Mr. Kilpatrick lived two houses down from my boyhood home. He must have been 20 when they sent him off to World War 1. At 90 he'd fearlessly assault my gang. "Wanna see my war wound?" I think he got it in France. Before the leather-jacketed teens could scamper away en masse he'd hike up his trouser leg and show us a long gash on his white, spindly old leg. It was horrendous... and it was fascinating. No, the wound was cool. Mostly it was horrendous because he was so old. And drunk. And incoherent. Mostly it was fascinating because he was so fascinated with it.Really, really sad when someone is trapped in their era.
How has marketing and advertising fundamentally changed since the 1980s?
I've somehow survived "everyone" becoming "experts" about "everything." For instance, I have a huge library. It's the legacy of my entire life. I once bought a huge home that actually had library shelves and reading rooms and an unabridged dictionary on a stand... but books? Google it, bra. Or I learned music recording when recording was an art. Today any teen with Audacity on a laptop thinks they know the score. Photography was once a true profession. Physics of light. Reciprocity failure. Monochrome photos from Time and Life can still make us cry. The one-shot Crown Graphic with the single flashbulb that the photographer pre-focused and waited and waited and waited and waited to push the button of the knockout punch or the burning building framed by the two firemen. Today, little digital snapshots flood the world... capturing and portraying nothing of value, and many from our cell phones. Graphic arts? Naw... break open Photoshop. Change this, change that, and it's tweaked. Don't like it, do it again.
I saw the professions of marketing, advertising, copywriting, and design industries change over 30 years, too. Was it for the better? Are we producing ads for those who do not read, or reading ads from those who cannot produce properly?
Or, like Mr. Kilpatrick, do the ghosts of my memories haunt old marketing battlefields where the gains were measured by little inch-dollars? Seventy years of his moments of glory after Cambrai were exchanged for the pocketchange of teen titters and scornful guffaws, mostly caused by our insensitivity, but also because he clung so steadfastly to them.
Wanna see my war wound?
Cheers
Lee
