In Tuesday’s newsletter, I wrote about how there are very few collage problems that can’t be solved with a photocopier.
@austinkleon Collage problems #collage
? original sound – Austin Kleon
The writer must be four people
An entry from 12/3/1961 in Susan Sontag’s journals. (via)
The writer must be four people:
1) The nut, the obsédé
2) The moron
3) The stylist
4) The critic1 supplies the material; 2 lets it come out; 3 is taste; 4 is intelligence.
A great writer has all 4 but you can still be a good writer with only 1 and 2; they’re most important.
See also: The four energies
The simplest cut
Embrace bewilderment
Here is a sign I saw on yesterday’s ride through the Johnson Creek Trail here in Austin.
I thought of the poet Rumi, who wrote: “Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.”
@austinkleon A message from my favorite sign
My riding partner is traveling, so I’ve been taking slow, solo rides.
Wandering the streets (and trails) with a wandering mind.
Getting somewhere I didn’t know I was going — that’s the goal, in rides like these, and in making art.
Here is another sign I saw on my way home:
Filed under: signs
A message for graduates
I recorded this message a few years ago at the beginning of the pandemic, based on some pages from Steal Like An Artist:
The classroom is a wonderful, if artificial, place: Your professor gets paid to pay attention to your ideas, and your classmates are paying to pay attention to your ideas. Never again in your life will you have such a captive audience.
Soon after, you learn that most of the world doesn’t necessarily care about what you think. It sounds harsh, but it’s true. As the writer Steven Pressfield says, “It’s not that people are mean or cruel, they’re just busy.”
This is actually a good thing, because you want attention only after you’re doing really good work. There’s no pressure when you’re unknown. You can do what you want. Experiment. Do things just for the fun of it. When you’re unknown, there’s nothing to distract you from getting better. No public image to manage. No huge paycheck on the line. No stockholders. No e-mails from your agent. No hangers-on.
You’ll never get that freedom back again once people start paying you attention, and especially not once they start paying you money.
Enjoy your obscurity while it lasts.
If you need a last-minute graduation gift, might I suggest the new 10th anniversary edition of Steal and maybe a gift subscription to my newsletter?
Is a bike ride creative?
“I have almost forgotten that there is such a pursuit as literature in the arduous study of – bicycling!”
—Thomas Hardy, 1896
Is a bike ride creative?
Sometimes it certainly feels that way.
You pick a time, you get your gear together, and you set out to see what happens.
Same with writing and drawing: You set aside some time, you get out your pens and notebook, and you see what happens.
Paul Klee said drawing was taking a line for a walk.
Or maybe a ride?
A drawing is a paper trail.
If you use a ride tracker, at the end of the ride, you can see your trail traced on the map.
The trails look like abstract drawings or wire sculptures.
A drawing made with your bicycle!
Mixing colors
Whenever I empty out a black ink cartridge that comes with one of my beloved brush pens, I think about adding another color to my set. This week I added a green by filling about 2/3 of the cartridge with lemon and the last 1/3 with blue:
It’s pretty, but it’s also interesting how easy it is to get green by drawing yellow and covering it with blue. Also, I really like the constraint of the CMYK brushes.
What I could really use is an orange. (Magenta on top of yellow just gets a vibrant red.) I think the same mix ratio (2/3 lemon, 1/3 magenta) should do the trick. Will report back later!
Update (6/2/2022) I mixed some orange, too:
Not bad!
PS. Here’s how I fill them using a blunt-tipped syringe:
We find what we look for
This week’s Tuesday newsletter is about how we create the world with the kind of attention we pay to it.
Bicycles and re-enchantment
In an essay called “Talking About Bicycles,” C.S. Lewis recounts a “friend” telling him about the different “ages” of his riding a bicycle: first, the bike meant nothing to him, then he learned to ride it, and became enchanted, then, by riding it to and from school, he became disenchanted. Now, taking up the bicycle again, he became re-enchanted.
I think there are these four ages about nearly everything. Let’s give them names. They are the Unenchanted Age, the Enchanted Age, the Disenchanted Age, and the Re-enchanted Age. As a little child I was Unenchanted about bicycles. Then, when I first learned to ride, I was Enchanted. By sixteen I was Disenchanted and now I am Re-enchanted.
I feel this very deeply. I also feel it in terms of the city in which I cycle: I’m not sure I was ever fully enchanted with Austin, but I certainly became disenchanted with it. And now, somewhat thanks to the bicycle, I am re-enchanted with Austin.
There is magic here because there is magic everywhere… if you know how to look for it.
(Thanks, Alan!)
Watering the garden
“Those who go out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with them.”
—Psalm 126:6
“I climb up on the house / weep to water the trees”
—Guided By Voices
Another tearful week in our crumbling empire. At our house, we’re taking pleasure in our garden beds. Elsewhere, bad seeds are bringing forth rotten fruit, but here, good fruit is coming in. We’ve eaten a few strawberries plucked right off the plant. The tomatoes are getting bigger.
The more I learn about gardening, the richer the metaphor for creative work. This week I’m learning more about composting. On a recent bike ride, Hank gave me a mini chemistry lesson in exothermic and endothermic reactions, anaerobic vs. aerobic decomposition, chemical bonds, carbohydrates, etc. I even got to stick my hand in to feel the heat of the heap.
In Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer writes how she has “fullblown chlorophyll envy,” and wishes she could “photosynthesize” so that she could “be doing the work of the world while standing silent in the sun.” It’s hard not to envy the plants, who seem to know how to grow without anybody’s help. They know what to do without asking.
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