Like a snail on a cactus

Saturday, April 27, 2024

I usually can’t write the Tuesday newsletter until I know the image it’s going to start with, but I often start Friday’s newsletter without any idea what’s going to go at the top. Eventually, a theme emerges, or I come across something that will work, like this image of a snail on a cactus in my neighborhood.

“I’m moving like a snail on a cactus” has become one of my “How you doing?” responses.

Others:

“I am riding in the bike lane on trash day.”

“I am feeling like a cheeseburger with no cheese.” (My son Owen made that one up.)

“I got squirrels in my owl box.”

It often seems to me that life is now just about the slow accumulation of these phrases until I die.

Anyways, you can read the newsletter here.

No such thing as waste

Tuesday, April 23, 2024

Today’s newsletter is about understanding perfectionism, and how I misunderstood perfectionism for the longest time, so I wasn’t able to detect it in myself.

But the letter really began with this image:

I built this collage around a drawing that my son wadded up in frustration before running out of the studio in tears. In the past, this is what I thought perfectionism was: an inability to deal with the disconnect between what a drawing looked like in your head and how it came out of your hand. I thought perfectionism was a problem for the uptight, for big babies who can’t just loosen up and let ‘er rip.

You can read the rest of the newsletter here.

Something I wasn’t able to weave into the newsletter — because it’s not really about perfectionism, it just got me thinking about it — was this instagram post by Lynda Barry about “drawing with four year olds and being there to see how they figure something out”:

I often find drawings begun and then abandoned… Something is not quite right and they need to start over. Then comes the issue of wasting paper. And of finishing what they started. But what if we were…talking about a kind learning to play the trumpet, trying to play a certain note by repeating it… Getting the hang of it, making it natural. Would we say they are easing notes? It took 12 index cards to come to this image. The kid who drew it said “He bites the people” when they finished.

…I would have been told to stop wasting paper and I may have said the same thing to this kid if I wasn’t really paying attention to how this drawing came about. It reminds me of an archer— there is no wasting of arrows when you’re learning to shoot.

Lynda really got me to internalize this idea with my kids — there was no such thing as wasting paper or markers. We encouraged them to use up as many materials as they had.

As I mentioned in another letter, there were days that Jules filled so many pages that we’d sweep them up at the end of the day with a broom:

One of the things I’ve been playing with in my head is: What if we treated ourselves with the tenderness (and yes, the discipline) that we show our children?

For years, I wanted to write a book about how much I learned from watching my kids work, but what I’m starting to realize is that what I’ve really learned is how to set up the conditions for creativity to happen. If you can do it for a four-year-old, maybe you can do it for yourself…

And one of the great lessons is: Believe that there is no such thing as waste. Creative work is the residue of time “wasted.” Of materials “wasted.”

At the same time, the whole reason I made the collage is so I could “save” that drawing from the wastebasket! And Lynda, too, in that post, is saving those drawings, repurposing the “waste” into something worth saving…

So maybe one has to make without regard to waste, without fear, and save and share what you can’t stand to see wasted…

How to have fun thinking with a paper dictionary

Thursday, April 18, 2024

People often ask questions like, “Why do you have that paper dictionary in your office when you can just look things up online?”

Reader, let me tell you!

Walt Goggins makes me think of the word “ornery” — so I looked that word up. (As John McPhee tells us, it’s important to look up words even when you think you already know the definition.)

Ornery: “Mean-spirited, disagreeable, and contrary in disposition; cantankerous.”

Well, yeah, but not quite.

“See Synonyms at CONTRARY.”

Okay, let’s go.

The entry for “Contrary” is several paragraphs long. My eyes glaze, not over, but above — to the entry for “contrarian.”

That’s a word that usually has a negative connotation, right? “Oh, he’s just being contrarian.”

But let’s read the definition, anyways.

“con-trar-i-an n. an investor who makes decisions that contradict prevailing wisdom, as in buying securities that are unpopular at the time.”

Contrarian as investor?

Oh, I like this idea.

I don’t want to oppose the status quo just to oppose it — I was to invest in what I think is undervalued at the moment. (Like paper dictionaries.)

Now, I’m thinking about word that “prevailing.” That’s an interesting word. Let’s look that up.

Cool, cool, what I thought, but OOOH look a picture of a PRETZEL:

I mean, I know what a pretzel is, I don’t need to read that definition, do I? Oh, yes I do, because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t know the connection between a pretzel and prayer:

So that’s how you go from thinking about Walt Goggins to thinking about monks, pretzel, and prayer in a just a few steps.

All thanks to the American Heritage Dictionary, 3rd edition, purchased for $5 at Goodwill.

Filed under: reference books

A chat with Stephanie Zacharek and Dwight Garner

Tuesday, April 16, 2024

Stephanie Zacharek is the film critic at Time, and Dwight Garner is a book critic for The New York Times. They’re two of my favorite writers to read, so when I found out they were friends, I thought it would be fun to interview them together for the newsletter.

We had a good time talking about honesty in criticism, having a sense of humor, the writing process, our favorite books and movies, how to develop your personal taste, and much more.

You can watch the video or read the transcript in today’s newsletter. (You can also click the podcast options in the sidebar and listen to it.)

A few highlights, below…

Dwight on the importance of a sense of humor:

I agree with the great Australian-British critic Clive James, who said that a sense of humor is, I think he put it, “common sense, dancing.” Which I just love. You don’t trust someone without a sense of humor. Donald Trump — no sense of humor! You meet someone without one and… 9 times out of 10 I don’t trust or like writers who have no sense of humor. Every once in a while you get a Dostoevsky, who, you know, has his moments. Sheer power can win out. But I increasingly like to be made to smile when I’m reading. To me, that’s a sign of a first rate intellect. Critics want to deliver pleasure, right? All writers do. And humor is just part of that pleasure. Pleasure is an elevated thing to deliver, if you’re doing it right.

Stephanie on her favorite movie, The Lady Eve:

It’s funny, sometimes you go to a dinner party, and people are like, “Oh, you’re a movie critic, so what’s your favorite movie?” And other critics that I know, it’s like, “Oh, my God, I hate that question.” But I love that question! Because I always have a ready answer. And my answer is: The Lady Eve by Preston Sturges, which is a comedy. A lot of people might think, oh, no, I have to choose a really serious movie as my favorite movie. But The Lady Eve, not only is it funny and great in so many ways with fantastic performances by Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda, but it’s actually about something very serious. This idea of looking at someone and thinking that you’re in love with that person and not seeing exactly what’s in front of you.

And Dwight on his commonplace book (which he turned into Garner’s Quotations):

I’ve kept it for so long now, it’s been transferred from print to various laptops. I sort of keep it obsessively. Everything I read, I end up writing things down from. I know, generally, I don’t like a book, if I end up putting nothing from it into my commonplace book. Not to every writer has to be pithy and perfect, but if I read a book, and I don’t want to put a single thing from it? And I keep all kinds of categories, I can open up to flying, social class, violence, war, sex, drugs, conversation, theater, music. I’m just obsessive about it…

It’s [in] Microsoft Word. And the files are so large that they get hung up and the beachball spins… They’re broken up. I’ve broken up Food, because Food is so big. I’ve broken up Drink, because Drink is so big. I’ve broken up Writing because writing breaks down into so many aspects of writing to talk about, right? But even the A-M and M-Z are just large and unwieldy. And I don’t know, it’s a boring topic, but… I take great pleasure in it!

I highly recommend reading or watching the whole thing here.