Myth-making.

I started reading Ingrid Rossellini's new book last night, "Know Thyself: Western Identity from Classical Greece to the Renaissance."  You can buy it here.

(And yes, Ingrid Rossellini is the daughter of the great director Roberto Rossellini and the great actress Ingrid Bergman.)

What got me last night was a quotation Bergman attributed to Joseph Campbell, but that the web attributes to a 4th Century Roman writer, Sallustius.

Regardless of who said it, it's worth spending a few moments thinking about.

"A myth is something that has never happened, and is happening all the time."

Chew on that for a few minutes.

Think about the stories we create for brands. Think about the stories we create for ourselves, as writers. Think about the universality of human nature, and the myriad things that are "happening all the time."

You don't need to spend much time reading advertising trade magazines or even your Linked In-feed, before you trip over someone blathering on about experience design, or user interface or some other mumbo-jumbo.

There are dozens of slide-shows clanking around cyberspace with some dweeb talking about new media landscapes, empowered consumers, and people seeking out cheaply produced content, that will somehow, magically get passed along and induce sales.

I think we spend too much time thinking about how much in the world has changed. And not enough time thinking about how much the world hasn't changed.

We sprint after the ephemeral and transitory to the exclusion of universal truths.

Let's fuck everything we do in advertising, save for one criterion.

Let's asks ourselves if we've scratched a universal itch. If we've created something that someone will notice--and care about.