockshot, and it's got to be royalty free'. The awful word 'stock' should be enough to tell people that it's no substitute for an original idea shot by a talented photographer - remember advertising photographers? - but no-one really cares any more as long as the price is right).

Most of the time it's more like working in Prontaprint than being in a creative department. More Civil Service than CDP. 'Ads while you wait!' Don't make it good, make it quick, and above all, make it cheap…

In fact, talking to the few mates I've got who amazingly still have jobs in the business, it feels like creativity is positively frowned upon these days. Rather than account execs excitedly going to clients and saying, 'Wow, have we got a great campaign for you…', they seem to work in league with the clients to keep the meddling creatives from sticking their oar in. A point which is proved when you notice that when recession bites, without exception, the very first people to get the boot are the creatives. They're dispensable. In the last recession I was laid off from an agency that actually got rid of the entire creative department - 'Come to us! We can't produce any ads, but boy can we do good meetings'.

And that, I fear, is where the problems lies. There's simply no demand for people who actually produce stuff anymore. Craftsmen (and women). People who make things, who create things. Who needs 'em? These days the money's in talking about it, not doing it.

Just look at Britain. We make bugger all these days. We don't make cars any more. We don't make ships. We don't make clothes. But throw a stick out of the window, and you'll hit half a dozen consultants on the napper. (If you make it a very big stick, it may go someway towards alleviating the problem).

I don't blame my last agency a bit - they were no worse than anywhere else, and they've got to balance the books. They're good people, and if all the talking and powerpoint charts ever result in them actually having to knock up an ad or two, I know I'll get the freelance. In fact I've already had some. And at least there are still some great little hot-shops out there still pushing the boundaries and gamely flying the flag for original thinking.

And while we're looking at the upside, hopefully this recession will force the dinosaurs of the ad industry to re-invent themselves, and the business will emerge on the other side fresher, leaner, more responsive and genuinely creative again. Maybe it will take a good kicking for clients to realise that the quality of the work is really the only differentiator worth taking any notice of. Anyone can have a meeting. But putting a great ad on a piece of blank paper is bloody hard.

Well, now I'm the anywhere else I dreamed of being. At home. And what the hell, as any good Taoist will tell you, it's all ying and yang. For every down, there's a corresponding up. Even if you seem to have to wait an age for it to come plodding round.

If I was still sitting in that office, copy-typing yet another client's emailed headlines and turgid, un-grammatical, deathly body copy, I wouldn't be able to discover the joys of playing a Dm7b5 arpeggio over a Bb chord. I wouldn't have just spent two hours trying to string together three different dimished arpeggios over two bars of A7, wondering why I'm still less than half way through when Django has not only finished, but skipped his sprightly two-fingered way through the following two bars of Dm too.

And I wouldn't be writing this to avoid tying my fingers in knots.