The Hawk - Austin Kleon

The Hawk (a comics diary)

Monday, January 20, 2020

“The hawk was everything I wanted to be: solitary, self-possessed, free from grief, and numb to the hurts of human life.”
—Helen Macdonald, H Is for Hawk

Here is a picture of the hawk. And:

Sunday morning

Sunday, January 19, 2020

Breakfast:

A morning moon,
a hungry hawk,
and a pair of knuckleheads
sharing a pair of binoculars.

Not a bad life.

One method of writing

Saturday, January 18, 2020

Before anyone asks: here’s what kind of notebooks I use.

“I make sure I never face a blank page.”
—Lydia Davis

One method of writing (that works for me):

Make note of every dumb thought that occurs to you throughout the day.

Tomorrow morning, pick the thought you think ~~is the least dumb~~ is the most interesting* and write more about it.

Repeat ad infinitum. (Or ad nauseam. You know, whatever works…)

Just write the thing down now, when it seizes you. You have the whole eternal afterwards to decide whether or not it's dumb.

— Julia Gfrörer (@thorazos) January 7, 2020

* I edited this because sometimes the dumbest thought could be the most interesting thought and the one that gets you somewhere. “It’s a fine line between stupid and clever.”

Measure by measure

Friday, January 17, 2020

Because I am, obviously, insane, I’m learning Aphex Twin’s “Avril 14th” by copying each measure by hand and learning each section as I go. Here are the first few bars:

Happy Friday here’s me trying to learn Aphex Twin pic.twitter.com/MTeAJKKOmg

— Austin Kleon (@austinkleon) January 10, 2020

I’ll let you know how it goes. (So far, I’m not sure the copying part is adding that much to the practicing part.)

And just for fun, here’s a video of Will Van Horn doing it on pedal steel:

Hide and seek

Thursday, January 16, 2020

Who says it better than Winnicott?

A few years ago I was toying with writing a book called Hide and Seek, but those ideas eventually became chapter two of Keep Going:

Creativity is about connection—you must be connected to others in order to be inspired and share your own work—but it is also about disconnection. You must retreat from the world long enough to think, practice your art, and bring forth something worth sharing with others. You must play a little hide-and-seek in order to produce something worth being found.