Austin Kleon

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Diary of a 5-year-old

We have talked the 5-year-old into keeping a casual diary of sorts, and, while it’s so fun to see his days summarized in his little hyphenated paragraphs, it’s also really surprising, too. For instance, we’d thought that he had a terrible time on the day mentioned above! He moped around and complained about the heat and all the walking. It’s a reminder that if you have a kid who keeps things close to the chest, giving them tools to express themselves (in O’s case it’s Garageband on the iPad to write songs, or a pen and a nice notebook for a diary) gives you this whole different glimpse into who they are and what they’re feeling and thinking.

School and the seasons

Last night my wife and I re-watched Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. The movie deals with time: how a prisoner does his time, how time brings back old wounds, and how we can use time to rewrite our stories. One device director Alfonso Caurón uses to show the passage of time is shots of the Whomping Willow in each season. (Stitched together in the image above.)

For me, the Harry Potter movies (I’ve only actually read book 7) have always been the story of going to school. The story starts when the summer is ending, and the story ends when summer begins again. Growing up, I was always like Harry: my life tied to the school year, I dreaded the summer and couldn’t wait for fall to come. The death of summer = the hope of new adventures. (Books, girls, etc.)

Before I went to bed last night, I came across this perfect passage in Patricia Lockwood’s Priestdaddy:

I have lived for the last eight years in seasonless places, where things do not die, but revolve in a constant tropic sun. I had forgotten how the fall sharpens pencils, gray and colored ones. I had forgotten that when you pay attention to the seasons, you are returned to school and all its feelings, the freedom of three o’clock and the nameless dread of Sunday night, when the sky looms over you like the deadline of some paper you haven’t even started. I want to drink cocoa out of a thermos; I want to go to a high school football game.

School is about to start here in Texas, but summer will continue to blaze for at least another two months. I wonder what time feels like to people who grew up here. I’ve lived in this seasonless place for over a decade — for 11 years I’ve lived in a constant state of seasonal disorientation. (And deprivation.) I want to feel that feeling again, of how “fall sharpens pencils.”

Coffee with an old friend

Back in February I sat down with Mike Rohde and recorded a conversation for his Sketchnote Army podcast about how I work. It was recorded on an iPhone in a noisy coffee shop downtown, but it has a casual, candid feel to it that I enjoyed.

I was right in the middle of writing the talk that would become my new book, and while I don’t talk about the book at all, I talk a lot about the process of getting to it: going back to daily blogging, putting out the newsletter, having a repeatable daily practice for generating work, reading Thoreau’s journals, watching Ralph Steadman draw, etc.

Listen here.

Ralph Steadman in the studio


I really love this 2013 video of Ralph Steadman in his studio making drawings, talking, and playing the ukulele. It’s basically what I want my life to look like when I’m his age:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6omL2ukk9c

There’s so much to learn. On the difference between him and his work:

People have said, “Oh, I thought you’d be a nasty piece of work because you’re so dark and trenchant,” and I say, “No I’m not! I’ve got rid of it — it’s all on paper!”

On mistakes:

There’s no such thing as a mistake. A mistake is only an opportunity to do something else.

On style:

I never went out of my way to invent a style. I haven’t got a style — I just draw and it’s that way.

In 2014, he Skype-d in to a room at SXSW to promote for his documentary, For No Good Reason. He was walking around the studio, and I saw this big book on podium next to his desk. It looked like a big Gutenberg bible or a dictionary or something. I started obsessing over what this book could be. So when it was Q&A time, I shot up my hand and asked him about it. He lit up and said, “Oh! That’s my idea book! Every time I have an idea, I go over here and write it down.” He started flipping through pages and showing us old bits and debris he’d pasted into it. (What I wouldn’t give to see it in person!)

Here’s another video of him drawing, because I can’t get enough:

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