Tom Davies Copywriting portfolio 2018
Tom Davies
07976 942419
wateracre@gmail.com
Long copy - article Sample article for The School of Life
Sometimes at the start of a new project we’re paralysed by the fear of getting it wrong. When the size of the task seems insurmountable, it feels like there are too many options to move forward with confidence. Every action we could take seems to close down possibilities that seem tantalising, and so it’s really tempting to pause and ponder some more. After all, it feels bad to get something wrong. It’s unpleasant. We know, deep down, that we should expect progress to require effort, but when we receive a setback, it still hurts. We’re forced to confront our image of ourselves, and it’s not good news - we’re worse than we thought. Our confidence is shallow, our ideas are clumsy and simplistic. If we were to try something, we’d get it wrong. But getting it wrong is, in fact, essential. In a 2009 interview, the broadcaster Ira Glass talked about the start of the process of creating something. He spoke in particular about “the gap” in early-stage creators. Glass’s gap is that distance between a creator’s aesthetic taste and their technical ability - between the goal they have and their power to realise it. The only way to bridge that gap, Glass suggests, is to create a large volume of work, piece after piece after piece. Essentially, he’s advocating for practice - for treating creativity like a muscle that needs to be warmed up before it is operating at full potential. In other words, getting it wrong. Repeatedly. In the tech sector getting it wrong has been reclaimed and retitled as “iterative design”. Each project at the outset expects to be developed through multiple versions that get successively closer to a bug-free product that will be of use. Programmers know that if version 2.0 doesn’t quite work, they shouldn’t worry. They test, reaffirm their objectives, redesign, and now here’s version 2.1. We should similarly embrace the wrongness of our choices, warming up our creative muscles through practice, exploring drafts and iterations to incrementally narrow the distance between our goals and our ability to achieve them. At the same time, we can reshape the image of ourselves we hold to permit practice, experimentation and play. Only by affording ourselves that kindness will we understand that getting it wrong is vital to getting it right.
Tom Davies
07976 942419
wateracre@gmail.com
Long copy - news blog Josh’s Switchback T-Shirt
Sometimes a simple thing like a t-shirt can mean so much… When some Switchback staff recently popped into the Spitalfields lunch spot Kastner & Ovens for some tasty salads, they said hello to former Trainee Josh, who completed his training with Switchback in May this year. Josh was wearing his Switchback t-shirt and his Mentor Kat was intrigued to find out why. Josh had worked in the staff mess in prison, and we were blown away when his culinary skills impressed Kastner & Ovens so much, that they gave him a permanent job only three weeks after release! Josh has now worked at Kastner & Ovens for five months – including some weekend work at events with the K&O team. As if that wasn’t enough, Josh had also been taking some evening catering classes to sharpen those skills, and enable his ambition to be a Head Chef. So why was he wearing his Switchback t-shirt? Josh told us that he’d received a letter from the manager of the prison staff mess. The manager had written to tell Josh to say he was so pleased to hear that Josh had been doing really well since release, and wanted to say well done for everything he had achieved so far. So Josh had worn his t-shirt that day with pride – a reminder and a celebration of how far he’d come! Source: https://www.switchback.org.uk/joshs-switchback-t-shirt/
Tom Davies
07976 942419
wateracre@gmail.com
Long copy - music review Review: Beck, “Morning Phase” Everyone needs sad songs occasionally. A little musical wallow can be an important part of the healing process – whether you’re getting over loneliness (Nilsson’s “Without You”), a departed child (The Beatles’ “She’s Leaving Home”), or the destruction of Jerusalem (the Book of Lamentations – not as catchy, that one). Sea Change, Beck Hansen’s 2002 album, was a collection of tear-drenched songs inspired by the break-up of Hansen’s nine-year relationship, and as such provided some superior material for moping around your bedroom crying. These were songs performed at a glacial pace, draped in sincerity rather than the slacker cool of Beck’s career highlight Odelay. Now, twelve years later, he’s gathered the same musicians together for a tonal sequel to Sea Change – this time the blood-letting coming not as a response to the death of a relationship, but following an extended period of incapacity because of an injury to his spine. Because of this shift in the source of the misery, Morning Phase’s mood is more one of existential malaise than the raw nerve-endings of its prequel. Indeed, after a ten-year marriage and two children, Beck sometimes seems a little bit too happy to be singing sad songs – the music plucking the heart-strings, but the lyrics only offering formless cut-up poetry in response. There are glimmers of commentary about his injury – lines like “Bones crack / Curtains drawn / On my back / And she is gone” from Say Goodbye are practically begging for lyric nerd interpretations on SongMeanings.com – but it’s more the mood of these quiet, slow songs that communicates the grief. Stylistically, the homage to Sea Change is striking – Nick Drake-esque folk augmented by stately, deliberate country swing. The lush strings of Hansen’s father David Campbell are once again employed to great effect, washing over the finger-picked guitars; particularly on “Wave”, where the nautical swells of the string arrangements underline the woozy mood. However, taken as a whole, there’s an unnerving sense that Hansen is walking a path he’s already ventured down; the great innovator’s comforting retreat into the language of his past. There are a few diversions – the emphatic piano stabs of “Blue Moon”, some lovely phased keys in “Unforgiven”, or the Gothic country of “Turn Away” – but the album’s tone is so monolithic, so uniform, that it slips effortlessly into a forgettable slab; Beck as background music. As a second-generation Scientologist, Beck is – presumably – extremely familiar with the ‘auditing’ process, where individuals relive past traumas to free themselves of their baggage. It is perhaps unfair to suggest this, but maybe Morning Phase fulfils the same function. It’s Beck talking us through his post-injury isolation, telling us how it felt to be in that room. Lonely, motionless, inert – his thoughts fractured, his sense of self washing away on the tide. Source: Third Way Magazine https://thirdway.hymnsam.co.uk/editions/april-2014/reviews/morning-phase.aspx
Tom Davies
07976 942419
wateracre@gmail.com
Short copy - Festival Listings
Source: Greenbelt 2012 - Festival Guide
Tom Davies
07976 942419
wateracre@gmail.com
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07976 942419
wateracre@gmail.com
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Tom Davies
07976 942419
wateracre@gmail.com
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Tom Davies
07976 942419
wateracre@gmail.com