Today, two friends from New York stopped by our home in Park City for lunch, one was a former client, and the other a colleague from my last agency.  And it just reminded me again what I love best about advertising.

It is the people.

The people in advertising are different.  They are not smarter, or nicer, or more virtuous than people from other careers.  Not by a long shot. But they sure are interesting to be around.

These two are passionate about their jobs, but able to step back and find the humor in what we all do (or, what I did)  for a living.  There are always stories to tell–about places they have traveled, brands they have helped make famous, ads that never ran but should have, triumphs and trip ups –that can entertain me for hours.

Maybe it is because at its heart, advertising is about people.  Us.  What we want. What we need.  What makes us happy.  There is drama in that. And I find it infinitely interesting.

According to Don Draper, that sharply articulate Mad Man, “Advertising is based on one thing,happiness. And you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car. It’s freedom from fear. It’s a billboard on the side of the road that screams reassurance that whatever you are doing is okay. You are okay.”

Don Draper is madder and more cynical than most of the people I worked with.  I think most of them were absolute optimists at heart.  ”Nothing is impossible” is the agency motto at Saatchi & Saatchi. Every creative I ever knew, every account person and every client, had the complete conviction that this next assignment, whatever it might be, would be the one that could change the world, make babies happier, women prettier, men more desirable, and all of us richer.

Occasionally, they would be right.

Helping people to find happiness, in a hundred small ways every day, is what ads are supposed to do. And to do that, you have to crawl into the other guy’s skin, listen to his fears and dreams, then get his attention and gain his trust, all at once.  That is a pretty interesting challenge. And it attracts a certain kind of person.  A  kind of person I like to be around.

These two, today, have found some happiness.  You can see it all over their faces. And they made my day, too.

I feel like they brought a taste of my old life, into my new life.  And that feels really good.

Steven Tyler killed it last night.

True Aerosmith fans are appalled that he would perform without the band, and on American Idol, no less.  But to see a 62 year old, recovering addict playing that haunting opening to “Dream On” on the piano, performing and screaming his heart out, was spellbinding.  And since I was never a big Aerosmith fan (they sort of slipped by me as a group), I simply applaud Steven Tyler for making everyone else on the finale, from Lady Gaga to Bono, look boring and formulaic.

I have spent the morning googling some of his past performances, and he was crazy.  His hair and clothes are pretty ridiculous, and definitely “Dude ( looks like a lady)”–like. But he could apparently really write, and sing, and scream when he chose to. And there was, and still is, an appeal in his vulnerability.

The last several seasons of American Idol have been forgettable, and this one was particularly so, but I did dial in from time to time, and found him to be intriguing.  A cleaned up rock star, turned TV personality and family entertainer, is an unlikely attraction.  But he was, dare I say, kind?  What a surprise.

I have always wanted to meet Mick Jagger or Eric Clapton or some of those other voices of my generation and see what they were really like in person. Watching him critique other young singers, and seeing him on live television for the past several months, I was touched at what a sympathetic character he was.  It certainly isn’t what I would have expected.

And I applaud him, further, for trying to straighten out his life, kick all the illegal, unhealthy habits and get a job.  I hope it sticks.

As for the lyrics to “Dream On,” take a look:

Every time I look in the mirror
All these lines on my face getting clearer
The past is gone
It goes by, like dusk to dawn
Isn’t that the way
Everybody’s got their dues in life to pay

Yeah, I know nobody knows
where it comes and where it goes
I know it’s everybody’s sin
You got to lose to know how to win

Half my life
is in books’ written pages
Lived and learned from fools and
from sages
You know it’s true
All the things come back to you

Sing with me, sing for the year
Sing for the laughter, sing for the tears
Sing with me, if it’s just for today
Maybe tomorrow, the good lord will take you away

Yeah, sing with me, sing for the year
sing for the laughter, sing for the tear
sing with me, if it’s just for today
Maybe tomorrow, the good Lord will take you away

Dream On Dream On Dream On
Dream until your dreams come true
Dream On Dream On Dream On
Dream until your dream comes through
Dream On Dream On Dream On
Dream On Dream On
Dream On Dream On

Sing with me, sing for the year
sing for the laughter, sing for the tear
sing with me, if it’s just for today
Maybe tomorrow, the good Lord will take you away
Sing with me, sing for the year
sing for the laughter, sing for the tear
Sing with me, if it’s just for today
Maybe tomorrow, the good Lord will take you away……

And for someone like me, who has always believed in the power of dreams, he made feel that power all over again.

Photo by AP

The tornado that swept through Joplin, Missouri left a swath of devastation that is almost unfathomable.  The scenes of block after block of homes, leveled, have been on the web and on television for the past 24 hours, but what if it were your home, your backyard?

All the plans you had for dinner that night, or to be sure and get done first thing Monday morning, no longer even exist.  Gone are your clothes, your bed, your pictures, the very roof over your head.  Gone in an instant.

I believe stuff really doesn’t matter much.  I have always felt my life to be happiest when I was surrounded by not much stuff.  When we lived in Paris, all we had was a bed, a table, 4 chairs and what we needed to cook.  We had a cheap futon that doubled as a couch, and we would put our wine glasses on the floor. We didn’t even have a tv until my parents came to visit, a few months before we were to head back to the U.S.  And life was easier for it, simpler.

So I think the people who now need to comprehend what has happened to their homes and their town, will eventually be okay without all that stuff.  They will rebuild.  They will, with help, get what they need to make a life again.

But what is hard to imagine is the loss of  home.  The intangible feeling that makes a place home. Your refuge. Your safe haven. The bed with the perfect pillow that you fall into, exhausted,  at the end of a long day, and jump out of the next morning ready to slay dragons. The dinner table where you linger over coffee and make plans for the weekend as the kids do their homework nearby.  The porch where a teenager experienced her first good night kiss (if they do that anymore).  The garden that holds such promise for spring.  The place of memories, good and bad, that form the tapestry of your life as a family. Gone.  In an instant.

How painful must that be?

On the Tuesday after the World Trade Towers fell, I was able to visit my apartment which was  a few blocks away and in the area then known as Ground Zero.  I rode in the back of an open truck, escorted by National Guardsmen, to go to my place to pick up medicine and any essentials I needed for the next few weeks, until we could all move back in.  As I looked about me, the devastation was similar to what we see now in Missouri, buildings crumpled, the landscape blanketed with white ash, metal and glass strewn everywhere.

But what struck me most, were the trees.  The trees were still standing, just as they had been, but were covered, not only with that ghostly ash, but with pieces of paper.  Millions of memos and letters were stuck in the trees as if part of some weird and gigantic high school prank.  I am sure each piece of paper represented some urgent or important piece of business that required meetings and negotiations and was designated essential to someone.  And now they were scattered, clinging to the trees, evenly distributed, almost artful in their design.

It made our day to day business suddenly seem so banal.

I think of home.  I think of lives lost, in the 9/11 tragedy and the storms of yesterday.  And I try to remember what is important.

Stuff smashed and shattered makes for dramatic news stories.

People.  Home. Life.  Love.  That is what matters.  That is what endures.

How great are cousins! Conversations I have with my cousins are unlike ones I have with anyone else on the planet.  In a good way.

Our shared memory of childhood summers at my grandmother’s house on Spanaway Lake, here near Seattle, will bond us forever.And our common understanding of our family’s legends,  quirks, and idiosyncrasies (isn’t there crazy in that word?), is enough to enable us to look across the table at each other and in a glance, get it.

One reference to prairie league softball, weenie roasts, the red tables, Buddy, or pushing Matty off the dock into the lake, is enough to start any one of us laughing, or crying.

One of my cousins, the artist, now lives in my grandmother’s house on the lake. It still smells of pine trees and wood fires and lake water the way it did when I was little.  I stand in her kitchen and remember my grandmother teaching me to make applesauce, and my grandfather sitting by the fire, reading the paper in his white silk shirt, smoking, always smoking.  I walk out on her front lawn and in my mind, I see the picnic table set with the sandwich makings and the cold cuts and jams in the crystals bowls.  It is all still there, in a ghostly kind of way, like a memory, like a thin fiber of who I am.

My other cousins have homes also on the water, on Puget Sound, and on Lake Washington, homes bustling with teenagers and lives that are rich and full.

In all of them, I walk in and somehow, immediately feel at home.

I am touched by the patience of my cousins’ kids who may not remember ever meeting me, but who listen patiently as their mothers and fathers and I indulge in stories from our childhood with an easy familiarity (isn’t there family in that word?) that must surprise them.

That’s the thing about cousins. Less complicated than siblings, closer than friends, cousins are all about unconditional acceptance.  As adults, we can simply celebrate one another, cheer each other’s successes,  and reinforce who we are now, because we know who we were then and what the road has been.

I saw this week, that even though the time I have spent with my cousins over the last 40 years amounts to hours, not days, in the first 10 or 15 years we were all alive, we were vitally important–no, essential–to one another.

And we are still.

I spent the evening with a Navy Seal about a year ago.  My cousin brought him to my home to meet me, as they were spending a romantic weekend in New York.

He was really something.

I have never seen a stronger looking person in my life, a little over 6 feet tall, with incredibly muscular legs.  He had close cropped hair and a long, wiry beard, which surprised me, but which “helped him blend in,” he explained.  Although only in his 30?s, he seemed far older.  He had already completed several tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, and was preparing for one more.

Quiet, confident, he spoke about his job in a somewhat businesslike manner, but there was intensity in what he didn’t say. Some of his stories were lighthearted and involved copious amounts of Jack Daniels.  Others were more serious.  Most, I suspect, went untold.

I thought of him last night as the president reported on Bin Laden’s death.  I wondered if he had been a part of it.

Then I realized, of course he had.  All of the men and women who have fought in this series of wars have, in some way, been a part of it.  And none more than the U.S. Special Forces in the Special Operations Command, like the Navy Seals.

I am glad Bin Laden is gone, but I did not cheer or feel jubilant at the news of his death.  All of these wars have been terrible, for us, for the world, and for those who must fight them.  I just want all of the killing to stop.  Everywhere.

That night after my cousin and her friend left, I remember locking the door behind them, crawling into bed and feeling a little safer knowing that young men like him were protecting me.  He was quite remarkable.

I hope now he can come home for good.