Austin Kleon

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Writing as a spiritual practice

I took a break a few days ago to watch Paul Elie (author of The Life You Save May Be Your Own and Reinventing Bach) interview James Martin about his new book, Learning To Pray, and writing as a spiritual practice. (Read more my thoughts on prayer.) Video of the discussion is on YouTube.

Out of all the interesting subjects they discussed, I think I was most taken by Father Martin’s explanation of how his vow of poverty affects his writing. Martin is “editor at large” at America Magazine, and as he explained it, he basically has the freedom to write about whatever he wants. The same goes for his books: All of his royalties go to the magazine, so he’s mostly unconcerned about sales. He also said his purpose in writing, always, is not to achieve literary greatness, but to “help souls.” So his mission and his vow of poverty takes away most of the common pressures of publishing. Writing, for him, is never a struggle.

See previously: Learning to Pray with James Martin and Mary Karr

Carving Coconuts

It has been days since I saw Coconut The Owl, so in an attempt to bring her back into view, I spent yesterday morning making these block prints:

I use really cheap, simple tools. You can get most of what you need in one handy little kit online. (Try poking around the Speedball store.) I like to print on random newspaper pages at first, both to test the print and see what random colors do to it.

I’ve been inspired by Frasconi: Against the Grain, a wonderful out-of-print monograph of the woodcut work of Antonio Frasconi, who emphasized that anyone could make block prints and that you “don’t have to go to a special place, with a lot of heavy equipment. This is something you can do in any corner of your home.”

Block printing is also a wonderful thing to do with kids. My oldest can carve safely, especially with the soft “speedy carve” style blocks. My youngest, who’s a little more cautious, helped me with the brayer.

I might find some good paper and do an actual run on this print. Sign up for my weekly newsletter to be the first to know when they’re available.

Covers for books I don’t intend to write

One thing I do to procrastinate on books I should be writing is make fake covers for books I don’t intend to write.

The one above came from a typo: I tried to type “hell yeah” and typed “hell year” instead.

The one below is a manipulation of a book on small business taxes my wife got from the library:

I find this kind of creative lark really freeing and fun and pressure-relieving. It can also lead to new ideas.

I’m reminded of Guided By Voices frontman Bob Pollard, who said:

Back in high school, maybe 4 or 5 people wanted to be in a band, but nobody knew how to play an instrument. So in art class, we’d sit there and make album covers, and the credits, and I’d have the lyrics, and we’d have everything but music. We even made t-shirts for our band. Walked around, and people’d say, “You guys have a band?” “Yeah, yeah, we’ve got a band!” And no one could play anything. So it started out as kind of a fantasy.

When Pollard is writing, he says he often likes to start out with song titles and fake band names, and then write songs for those specific titles and names. (cf. Nathaniel Russell’s Fake Fliers.)

Sometimes I’ll post an image and people will think it’s a book cover, like this quilting collage I made.

More fun: If you watch my friend Wendy MacNaughton’s show, Draw Together, you’ll see a bunch of fake books she made for the set.

I do actually have the book cover ready for the book I need to be writing — now I just have to write it.

The two Coconuts

To catch you up to speed: at the end of December, an owl appeared in the palm tree in our backyard.  We named it Coconut. I started taking pictures of it every day and drawing it. After a freak snow day here in Texas, we decided to have a house built for it. On Valentine’s Day, we spotted Coconut in the house, and then the ice storm hit, ruining Coconut’s old spot in the palm tree. On February 19, we confirmed that there were two owls in the box, and probably two owls we’d been seeing all along.

Two Coconuts.

At the end of February, I bought a cheap spotting scope with a cell phone attachment and started taking timelapse videos of them:

The trouble is, I still can’t tell them apart unless they’re next to each other. (Males are slightly smaller than the females.) Eastern screeches are able to sort of morph their bodies to blend in with tree branches, so one minute they might be puffed up and happy, sleeping in the sun (as Coconut used to be in the palm) and the next minute they’ll look all skinny and mean, like they want to murder you. (They are, after all, killers.)

We had a scare a few days ago, when the box was empty and we couldn’t find the owls anywhere, and there was a goddamned SQUIRREL in the box. I was distraught, until the next day, when we spotted them both up in the tree very close together, preening and cleaning themselves, which suggested to me that they were about to mate. Then, yesterday, Coconut was back in the box. Now, this morning, they’re both in the tree.

So I don’t know what the hell is going on with these owls. According to everything I’ve read, this should be the time of year that they mate and lay eggs. The female should roost in the box, leaving around dusk and dawn to defecate (yes! owls poop! it’s a good way to spot them) and hunt, and stay on the eggs the rest of the day. The male should hang out nearby in a tree to keep an eye on things and fly in food.

But that’s the wonderful thing about observing animals, human animals, too: there’s the way they’re supposed to behave, and there’s what’s in front of your eyes.

Regardless, they’ve been a bright spot in a winter that was downright grim. If you’d like to see more photos and videos, check out the #coconuttheowl tag on Twitter and Instagram.

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