Austin Kleon

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The Less Good Idea

A still from William Kentridge’s Self-Portrait as a Coffee-Pot

Listening to an interview with artist William Kentridge, he explained the origins of The Centre for the Less Good Idea, an “interdisciplinary incubator space” he started in Johannesburg.

The name comes from a Twsana proverb: “When the good doctor can’t cure you, find the less good doctor.”

From the Centre’s website:

Often, you start with a good idea, It might seem crystal clear at first, but when you take it off the proverbial drawing board, cracks and fissures emerge in its surface, and they cannot be ignored. It is in following the secondary ideas, those less good ideas coined to address the first idea’s cracks, that the Centre nurtures, arguing that in the act of playing with an idea, you can recognise those things you didn’t know in advance but knew somewhere inside of you.

The Centre hosts all sorts of events, in person and online. I was unaware, for example, that Kentridge and Walter Murch had collaborated. Here’s their recent conversation:

Roget’s Thesaurus: A library of words

In my latest newsletter, I wrote about becoming obsessed with Roget’s Thesaurus, after realizing that every thesaurus I’d ever picked up was alphabetical, and alphabetizing a thesaurus basically destroys the meaning behind what Roget was trying to do.

“We tend to think of a thesaurus as a collection of synonyms and antonyms,” writes Roget’s biographer, Joshua Kendell. “But Roget’s is essentially a reverse dictionary. With a dictionary, the user looks up a word to find its meaning. With Roget’s, the user starts with an idea and then keeps flipping through the book until he finds the word that best expresses it.”

Read it here.

Winter owl updates

Here are some blind contour drawings of the two owls that are living in the box in the backyard.

A while back, I bought a cheap Gosky spotting scope with a smartphone adapter that let me take photos with my old iPhone SE. I keep it on the desk in my studio pointed at the box, but up until a week or so ago, I had to go out there to take photos manually or run the phone’s timelapse function.

It occurred to me what I really needed was a 24/7 stream of the box. That led me to AlfredCamera, an iOS app that turns your old iPhone into a security camera. It’s a little buggy, and the image quality isn’t the best, but having 24/7 coverage with motion sensing and a low-light filter and the ability to play back footage has meant that I’ve gotten to witness all sorts of owl behavior I wouldn’t get to see otherwise.

The most adorable moments are when they’re perched in the box side-by-side, getting ready for their night of murder. Watching them try to squeeze into the opening is a great source of comedy:

As for whether they stick around or not, we’ll just have to see.

If they do stick around, they often mate by the end of the month. Mama will lay eggs in March, at which point Papa will move about 14-20 feet away from the box to keep an eye on things. Once the owlets hatch, Papa will move closer, about 7-10 feet away, and in June the owlets will fledge.

You can see owl updates on Twitter or in my Instagram stories.

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