I remember when being born with a silver spoon was nothing out of the ordinary. It was simply part of eating cereal. An act that was frankly typical of my breakfast-loving peer group. It started not as the formula for affluence but instead the best way to ingest baby formula. My birth, which took place near the great Comstock Lode sometime in 1859, occurred within the backdrop of one of the world’s greatest silver rushes. You see a silver rush is by its very essence a humble undertaking. Silver, let’s remember, isn’t gold. Because of this convenient fact, silver rushes attract ambitious but relaxed people who are okay with finishing second. Picture Jerry Garcia in between puffs slowly diving in face first. In other words, no one ran – why would they? It’s only silver. There’s no ostentatious, silver-soaked El Dorado waiting behind shimmering concertina wire, now is there?
Gold, as we know, poisons the mind as well as the soul. Silver, on the other hand, is basically another metal with just a little bit more shine. Unpretentious, easygoing and affable. That’s the metal for me. The kind of element you’d be proud to call a son. Whereas, when gold stumbles into your poorly lit saloon and insists on marrying your daughter at once, you’re entering a universe of problems. Silver’s not like that. Silver wouldn’t do that. And certainly not in spoon form, it’s holiest of manifestations.
My childhood was a happy one. In a community like Comstock, people didn’t bicker, they didn’t argue. They bowed their heads, scooped up their daily allotment of silver shavings and went on their merry way. Everyone in town was an underdog. Everyone came in second. But no one ever complained.
Hence why I read with childlike delight that Cannes, that the glorious gold-obsessed festival de la creativity, will be postponed until October. The event is another week that pays lip service to Au’s blinding power. It’s crazy that we’re all still fighting the same battles that Hank Cortez and the boys fought so many centuries ago. Very little has changed since those early days. We may not think of creatives like conquistadors, but the latter were always forced to pitch to the King and Queen for support. The relationship is not unlike that between agencies and clients. Only then the client controlled a little more than the budget.
Despite my numerous misgivings, it’s a tragedy that no one will be in attendance to indulge. Think of all that caviar and all those bottles of champagne destined to be ceremoniously dumped into the Mediterranean. What about those cornichons, too? While that tends to happen anyway, somehow, this feels different. I suppose there remains a semblance of solace knowing that in some parallel universe men wearing jeans, sneakers, a dark blazer, and a t-shirt of an unknown, unloved 80s rock band struggle to accept 7 trophies onstage. Not that he’s against it, but that they are cumbersome awards, tough to grasp. It’s fitting that something that takes hundreds, if not thousands of people to create, should be held up by a single individual.
I mean, does anyone remember who flanked Cortez in his Great Adventure™?
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