In my never-ending borderline-OCD quest to never waste anything and make something of my by-products, I’ve started keeping a pad of sticky notes on my desk and when I have unused scraps from my collages I add them to a note. Eventually the note becomes its own collage, sometimes more interesting than the “real” collage I was working on. (The note above was made while tidying my desk and talking to the friend on the phone.)
I’m an imperfectionist when I’m working, so I’m usually puzzled by perfectionists and their problems.
“I figure I’m going to be living with this song for a long time,” says Weird Al Yankovic, in regards to his painstaking process of crafting parody lyrics. “We’ll probably be doing it onstage for the rest of my life. It’s got to be right.”
I like this argument for craft, especially for books. Make it good enough that you can live with it for the rest of your life! Or, if that’s too much (and it is, really) make it good enough that you can live with it for at least the next couple years while you hawk it…
Read old books. Break bread with the dead. Steal old stuff.
I’ve been making mini zines throughout quarantine. Here they all are, with links to read them. I also post them as I go on Instagram. (This list will be periodically updated whenever I hit a new batch of nine. Scroll down to see video of how I make them.)
1. ONE HUNDRED AND ONE FAMOUS POEMS
2. ONE FAMOUS POEM & A Letter to a Young Friend
3. Song Birds
4. much slower
5. Stay Home
6. I feel weak and fruitless and lost
7. the cost of love
8. USA OVER / FOREVER / US
9. NUTSO #1
10. METRONOM
11. NUTSO #2
12. NUTSO #3
13. NUTSO #4
14. A FISH ASHORE
15. BATHYSPHERE
16. Ode to HEB
17. So Shall Distance Sing!
18. FISHING FOR FUN
19. He Who Smelt it
20. These Goodbyes
21. There is no doubt
22. seems strange
23. — and a queer lot they are
24. untitled
25. beyond fishing
26. fish fishing
27. The New Book
28. The American trap
29. MASQD
30. untitled
UPDATE (4/23/2020): I can’t seem to quit making these things! Here are some more:
31. The Man With No Advice
32. Miracle Unmoving
33. Reminded of a Shipwreck
34. Rough Landscape
35. Survive the Savage Sea
36. Party
37. untitled
38. Apocalypse
39. untitled
40. the evolutionary development of plan s
UPDATE (5/3/2020): Another batch:
41. skin of rock
42. a stern land
43. NERVES
44. 56 DAYS: Rations almost spent
45. untitled (madonna)
46. HOW TO PROVE SOMEONE HAS NO TASTE
47. HOW TO DETERMINE HUSBAND’S AND WIFE’S COMPATIBILITY
48. remember
49. Bach
UPDATE (6/4/2020): Yet another batch:
50. pansy luchadores
51. How To Talk To Someone With A Missing Imagination
52. Pocket Calculator
53. How To Draw What is Invisible
54. Cheerful Hodgepodge
55. Sleep Dirty
56. 100 Blind Self-Portraits
57. Sleep Dirty Two
58. Angry and Curious
Here’s a video of how to make your own zine from a single sheet of paper:
And here’s an hour-long video of me making a zine for CreativeLive:
I’ve taped this picture of David Hockney back up in the studio. (Underneath these excellent bumper stickers.) It had a prominent spot on my bulletin board when I was writing Keep Going, and Hockney was one of the key figures I was thinking about when I wrote the book. (In the article the photo was clipped from, Hockney said, “I’ll go on until I fall over.” A motto worth stealing.)
And so, it’s been great comfort to me to find out he’s still out there painting, in quarantine up in Normandy, sending “fresh flowers” from his iPad to friends, reminding us “they can’t cancel the spring,” even urging us to do our own drawing:
I would suggest people could draw at this time… Question everything…. I would suggest they really look hard at something and think about what they are really seeing…. We need art, and I do think it can relieve stress. What is stress? It’s worrying about something in the future. Art is now.
Hell yes. Go on until you fall over.
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