Lost Ideas #2 – Jingle

I was asked last year to quickly come up with a piece to share with a large mingling audience at a fundraiser event some friends were hosting. Having been working on some new texts for other projects, I thought I would experiment with the use of language appropriated from advertising. Advertisements play a convenient and poignant role in a lot of contemporary art (Cornell, Warhol, Prince among others), and the mystique of the advertising zeitgeist contributes to the popularity of Mad Men, which I have just started watching.

This proposed piece (it was never actually performed–due to a sick kid–mine) was to take snippets of written advertisements, or in some cases implied meanings from ads, and attach them to a single jingle bell on a bracelet-sized piece of yarn. Each attendee at the fundraiser would wear their jingle around with them for the evening, along with a single example of modern ad-speak. Here is a partial list of texts I might have used:

connect to your inner self
watch this
consider this ride
need a lawyer?
how about more school?
in case of a fire
cash back
take care of your feet
remain alert
report fraud
beware of bugs
perfect yourself
visit art
travel back in time
it will be fun
listen louder
compete
new shoes better
witness a fight
don’t leave