Click here to subscribe.
On reading novels
Tuesday’s newsletter was “on sitting around and reading a novel” for nothing but the pleasure of it:
[The feeling] that you’re getting away with something […] is really important to the reading experience. Reading should feel a little subversive… because it is! To sit around and read a novel in the year 2025 is an act of resistance — you’re swimming against the current of the entire contemporary shitstream.
Readers left hundreds of recommendations in the comments of that one.
For a list of some of my favorite novels, check out a previous letter, “Big books for summer.”
Easter Eggs
This Easter I was reminded of this photo I took in east Austin, 2013. (The sign reads: “Don’t make your own easter eggs — ain’t nobody got time for that!“)
That’s one kind of Easter egg, but the other is a hidden feature or a message.
Not everybody knows this, but I hide Easter eggs in every one of my Friday newsletters — the “hey y’all” greeting and the “xoxo” signoff is always hyperlinked. (I can’t remember when I started this practice, but I know I stole from Laura Olin.)
Sometimes the links are random, but often they comment somehow on the list of 10.
Here’s the most recent Friday letter so you can see what I mean: “Art comes from other art.”
Don’t crush Lamar!
Our local school district is considering a plan to move hundreds of students into my son’s middle school, which, like many public schools across America, is underfunded, overcrowded, and already operating well over capacity.
If you live in Austin and you have a dog — or a Scottie! — in this fight, please consider dropping a line to superintendent Matias Segura (matias.segura@austinisd.org) and the AISD Board of Trustees (trustees@austinisd.org) and urge them to consider a plan that doesn’t include crushing a special school that is already stressed.
To stay up-to-date on what’s going on, the Lamar PTA president writes a really good newsletter.
If you’d like to spread the word, I made a flyer that you can download and print:
Nice News profile
A very nice profile of me over at Nice News covers a bunch of the stuff I practice and preach.
“It’s funny. I consider myself a deeply lazy person,” Kleon answered with a laugh when asked how he manages to be so prolific. “And that’s where the discipline comes in.”
He said that many people are intimidated by that word — discipline — but the way he defines it is simple, and comes courtesy of guitarist Robert Fripp: making a commitment in time. “Just showing up over and over again is kind of my way that I get over everything, over my laziness, over my apathy, over my despair at what might be going on in the wider world,” Kleon shared.
(That excerpt led to today’s newsletter, “The subtle art of showing up.”)
Big thanks for Rebekah Brandes for her thoughtful questions and great writing.
You can read the whole piece here.
I can’t stop printing
The last few newsletters have shown off how obsessed I’ve become with printmaking — I can’t seem to stop!
From “All is not well (but some things are”:
“Not everything will be okay but some things will.” Years ago, I saw that phrase on a slide at the end of a Maira Kalman talk. It has stuck with me. I wanted to put my own spin on it, so I made a block print with the words, “All is not well (but some things are.)” I was looking for material to print it on, and settled on a few thrifted copies of Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation.
I made these prints after writing today’s newsletter, “The subtle art of showing up”:
I get several forms of the question, “What good is making art in times like these?”
There are many decent answers, but the one that rings truest to me, I think, comes from art coach Beth Pickens: “Artists are people who are profoundly compelled to make their creative work, and when they are distanced from their practice, their life quality suffers.”
If I don’t show up for creative work, I suffer. I’m not a whole person. If I don’t show up to the studio, it’s harder for me to show up for the people in my life.
And, really, that’s all, sometimes, you have to do: just show up.
I’m getting many “what are you going to do with all these prints?!?” questions… so that might be the subject of next week’s newsletter…
- 1
- 2
- 3
- …
- 627
- Older posts→