Sure, you can give presents at the holidays, in boxes, like everybody else, but the real challenge is always to find something UNIQUE, isn’t it? Something no one else would ever think of? Something fun to give that inspires happy surprise in the give-ee.

Well, the best things in life, I’ve heard told, are free. And while most of those are impossible to wrap, it is generally agreed that their impact greatly outshines that of any, say, tiny mechanical “life-like” dog from the internet.

So my list for Santa this year is unique in the fact that he cannot actually bring the requested gifts to my house. They are not objects, but concepts, thus they all just have to happen, Deus Ex Machina style, like I was a character in a Netflix™ holiday movie who keeps running into a kind old stranger with twinkling eyes and a full white beard that I somehow, even though it’s December, entirely fail to recognize.

No. 1. Learning.

I love learning new things - and here I am leaving off the most obvious and descriptive three words of that sentence… at my age.

I mean, we’re supposed to learn when we’re young, that’s our job. And there is so much that we are experiencing for the very first time - every interaction we have with the world is some kind of lesson -

- and then we begin recognizing PATTERNS

- and then we end up amassing INFORMATION

- and our experiences compile into bits of WISDOM

- and then, later on, one day we go to the bookstore and look at the shelves featuring our favorite authors and realize there are more books that we’ve already read than ones left to read. Yep. That’s where I am.

So to gain NEW stories, experiences, and facts is especially exciting to me now. Sure, there are online courses and lectures and how-to manuals and cookbooks, but Wikipedia is bananas. In just a few hyperlinks, your entire world can change. That’s what happened yesterday.

For almost 30 years I worked in Advertising, making my living by being creative. During that time I was told by many people how rare that was. Didn’t seem rare, there were tons of us doing it.

Yet, some suggested that I in particular was at a social disadvantage. Some saw the exact opposite. Yet all seemed keen to remind me that I was, culturally, a communication pioneer. Black Shackleton; unique, alone, and perhaps curiously… doomed. Can’t blame these folks: they lacked the same history that I did.

As I clicked through Wikipedia yesterday researching protest music and peace anthems, I came across an old classic advertising jingle:

“I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony…”

made super famous when Coca-Cola collected young people from around the world on a hilltop in Italy to create what was, in 1971, the most expensive commercial ever made. An international chorus, united in a song that culminated with the musical slogan “It’s the Real Thing”, referring to love and peace and (of course) the product in the bottles they were holding.

It was a hit. I mean, it was an actual hit - the jingle was extended into a song, re-recorded twice and went gold around the world - quite a feat since a commercial had never before experienced such commercial success.

Two clicks later I discovered that the original tune was from a record called “True Love and Apple Pie” by British hitmakers Cook and Greenaway, which had been extensively rewritten for the ad by the songwriters, legendary ad exec Bill Backer, and US songwriter Billy Davis.

I had never heard of Billy Davis. One more click I learned he worked at McCann Erickson in New York as their SVP Music Director, writing music for ads like “If you’ve got the time, we’ve got the beer” for Miller and “Coca-Cola Adds Life…Have a Coke and a Smile”.

I KNEW these songs, I sang them in the grocery store and around the house, never suspecting that a black person had anything to do with them.

In a general sense, does that matter? Probably not, but it would have back then - giving me a clearly possible goal to focus on. I made up little songs all the time and wanted to do that for a job, but try telling that to your mother. And it’s important to me now, as evidence that the work I accomplished in that category was part of a specific legacy of professional experience, and not an independent or isolated spark. Blackleton No More.

And it might sound a bit crazy, but I feel that learning about Billy Davis yesterday has somehow, across time and space, influenced that little kid I used to be, sending a bit of encouragement back 50 years and across 3000 miles…

Hey! Kid! Keep being a wierdo! Keep memorizing Monty Python sketches and reciting them in loud voices in the backyard! Keep learning how to make up songs and write stories and build things. I know it sounds impossible now, but grownups like you actually make things you like, and someday you can get a Real Job with all that in New York City! Seriously!

But while you’re at it, you might just want to keep a sharp look-out for an old man with a long white beard and a red shirt and a twinkle in his eye? He should definitely be around there somewhere.

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