The Berlin Wall and me.

I remember standing in the middle of the front room of our college flat watching the news that the Berlin Wall was being taken down. I remember being dumbfounded. It was inconceivable and fantastical. You see, just 11 months earlier I'd seen the wall. I had taken a long weekend off from my studies in London to visit my cousin and her husband who were stationed in the US military in Berlin. They agreed to take me into East Berlin for the day. It was December, bitterly cold, a pregnant East German woman had just escaped across the river Spree and miraculously survived. But the East German government was bruised by the news and were on alert. My cousin's husband was required to wear his US military uniform when we went into East Berlin. I was told when we crossed the border to hold my passport up to the window but keep my eyes straight ahead and not make eye contact with the East German guard - it would be seen suspiciously as a slight or an attempt to communicate and we would be questioned. Indeed, a car ahead of us was pulled over for that reason.

Crossing into East Berlin was chilling. We were on alert about what could or could not be photographed. Who we could or couldn't speak to. Where in East Berlin we dare not go. The city, stripped of the advertising, commercial signs and neon was grey and seemingly deserted. We went into stores barely stocked with decades old furniture, shabby textiles and wooden toys. This was the 80s, mind and Western shops were garishly stocked with patterns and fluorescent colours. We bought a few wooden toys, had an extravagant meal of stodgy German food in a East Berlin restaurant, visited the Tomb of the Unknown Solider and made our way back to West Berlin. I later returned to a cold but somehow more festive London and finished my exams.

11 months later I watched as it all came down. As East Germans strolled freely through Checkpoint Charlie at once exhilarated and full of sadness that such a divide had been allowed to tear a country apart. The pictures of East Berlin and the Wall, now gone, stick in my head to this day and a visit years later to a reunified Berlin made them seem even more dreamlike.

Now, we celebrate 20 years of reunification and the freedoms and challenges that brought. But we must remember that these territorial walls exist today, tearing apart families, communities and cultures with no more justice than the Berlin Wall embodied. And be hopeful that, like the Berlin Wall, oppressive regimes and the controls they institute do not have to be permanent.

Those were the years...

To mark the 40th anniversary of the Arpanet, Guardian publishes a year-by-year people's history of the Internet.

Dark

Every month, the art buyers choose photographers to exhibit in the Ogilvy bar. This month we have the beautifully rich, dark work of George Logan, up-close shots of gorillas, chimpanzees and mandrills photographed at the Limbe Wildlife Centre is Cameroon - a centre for animals rescued from the brutal poaching and bushmeat trade.

The proximity of the animal to the viewer is captivating becoming almost tactile, and one sees how this type of animal portraiture is able to capture as much character and emotion as any human portraiture.

You are encouraged to visit the Born Free Foundation and the work they are doing to stop the illegal 'bushmeat' trade.

Remember Merlin?

Merlin was a not-so-pocketable pocket video game in the early 80s that included six games (although I only remember tic tac toe and blackjack.) I loved Merlin, but it was a battery hog (much like Simon) and I soon gave it up.

The King of Madison Avenue

Yesterday we hosted a book signing for Kenneth Roman, former CEO and chairman of Ogilvy, for his new book on David Ogilvy, The King of Madison Avenue. It has received positive reviews, and interest in what is arguably one of the most famous men in advertising is at an all-time high due to the popularity of Mad Men.

He told a few anecdotes about David and shared the discrepancies he found in his research between the myth (some told by the man himself) and the fact. One thing was clear: David was a charming genius who understood how to sell: his clients' products, his agency and his image.

During the signing I told Kenneth that I began my advertising career at Hal Riney & Partners (previously O+M West, now Publicis/ HRP) sitting underneath a gigantic portrait of Ogilvy. I made the mistake of asking a colleague who the old man in the portrait was in front of Hal and got a polite bollocking (and a history lesson). I told Kenneth I never imagined then I'd be heading up experience planning at Ogilvy in London all these years later.

Mr. Roman kindly inscribed my book: 'For Brian - David would have admired what you're doing - and that you trained with Hal. With best wishes, Kenneth Roman.'

That made my day. It will likely make many days ahead as it reminds me of the power of the legacy embedded in the organisation he built. Ogilvy retired in 73, and passed away in 1999, but ten years on he's still very much with us.

Sure-chigai tsuushin, or “passerby communication.”

Wired reports that hundreds of Dragon Quest IX players are gathering in front of Yodobashi-Akiba department store in Tokyo with their Nintendo DS in hand to share tips and valuable 'maps' with each other.

Players in Tokyo are leaving the Nintendo in communication mode as they make their way through their day and collecting connection messages (pings) from other players also in communication mode that sometime include valuable tips for the gameplay, making it one of the biggest crowdsourcing game features ever.

Visit Denmark, they're easy apparently.

A remarkably ill thought out video by VisitDenmark was pulled after complaints that it promoted promiscuity and made Danes look like promiscuous whores.. In the rambling movie, a gorgeous Danish woman holding a baby encourages men to visit Denmark so that she can find the father of her baby - the product of a drunken one-night stand. Really, one wonders how these things get past the idea stage and how the threat of fatherhood would persuade people to visit.

Navigate London's 'designscape' with this gorgeous city guide.

Afterall magazine have put many brilliant visual culture articles in their archive online for free.

Art and death

Spent the day in the park reading the excellent Cabinet Magazine and learned, among many things, that the Pre-Raphaelites used a paint pigment called 'mummy brown' which was made of ground human and feline mummies until the 20th C. when the supply of mummies literally dried up.

Cabinet is a brilliant blend of the unusual and the explicative and satisfies curiosities about the world one never knew they had.

We used to joke that six weeks was the gay relationship equivalent to the seven-year itch. Well the itch needed scratching and so after 7 weeks of ambivalent dating T. and I ended it last night. Rather definitively. I'm not sure why some feel the need to sever with cruelty when an unambiguous 'this has run its course' would suffice. It was what I was my goal. His was quite different. More of a 'let me give you a good reason to delete my number from your phone' strategy. And it worked.

I wasn't in love with him and was becoming sure I wasn't going to be. I try to pretend it wasn't his age. It was. Or his immaturity. It was. Or a basic lack of mutual interests. It was. We weren't suited, but I liked having someone in my life. Someone with whom one can experience basic intimacy. It had been far too long. It awoke a desire to be with people again. And for all of those things I should be grateful to T. Once I stop hating how it ended. I've never believed that relationships should be judged or remembered solely by their end, and it would be ridiculous to call that a relationship, so I'm hoping that after a good cry and a good pout and maybe a pint of ice cream I will look back on my summer fling with T. and smile.

Hello constant companion

I am spending the next two weeks on holiday in London, at home, with small projects and goals and desires to sort and heal some things and clear out others. I've resisted the urge to call it a staycation, to feel guilty about not chasing the sun and take my bad habits on tour, to worry if I'm hiding away. I need to concentrate on making positive change in my life and to find a desire to create again. To feel each hour passing. To pay attention when anxieties and fears surface. To connect to more of live around me.

So here I am. Not entirely sure what to do with myself. Letting myself feel tired and worn down, but being aware of why and what I am doing knowing that good decisions will bring good changes - even despite the immediate discomfort they bring.

I asked to change medication yesterday. I never felt right on the sertaline. Less anxious, but not focused, balanced or happy. I forced myself to feel positive, but it was appearance and not real change.

Changing medications brings short-term side effects that aren't totally pleasant, anxiety and nausea. Restless, dream-filled sleep. Meditation helps some, but mostly the knowledge that it is temporary and that real comfort may be coming. Will be coming. Will make it a bit easier to change, more equipped to deal with the positives and negatives that life offers.

More equipped to connect and to create. That is my focus on this next period.

A therapist once told me that I live too much in my mind, so much so that I've let my body fall into disrepair. I'm now trying to focus on living in this body again. Repairing the damage. Meditation helps to place myself back into my body and I spent a good deal of time in the last few days in a body scan. The gym and Justin are a great help in that. Moving the body, making it contract and stretch and pull and push and do more than I think it should or can. At first the pain made me anxious, but I'm starting to sense the difference between good and bad pain.

Now, I concentrate on how I eat. Not necessarily what, but how. How mindlessly I feed it. How little aware of eating I was, waiting for feelings of happiness and euphoria to come. How able I was to turn off the feelings of discomfort that would follow. How little I tasted of the vast amounts of comfort I was eating. It is hard. I am not consistent. It is the single most important change I can make and therefore one that I'm most resistant to. The mind and emotion rally to act as they did before. To protect what they know. To give breadth and permission to the bad habits. I'm trying to re-wire the pattern. It is difficult. It requires finding satisfaction in other places.

How? How I connect and how I create. Connect and create. Simple and powerful, straightforward and complex words.

Techno-fabulousness

Waiting from My Robot Friend and Alison Moyet. Moyet at her most Yazoo-like since Yazoo

The shake and shuffe game

Not as tragically gay, 80s, or pop as I feared it might be...


(1) Turn on your MP3 player or iTunes or whatever.
(2) Go to SHUFFLE songs mode.
(3) Write down the first 25 songs that come up--song title and artist
--NO editing/cheating, please. Doesn't have to be 25. Could be 20, 50, whatever.
(4) Choose some people to be tagged. It is generally considered to be in good taste to tag the person who tagged you.

------

Who'd have guessed my iTunes is such a moody bugger, ha!

------

And on Yazoo
Yazoo, 'Yaz' were definitely on the soundtrack to my youth and this song about a friend's funeral fit my teenage black mood.

Icct Hedral Aphex Twin
Aphex Twin doing Phillip Glass. Good for moments when you need the mood to go absolutely creepy

Ceux qui n'ont rien, Patricia Kaas
'Moi je connais le bleu, des matins malheureux' and she's sexy as hell

Airplane, Indigo Girls
The Indigo Girls came to UC Davis with Sarah Jessica Parker and Robert Downey, Jr. to raise awareness for some campaign issue or other. We were all shocked at how bad his skin was. SJP wasn't yet SATC so no one really said much. The Girls sat with the students, listening to other bands play, signing autographs and hanging with whomever, which I thought was pretty cool

Weird Fishes / Arpeggi, Radiohead
A love song as only Radiohead could write

Early Autumn, Ella Fitzgerald
Tell me about it, Ella. She's definitely my go-to-girl on Sundays and it's been a really long Autumn here, already.

Some people, Belouis Some
There was a music video show on channel 36, only on Summer afternoons, that played music from the UK this was one I remember from it.

China, Tori Amos
I have way too much Tori Amos on my iTunes. I blame my need for medication on her, but I like this song.

This House, Alison Moyet
My most favouritest-ever singer. Another depressing song but one of the best. "Under these fingertips a strange body rolls and dips I close my eyes and you're here again. Later as day descends. I'll shout from my window. To anyone listening, "I'm losing"'

Overground, Siouxsie and the Banshees
I used to listen to KROQ at nights in my room with the lights out. It really bugged my father for some reason, but it introduced me to Siouxsie Sue and although I was probably clinically depressed, I remember it fondly.

Trains to Brazil, Guillemots
Most likely a iTunes song of the week, but I like the rawness of it.

Ay fond kiss, Eddie Reader
From the poem by Robert Burns. 'Had we never lov'd so kindly, Had we never lov'd so blindly! Nor never met nor never parted, We would never be so broken-hearted.'

Am I the Only One (who's ever felt that way) Maria McKee
We saw this pinup of AltCountry play at a club in Santa Cruz. When the first song applause didn't meet with her approval she shouted down the mic 'This ain't no f***ing folk band'

Promise, David Sylvian
My friend Tim turned me onto David Sylvian, former lead singer of 80s band Japan. Now, I go with him every time David plays in concert (and he gets dragged with me every time Alison Moyet plays.) His album with Nine Horses is brilliant.

Radio, Robbie Williams
Cheesy, cocky and currently out of favour, but I like him anyway

To the workers of the Rock River Valley Region, Sufjan Stevens
I love that someone's writing chamber music these days. We'll see if he manages to write an album for each of the 50 states, but I think he's a brilliant lyric writer.

Country Mile, Camera Obscura
From the music researcher in our office. Obscura, indeed.

If you leave, OMD
RIP John Hughes

Beds are Burning, Midnight Oil
I've no idea I had this song. I liked the anger in his voice

Pleasure is all mine, Bjork
From the difficult to like album Medulla even though I like Bjork immensely. I saw her once at the local butchers in Maida Vale, dressed head to toe in pink fleece

Feel Good, Inc, Gorillaz
I always feel good hearing this song. It's on my gym playlist.

Cavaleir Monge, Mariza
Mariza is arguably the world's most famous singer of Fado, a Portugese folk music born in the taverns of Portugal. Haunting and beautifully sung

Optimistic Radiohead
Radiohead? Almost never.

Ich bin der Welt Abhanden Gekommen, Kathleen Ferrier
Ah, nice surprise. I've been working my way through Alex Ross' The Rest is Noise, a majestic survey of 20th C. music, and downloaded this scratchy recording of Mahler's lied because no newer ones bested Ferrier's mournful voice. " I am lost to the world with which I used to waste so much time, It has heard nothing from me for so long that it may very well believe that I am dead."

Sand drawing

Obsessive and beautiful


Via ZeFrank

Shhh, don't tell my mum

Day 11 without a drink...

Last updated in March? Pathetic. Apologies to anyone, if anyone, who has bothered.

A natty status and will put effort into writing something substantial over the weekend.

Reading: White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
Watching: Pedro Amadovar movies from Lovefilm
Listening: Bach, the Goldenberg Variations and Elbow's Seldom Seen Kid (which I listen to over and over and over again.)
Tickets to: A Doll's House and the Proms
Preoccupied by: My personal training programme and how disrupted it's been
Working on: Creating more digestable strategies that demonstrate more brand, rather than channel, thinking

Little giants

I recently judged the OMO entries of the Mofilm Contest. Twelve iconic brands asked people to create user-generated adverts. The twelve finalists will be judged by Spike Lee for a chance to win an apprenticeship on his next movie. The winner will be announced at Cannes Lions 2009. In the meantime, you can see the charming OMO entry by Diana Triana here.

See more videos on MOFILM Cannes, a MOFILM competition.

Skeletons of steel scrapping the sky

'What happened in the city of New York when the skyscrapers was born is that buildings turned from crustaceans, which are supported by their walls to vertebrates supported by their skeleton. But the skeleton had to be made of steel. It's one of the great transforming moments of how we live on earth as human beings.' David McCullough

In Frankfurt we walked past an enormous skyscrapper whose sides were unfinished in patches, revealing a rough coating of concrete the same texture and colour of a nearby church. For a moment, I thought it was deliberate, but the beautiful symmetry was accidental and temporary. Much like life.

And it's spicy too

I'm a great fan of chili sauces. None more so than Sriracha. There is a charming little article about a brand grown famous not through marketing, but reputation.

Make a splash

Move your cursor to create beautiful, inky calligraphic lines and explore hidden experiences.

Formative

Today, standing on the pavements during a fire alarm, we talked about movies from our childhood that we felt were the most formative. I mentioned the Red Balloon, a wordless, but dramatic, short film from 1956 that played repeatedly on television in the 70s. The films mixes solitude, joy, bravery and folly and it probably helped form both my melancholic nature and my love of Paris. And you can watch it online here.

Stop and go

A Night in Hong Kong, stunning stop motion video.

I hate Comic Sans

A short film about the font Comic Sans, in response to Gary Hustwit's film, Helvetica.

Desiree Rogers and her clients, diagrammatically

Human-assisted robots reveal human behaviour

Tweenbots are simple robots Kacie Kinzer invented to see if strangers would be willing to interact with an anthropomorphised object on the streets of New York. They are set off in a simple, straight line with a written on a flag and instructions to point the tweenbot in the right direction. She didn't expect any to arrive at their destination and was surprised how actively and willingly strangers rescued the human-assisted robots from blocked paths, objects or perilous roads. She writes:

The journey the Tweenbots take each time they are released in the city becomes a story of people's willingness to engage with a creature that mirrors human characteristics of vulnerability, of being lost, and of having intention without the means of achieving its goal alone.

In typical headscratching style I started my holiday by working. Getting up at 4.30 to fly to Nice for the MIPTV conference in Cannes. It was a great event

We Tell Stories, winner of the SXSWi elevator pitch contest, and very interesting story-telling site.

iPaint

Gallery of beautiful images painted using the Brushes App on the iPhone

Photos from Zurich

Photos from a sunny day in Zurich, faux cross-processed to deal with the poor quality photos my Ixus took.

On monoculture

Idealists of the long tail and the 2.0 multiverse shouldn’t count out the monoculture—it turns out you can do a hundred NPR shows and have all the Web buzz in the world and it’s nothing compared to the power of one Hollywood movie actor’s passing remark.

Carl Wilson, author of Let's Talk about Love: Journey to the End of Taste

Ryanair and anti-social networking

In a week when they announce they're considering installing pay toilets on their planes an illiterate Ryanair employee attacks a tech geek who highlights a bug in their site. Are Ryanair trying to be the Archie Bunker of the air?

Books are wonderful things

Five rules for designing book covers (including the ubiquitous cope-out, 'rules are meant to be broken.')

Notgeld - German pre-inflationary currency

Beautiful notes from the Weimar Republic

Stitched up

I vaguely remember seeing Stitching at the Edinburgh Festival in 2002. What I do remember was how mindnumbingly tired and hungover I was after a late Saturday night trying to drunkenly find a hotel of which I didn't know the name or location. Sitting in a dark theatre on a Sunday morning was work itself, nevermind that it was a brutal and graphic play about a couple struggling to transition from sexual (dys)function to impending parenthood. It was startling. It was sinister. It stood in sharp contrast to the lesbian sockpuppet musical of the day before. It was also Mamet-esque in its ability to make poetry of cruelty.

Now Malta has banned it. There's a Facebook group to protest the ban. I can't claim to have loved (or remembered) the play, but don't believe that a European cultural capital in the 21st C. should be banning plays in which language and thought provoke. Are there limits? Undoutedly. But ideals will always be tested by values and in this case the freedom of the arts must withstand value-based legislation. and whilst Stitching is vulgar, it isn't the extreme of the test.

Plus, the very handsome Andrew Haydon told us to do so.

Create your own Atheist bus ad
A recent controversy in the UK saw a local atheist organisation take out bus ads raising the ire of the small band of Christians who think they still live in a Christian country. Here's a chance to mock their pseudo-outrage

Create your own Atheist bus ad
A recent controversy in the UK saw a local atheist organisation take out bus ads raising the ire of the small band of Christians who think they still live in a Christian country. Here's a chance to mock their pseudo-outrage

Looking forwards day

New A.S. Byatt novel due in May, and I can't wait.

Ogilvy sponsors brief at MIPTV in Cannes

Ogilvy and Unilever join forces in MIPTV this year, including a brief in the Content 360 competition: Engage with women through branded content.

Best online car insurance experience

NMA reports that Sheila's Wheels and Churchill provide the best online car insurance experience. The ads of both are guilty pleasures - one doesn't like to admit how catchy the jingle for Sheila's Wheels really is, but it makes me want to wear pink sequins...

UK Music charts

They announced this week that CD sales will no longer be counted in the UK Music Charts as digital downloads now drive what we'll see topping the charts.

Today in history: history of science

Léon Foucault uses a pendulum to demonstrate the rotation of the Earth.

Foucault had an insight. A pendulum hanging on a wire and swinging directly north and south would appear to the observer to slowly move its plane of oscillation as the Earth turned underneath it.

I've lately been reading Steven Johnson's The Invention of Air which is proving how little about the history of science I know, but how interesting it can be when told well.

World Air Travel

Amazing mash up of the world's air travel.