Diary collages

Friday, September 13, 2019

Haven’t much felt like writing in my diary, so I’ve been making collages.

Whenever I get my hands on a comics page from the newspaper, I cut them up and play.

I hoard drawings from my 4-year-old to fill the pages.

Rules of the studio

Thursday, September 12, 2019

The boys like to work in my studio, but they’re rascals, so we needed to set down some rules.

(Inspired by Corita Kent, Lynda Barry, Tom Sachs, Keri Smith, Seth Godin, etc.)

It’s obviously going to be an evolving list…

SXSW interview with Debbie Millman

Wednesday, September 11, 2019

I was delighted that Debbie Millman agreed to interview me live at SXSW for her podcast, Design Matters. I’ve cut and pasted a few highlights, below.

On acknowledging the role of luck:

Anyone who has any kind of audience and doesn’t acknowledge luck is deluding themselves. Of course we make moves that put us in the right place at the right time, but to not acknowledge luck just seems to me a great disservice to everyone.

On my books as bathroom reads:

“When someone tells me that they keep my books on the back of the commode, that is a great compliment to me, actually—because that’s where people read.”

On having parents like Milton Glaser’s:

“I had a mother who told me I could do anything, and a father who said, ‘Prove it.’” That’s the best school there was.”

On finishing a project:

“The great pain of creative work is that once the thing is done, it’s dead to you. I mean, execution is literally like an execution.”

Because I believe in credit where credit is due, there’s one little thing I want to clear up. There’s a really fun surprise at a certain point in the conversation, a moment so good that I hate to ruin it. Though I’ve been a fan of Debbie’s work for a long time, it was actually Mary Doria Russell’s 1999 commencement speech at Laurel School that inspired my wife.

You can watch our conversation on YouTube, or listen on iTunes or Soundcloud below

Happy birthday Mary Oliver

Tuesday, September 10, 2019

Happy birthday to Mary Oliver, her first since she died earlier this year. She taught us to make an appointment with the page and that we do not have to be good.

She said:

I consider myself kind of a reporter—one who uses words that are more like music and that have a choreography. I never think of myself as a poet; I just get up and write. For most of my life, I haven’t had the structure of an actual job. When I was very young and decided I wanted to try to write as well as I could, I made a great list of all the things I would never have….

Would not have, because I thought poets never made any money. A house, a good car, I couldn’t go out and buy fancy clothes or go to good restaurants. I had the necessities. Not that I didn’t take some teaching jobs over the years—I just never took any interesting ones, because I didn’t want to get interested. That’s when I began to get up so early in the morning—you know I’m a 5 A.M. riser—so I could write for a couple of hours and then give my employer my very best second-rate energy….

I’ve always wanted to write poems and nothing else. There were times over the years when life was not easy, but if you’re working a few hours a day and you’ve got a good book to read, and you can go outside to the beach and dig for clams, you’re okay.

(There’s no beach where I live, but there’s sunshine, and I can go outside and get a taco.)

This is just to say

Monday, September 9, 2019

I love copying my kids’ drawings and writings into my diary. Copying seems like a mindless activity when you first start out, but by the time you’ve finished your copy, you usually learn something about the thing you’re copying and/or you discover something of your own.

The first grader wrote this poem last night at the pizza joint. (He and his brother have been watching the poetry episode of Classical Baby and reciting WCW’s “This is Just to Say.”)

While I copied the poem, I noticed how he writes his lowercase a’s and how he forms the letters starting from the bottom. I thought about Emily Dickinson’s envelope poems and about how the size of the paper we write on affects what we write. I thought about how quickly kids move towards parody with their own work, and how here I was, again, making a copy of a copy.

When I copied the tablecloth, I noticed that the original pattern could become a skull or some kind of death mask.

When I copied the exploding earth, I wondered what was with the teeth, until I realized they were exploded parts of the poles.

Copying is a way of paying closer attention.

Side note: I find it interesting how whenever I post something “dark” that my kids make, strangers assume that they’re “dark” kids. They’re actually quite cheerful kids… it’s called “imagination,” man!