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100 things that made my year (2016)

Thursday, January 5, 2017

Mozart’s clarinet quintet in A major.
Taking a walk every morning because demons hate fresh air.
Discovering and researching unschooling. Roberto Greco’s fantastic Tumblr and Pinboard archives. The work of John Holt, his books How Children Learn and How Children Fail, his 55-year-old journal entry, his thoughts on the true meaning of intelligence and how babies are scientists. John Taylor Gatto’s Dumbing Us Down. Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner’s Teaching As A Subversive Activity. Lori Pickert’s twitter. DH Lawrence on how to educate a child: “Leave him alone.” Manifesto of the idle parent.
Mulatu Astatke, Ethiopiques, Vol. 4.
Moving into a new (old) house in the suburbs. Watching the rain from the front porch. Magic in the back yard. Fixing the 40-year-old whole house radio. Taking instruction from our old ovens. Playing hide and seek in the yard. Drawing in chalk on the driveway. Lying in a hammock in the back yard. Looking out the window while doing the dishes.
Still working in a garage, but an insulated, fully A/C-ed one. Looking through my notebooks. Setting up a bliss station.
Doing my part to destroy that dumb cliché, “The enemy of art is the pram in the hall.” Trying to copy how my 3-year-old son makes art in the studio. His lettering. The way he copies signs. His art. Making masks out of Trader Joe’s bags. Collaborating. Baudelaire’s quote, “Genius is nothing more or less than childhood recaptured at will.” Toddler color theory. Do A Dot Art Markers. Crayola Slick Stix. Mid-century photos of children making art at the MoMA. Paul Klee’s handmade puppets for his son. Darwin’s children doodling on the back of his manuscripts. A fifth-grader’s cure for writer’s block.
Practicing piano. Satie. “My Favorite Things.” Prince’s “The Beautiful Ones.” Vince Guaraldi’s “Skating.” Bill Evans’ “Waltz for Debbie.” My son finishing the high E in “Fur Elise.” Pulling up Shazam, playing nonsense on the piano, and seeing what it matches. “Pianovision,” Chilly Gonzales’ word for videos of piano players shot from above.
Filling the house with music. My oldest son requesting the 5th symphony on our walks. (Later, my youngest son singing it. “Duh duh duh duuuuh.”) Drawing musical scores. Reciting the narration from Benjamin Britten’s “A Young Person’s Guide To The Orchestra” by heart. Singing all 9 minutes of Van Morrison’s live version of “Caravan.”
Plain ol’ family life. Doing obsessive dad things like inflating the tires and breaking down boxes for the recycling. Sending my son out to get the Sunday paper. How old toys that disappear for a month become new toys. My wife comparing parenting to being a green screen puppeteer. Coming up with dumb parenting lines like, “Dad is one letter away from dead” and “You can’t spell family without FML.” Complexity. Nailing down what we expect.
Michael Chabon on taking his son Abe to fashion week in Paris.
Hearing Delta 5’s “You” on the radio and discovering that every time I play it my youngest son squeals with delight and starts dancing. (The way he stomps to Caspar Babypants’ “Stompy The Bear”!)
Small victories. Sleeping through the night. Eating dinner. Not hitting your brother. Pooping on the toilet. Indoor voices. Learning to whisper.
Silence.
How Ed Emberley clears his mind.
One-star Amazon reviews.
Photos of people reading my books and my art in the wild. Seeing blackout poems in the classroom. (So many!)
Finding these huge decades-long books of Peanuts daily strips at Costco and reading them at breakfast. This website on the the use of Beethoven in Peanuts strips.
Schumann’s “Ghost Variations.”
The martian landscape of Odessa from a plane.
Strawberry rhubarb pie.
Watching Road Runner cartoons with my sons and then seeing real roadrunners out on our walks. Suburban Texas wildlife. Cicada shells everywhere. Squirrels judging me. Deer looking at me like I’m an asshole. The Texas Mountain Laurel blooming in March. Junebugs kamikaze-ing into the windows. Fireflies! The neighborhood guy with huge parrots and a COME AND TAKE IT flag. My son literally having ants in his pants. Biggie Smalls on why he wouldn’t move to the suburbs.
Rooting for escaped animal stories.
Getting a projector, making an A/V cart, and watching movies huge on our bedroom wall. Awesome old movies, like Ball Of Fire, Laura, and The Palm Beach Story. New-to-us stuff. What We Do In The Shadows. Chef. Ex Machina. Enough Said. Iris. Love & Mercy. Weiner. Spotlight. The Big Short. Vernon, Florida. Old favorites, even better than we remembered. Chinatown. Stop Making Sense. Grosse Point Blank.
Seeing movies at the Alamo Drafthouse, solo, or with a friend. Hell or High Water.
@NitrateDiva on Twitter.
Finally taking the Black Friday bait and getting the Seinfeld box set.
Reading comics when nothing else feels right. Chester Brown, Mary Wept Over The Feet Of Jesus. Daniel Clowes, Patience.
Finding books that my kids love that I love to read, too. Jon Klassen’s Hat Trilogy. Arnold Lobel’s Frog and Toad.
When my wife says, incredulously, “You’ve never seen [X]?” and then watching X and loving it. (This year: You’ve Got Mail.)
Beethoven’s late string quartets and sick burns.
Spotify’s Discover Weekly playlists.
Taking things apart to see how they work. Showing my son the piano’s guts.
Walking the riverwalk from the San Antonio public library to the art museum and all the way up to the zoo.
The Bill Murray method of drinking champagne.
Chance operations. Throwing dice. Turning the dictionary to random pages. John Cage, Silence. Tossing coins and consulting the I Ching. Getting a Rider tarot deck and pulling cards. Jessa Crispin’s The Creative Tarot and her tarot newsletter.
Collecting envelopes with security patterns.
Reminding Siri to take revenge on my sons in 30 years.
Standing in the Costco produce fridge in August.
Accepting that creativity has seasons. How somebody asked Marcel Duchamp what he was working on and he said “just breathing.” George Carlin on taking time to figure out what’s next. Figuring out what I’m really working on.
Robert Irwin’s hat: “High mileage, low maintenance.”
The brief return of @JennyHolzerMom.
Stress relief. Getting overwhelmed and watching a live-stream of the “bear cam” in Katmai National Park, Alaska. Replacing the doorknobs in my old house, one at a time, as needed, whenever I was losing it.
Long-neck ’ritas.
Calvin Trillin’s question, “Did you clean your plate?” The chicken-fried steak at Jim’s Restaurant on 71. The sides and fried chicken from the Golden Chick next door. No line at Rudy’s BBQ. Chinese delivery.
Desire lines.
Saying “it wasn’t for me” and moving on.
Discovering the work of William Steig, especially his book, Shrek.
A terrific story about typewriters.
Wasting time, even though you know there’s not a lot of it. Joe Brainard’s “People Of The World: Relax!” World of Tomorrow: “Do not lose time on daily trivialities.” Hagakure: “Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily.” Jim Harrison: “‘The danger of civilization, of course, is that you will piss away your life on nonsense.”
Putting on an art show at Mule Design in San Francisco. Lunch at House of Nanking. Staying at Wendy and Caroline’s place, warming up by the firebowl. Walking around Potrero Hill. Talking to a fellow dad from Texas in Christopher’s Books. Lunch by the ocean with Ted. Lying on a couch in Wendy’s studio overlooking the bay, reading David Hockney’s Cameraworks.
The word “nitwit.”
Reading about con artists. Steering clear of the exact recipe for remaining a horrible person forever. Finding lessons about dealing with Nazis in books as different as Steve Silberman’s Neurotribes and Sarah Bakewell’s At the Existentialist Cafe.
Turning to poems. Maggie Smith, “Good Bones.” Philip Larkin, “The Mower.” Allen Ginsberg’s “America.” Emily Dickinson’s “We Grow Accustomed to the Dark.”
The work of Ursula Franklin. The Real World of Technology. The Ursula Franklin Reader: Pacifism as A Map. Her idea of society as a potluck supper—we all bring our best dish.
Garry Shandling saying, before he died, that America needs to hit rock bottom. Morris Berman’s bleak trilogy about the crumbling of the American empire: The Twilight of American Culture, Dark Ages America, and Why America Failed. The future politician at the playground shouting “This is my territory!” but it sounded like “This is my terror tree!”
Taylor Swift summing it all up: “I would very much like to be excluded from this narrative, one that I have never asked to be a part of.”
Turning your eyes into a sewage treatment plant. Finding inspiration in mundane retail spaces. Pee-Wee Herman on his favorite Walgreens. Andrew Bird on finding inspiration in Costco. Zan McQuade on how to learn to love the mall. Fast food joints as third spaces.
Good albums. Finally getting that Frank Ocean record. Solange’s A Seat At The Table. Lambchop, FLOTUS. Frank Sinatra, In The Wee Small Hours. Brian Eno, Before and After Science. Leonard Cohen, You Want It Darker. Chance The Rapper’s Coloring Book on a flight to Chicago.
The Ohio Players.
Ali Wong: “I don’t want to lean in, I want to lie down.”
Chappell Ellison’s weekly twitter roundups, her Cartoon GIFs twitter, and epic thread of her favorite Vine videos.
Being completely sucked into the voice of Marilynne Robinson’s novel Gilead. Her interview with the president.
Good TV. Atlanta. The Americans. Mozart in the Jungle. Fleabag. Silicon Valley. Soundbreaking. Fargo. Catastrophe. Better Call Saul. OJ Simpson: Made in America. The Night Manager. Chef’s Table France. The Great British Baking Show.
The Longform podcast.
Moonlight. Getting out of bed to take a leak and seeing the moon out the bathroom window. The moon through binoculars. Can, “Moonshake.” Looking up at the stars as often as possible. Watching meteor showers in the courtyard. Looking for the moon, and my son saying, “The moon isn’t awake yet.” My son seeing the supermoon and saying, “Papa, the moon looks like the sun is shining!”
All the other beautiful, grumpy, wacky things my son said. The musical threats. “I’m gonna put a bow on you and string you like a violin.” “I am going to beat you like a percussion instrument.” The insults. “You got a big ole butt!” The exclamations. “Electricity is coming out of my penis!” “I used that rock as a toilet!” The complaints. “I can’t walk. I’m out of walking steps.” “I don’t like sunscreen. I don’t like anything.” “I want to fight this drawing.” “We’re not going anywhere today all the places are closed.” “No tub time! I’m working on my book.” “Get out of here! Leave me alone! No talking during the symphony!” “I want to go back in the house. My music is killing me.” The observations. “The toilet in the lunch store was not so loud.” “This place smells delicious!” “I don’t like the grocery, but I like Papa’s studio.” “Mama, I have an idea in my head!” “Harmonicas are in the woodwind section, papa.” “Thunder sounds like kettle drums.” Seeing his first remote-controlled car: “You move it without your hands!” Seeing an old movie: “The pictures are black and white and silver—not colored in.” Training him to say, when he sees an ad on TV, “They’re trying to sell us something.” The time he said, “I want to disappear!” and my wife said, “Join the club!” The time I played him “777-9311” and he said, “Is this jazz music?” The time I asked him if he thought Beethoven drove a pickup truck, and he said, “No, he just played the piano.” The time I asked him if he wanted to go to the fire station and the candy store and the bookstore and he said, “No, papa, there is work to do.” The time I asked him if he had a good morning and he said, “The morning is still going.”
The way he, a native Texan, says words like “hair” with two syllables. The questions. “What music is mama going to listen to on her way to the grocery?” “How did you make this lovely dinner?” “Can you tell me what I want?”
The meatloaf dinner at 24 Diner.
Hong Kong french toast.
Avoiding human vantablack.
Recording on my old Tascam 424 four-track cassette recorder.
Carving pumpkins.
Shrimp and grits.
Walking through the airport with Miles Davis’s “Solea” on my headphones and feeling like the baddest ass alive.
The soundtrack of Stranger Things. Discovering the Austin synth scene. Visiting the store Switched On. SURVIVE. Xander Harris.
Fred Rogers on why you’ve already won in this world.
Nathaniel Russell’s fake fliers.
Cartoonist Liana Finck’s instagram.
Mourning Prince with these amazing mixes of deep cuts. Mourning Bowie with all the guest DJ sets, like Iggy Pop’s.
Great songs, old and new. Leonard Cohen’s “Is This What You Wanted?” Wilco, “Impossible Germany.” Grimes, “Realti (Demo).” That vaporwave classic. Sonny & The Sunsets’ “Green Blood.” Jackie Shane’s monologue at the end of “Any Other Way.” Otis Clay, “Trying To Live My Life Without You.”
Peanut butter shake season at P. Terry’s.
Good pre-dream reading. Grimm’s Fairy tales. Tove Jansson, Moominland Midwinter. Joy Williams, Ninety-Five Stories of God.
Seeing the Leap Before You Look show about Black Mountain College at the Wexner. Reading the beautiful catalog. Seeing the Pond Farm exhibit at SFO.
Finding out the delightful link between two of my favorite books: Studs Terkel’s classic Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do was conceived when his editor read Richard Scarry’s What Do People Do All Day? and thought there needed to be a version for adults.
Watching the World Series with my Cleveland-born wife.
Meeting people for lunch.
Losing the afternoon to a long phone conversation.
Going out once in a while. Beers with old friends in Cleveland. Third row seats at Elvis Costello at the Moody Theater. Mark Mothersbaugh at the Contemporary Austin.
Talking to strangers. Discussing the Ramones with a panhandler.
Interviewing Box Brown at Bookpeople. Interviewing a bunch of great illustrators at the Texas Book Festival. Another interview with Chase Jarvis.
Dismissing the knuckleheads in the Oasis: Supersonic documentary and then listening to What’s The Story, Morning Glory? for 3 days straight.
The difference between libraries and schools. Visiting the main branch of the Richland Library in Columbia, SC, their amazing children’s room, their new Steal-inspired maker spaces, and revisiting my time as a librarian when speaking at their staff day. Identifying the public library as the American institution I most want to protect and support.
Scanning my library card barcode and putting it into a Dropbox folder so I’m never without it at the self-checkout machine.
Sound on Sound Fest weekend. Eating at Curra’s with The Dead Milkmen. Eating so much BBQ with my friend Christy that I popped a button on my jeans and had to go next door to the Elgin Wal-Mart and buy a belt. Visiting my first Buc-ees’.
My first-come-first-serve barbershop putting up a whiteboard so you can sign in and not worry about who got there before you or after you.
Re-learning cursive.
Long emails from retired English professsors.
Christmas Eve feast of the seven fishes.
Staying married for 10 years.
Books.

The Pram in the Hall

Thursday, October 27, 2016

happy i made the team

“I have not been a good father,” admitted John Banville in a recent interview. “I don’t think any writer is.” He went on to talk about how hard his profession had been on his family, and how hard he imagined it had been to live with him as a husband and father. Of writers, as if we are all one homogenous tribe, he said, “we are cannibals. We’d always sell our children for a phrase…. we are ruthless. We’re not nice people.”

“Speak for yourself, fucknuts,” David Simon tweeted. “Family is family. The job is the job.”

My twitter pal Julian Gough, who brought it all to my attention, summed it up nicely: “When a famous writer says ‘all writers are bad parents,’ he is giving young writers permission to behave like assholes.” (Julian has since published his own piece on the subject.)

My oldest son turned four this week, so I’ve been taking stock, and thinking about how lucky I was early on in my life to find examples of good writers who also seemed to be good dads. (And yes, early on, I was looking for men as role models, even though today I get more inspiration from mothers.)

When I was 24, I asked George Saunders at the Texas Book Festival how he managed to be a good family man and a good writer. I drew his response in my notebook:

screen-shot-2016-10-27-at-7-25-08-pm

Saunders later wrote about this revelation in “My Writing Education”:

I watch Toby, with his family. He clearly adores them, takes visible pleasure in them, dotes on them. I have always thought great writers had to be dysfunctional and difficult, incapable of truly loving anything, too insane and unpredictable and tortured to cherish anyone, or honor them, or find them beloved.

Wow, I think, huh.

And elsewhere:

“Toby was the first great writer I ever met and what the meeting did for me was disabuse me of the idea that a writer had to be a dysfunctional crazy person… Toby was loving, gentle, funny, kind, wise — yet he was producing these works of great (sometimes dark) genius. It was invigorating to be reminded that great writing was (1) mysterious and (2) not linked, in any reductive, linear way, to the way one lived: wild writing could come from a life that was beautifully under control. Watching him, I felt: O.K., nurture the positive human parts of yourself and hope they get into your work, eventually.”

Tobias Wolff himself talked about the subject in The Paris Review:

The self-pity of being a writer or an artist has been a sovereign excuse for all kinds of baloney. You know, All the sufferings I endure and the terrible things I do to my wife and children are because I’m an artist in this philistine America… I find that all the best things in my life have come about precisely through the things that hold me in place: family, work, routine, everything that contradicts my old idea of the good life…. it seems as time goes on that the deepest good for me as man and writer is to be found in ordinary life. It’s the gravity of daily obligations and habit, the connections you have to your friends and your work, your family, your place— even the compromises that are required of you to get through this life. The compromises don’t diminish us, they humanize us—it’s the people who won’t, or who think they don’t, who end up monsters in this world.

Wendell Berry said something very similar in the documentary Look & See — that art is elevated by interruption, that it gains meaning from interruption.

And interruption is the very true constant of the parent’s life, as this Tillie Olsen epigraph from Sarah Ruhl’s great book on parenting and writing explains:

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For those of us who have or are thinking about having kids, it’s so very important to find solid role models we can look to — people who have managed to raise children and make their art. I’m not the greatest dad, but any success I’ve had in the past four years as a parent is due to the good examples I found before I became one.

It’s also important for us to be role models: to show that it can be done.

I’ll give the last word to JG Ballard, who raised his three children as a single widower:

Cyril Connolly, the 50s critic and writer, said that the greatest enemy of creativity is the pram in the hall, but I think that was completely wrong. It was the enemy of a certain kind of dilettante life that he aspired to, the man of letters, but for the real novelist the pram in the hall is the greatest ally – it brings you up sharp and you realise what reality is all about. My children were a huge inspiration for me. Watching three young minds creating their separate worlds was a very enriching experience.

Art is for life, not the other way around.

What did you make today, papa?

Thursday, June 16, 2016

I came in from my 10-foot commute once and my 3-year-old looked up from his snack and said, “What did you make today, papa?”

It took me by surprise, as I had always assumed that when I was out of sight I was out of mind. (I now know that children seem to be most interested in you when you’re not around. When you’re actually around, they love to ignore you.) “No, he asks about you all the time,” my wife said. “He always wants to know what you’re doing. I tell him, ‘Papa’s out in his studio making things.’”

I can’t remember if that day I’d actually made anything. Some days I don’t, you know. Some days, the sad, pathetic days, it’s just answering e-mail and thinking about all the things I should be making and how I’m not making them.

But rarely does a day go by when my son doesn’t make something. I envy his setup and his habits. His mom has placed all the supplies within easy reach. He doesn’t torture himself. The goal is simple: There is a car-carrier truck that doesn’t exist that needs to exist. He sets to work with clear purpose and utter concentration. There is frustration, occasionally, but it usually passes. And when he’s done, he’s done, and it’s off to something else.

I try my best to copy the approach. First, I try to be my own mother: leave the workspace tidy, pens and notebooks at hand. Then, I try to be him: I try to go at it with his intensity, but also his indifference to the results. I fail more often than not.

“I learned so much about art from watching a kid draw,” said John Baldessari, former grade-school teacher. “Kids don’t call it art when they’re throwing things around, drawing—they’re just doing stuff.”

Almost every parenting cliché I’ve ever heard has turned out to be true. This makes it hard to add anything original. (Originality is yet another thing my son has never worried about.) Kay Ryan says a poet’s job is to rehabilitate clichés, but I sure don’t envy those who write parenting memoirs. All I feel I can offer is corroboration of the cliché: Sunday will be my fourth father’s day and I’m still learning and I still feel like he’s teaching me more than I’m teaching him. He’s asking me all the questions I should be asking myself.

“What did you make today, papa?”

Advice for the recent graduate

Wednesday, May 25, 2016

(For graduates, or anyone broke, in between things, or living at home.)

The chances are good that if you’ve recently graduated, you’re broke and living with your parents. (Cheer up: you’re in the majority.)

Here are 5 things you can do right now that will make your life better and won’t cost you much:

1. Treat your day like a 9-5 job.

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days.
—Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

This is especially important if you’re unemployed. A structureless life is a depressing life. Our days work better when they have a reliable shape. Grab a copy of Mason Currey’s Daily Rituals (if you can’t afford it, see #2 on this list) and read about the daily routines of famous artists, scientists, and creative people. Take inspiration from them. Cobble together your own daily routine and stick to it. As tempting as it is to sleep in, train yourself to get up early and do the thing that’s most important to you. (When you do something small every day, the days add up.) And at the end of the day, take Ralph Waldo Emerson’s advice to his own daughter:

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

2. Hang out at your local library.

I am a librarian. I discovered me in the library. I went to find me in the library… I discovered that the library is the real school.
—Ray Bradbury

School can burn you out on reading because you’ve been stuck reading a ton of books you didn’t choose for yourself. Now’s the time to jump in and fall in love again, by reading the stuff you actually want to read. (“Read at whim!”)

A lot of young people complain they don’t have money for books — get your butt to the library! If they don’t have the books you want, ask the librarian how you can request them.(You can start by looking for my books.) When you get to the library, you might find that they also have free, fast wi-fi, access to online eBooks and databases, and a rad DVD collection. Unlike Starbucks or Barnes & Noble, you can hang out there all day without buying anything and not feel bad about it. They also have a lot of resources for people looking for work. Go up to a librarian and ask them to show you around. You’ll make their day.

3. Take long walks.

I set out to dispel daily depression. Every afternoon I get low-spirited, and one day I discovered the walk…. I set myself a destination, and then things happen in the street.
—Vivian Gormick

Walking is tremendous exercise for the body, the mind, and the spirit. Many of the great thinkers have built walking into their daily routines, for example, Dickens used to take epic, twelve-mile strolls around London and work out his writing. Hit the bricks. Find somebody with a dog who needs walked. Again, it doesn’t cost anything, and you never know what you’re going to see. (Maybe a “We’re Hiring” sign?)

4. Teach yourself to cook.

Please, America, cook your own food. Heating is not cooking. Heating heats. Cooking transforms. It matters. And it’s not hard.
—Michael Ruhlman

If you can cook for yourself, you can eat better and save a ton of money. Pick up some simple cookbooks when you’re at the library (try Bittman’s How To Cook Everything) and look up some YouTube videos. If you’re lucky enough to have a relative who’s decent in the kitchen, cooking is a nice way to spend time together, and cooking for them is a good way to pitch in for your free rent. For tools, start with a sharp knife and a cast iron skillet and go from there. (Tip: The easiest dinner in the world is roast chicken and potatoes.)

5. Keep a journal.

The point… is not to record what you already know about what happened to you in the last 24 hours. Instead, it’s an invitation to the back of your mind to come forward and reveal to you the perishable images about the day you didn’t notice you noticed at all.
—Lynda Barry

Especially when you’re down-on-your-luck or just in between phases of your life, writing in a notebook can be the easiest way to feel like you’re accomplishing something.

Set a timer for 15 minutes and fill as many pages as you can, or, if you have plenty of time, do Julia Cameron’s “Morning Pages” exercise, and fill 3 pages every morning before you start your day. (And yes, you have to do it by hand.)

You might think you know what you’re thinking, but seeing your thoughts down on the page tells you what’s really going on inside your head.

A journal is also a great place to write down all the bad ideas, bad thoughts, and bad feelings you shouldn’t tweet.

Carry your journal around with you and write in it all the time: make notes in between job interviews, doodle while you’re watching Netflix, daydream about what you want out of life, etc. Any old notebook and pen will do, but if you have $10 or a generous parent, you can grab the journal I made.

Never throw out your journals — keep them, pull them out in ten years, and you won’t believe how far you’ve come.

* * *

Update: Here are 5 more pieces of advice for graduates…

100 things that made my year (2015)

Friday, January 1, 2016

millions of years have been about average let this year go

Grilled pimento cheese with red onion and tomato sandwiches.
Crying on airplanes.
Watching Buster Keaton’s The General with J Dilla’s Donuts as the soundtrack.
Writing on balancing motherhood and art. Sally Mann’s Hold Still. Sarah Ruhl’s 100 Essays I Don’t Have Time To Write. Jenny Offill’s Dept. of Speculation. Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts. Elena Ferrante. Writer Maureen McHugh on how she’s probably changed more lives being a mom and a teacher.
Debbie Chachra’s “Why I Am Not A Maker.”
Thinking about the relationship between artist and audience. What, if anything, we owe each other. Coltrane on what you give to the listener. Wendell Berry’s “Warning To My Readers.”
Jez Burrows’ Dictionary Stories.
David Lee Roth’s Crazy From The Heat.
Thinking about long-term creativity. Roger Angell on what it’s like to be 93-years-old. Women artists in their 70s, 80s, and 90s. David Hockney on making art at 77.
Using Twitter’s “People You Follow” search to learn about new things.
Spending more time on a private Slack channel than any other social media site.
The crazy story of how I became friends with world-class violinist Vijay Gupta.
Good music. The Velvet Underground, Matrix Tapes. Kraftwerk, Computer World. Captain Beefheart. Elvis Costello, Trust. Royal Headache, High. Sleater-Kinney, No Cities To Love. Sly and the Family Stone, There’s A Riot Goin’ On. Van Morrison, Veedon Fleece. Kurt Vile, b’lieve I’m goin down. Mac Demarco, Another One. King Sunny Ade. Fuzz, II. Madlib, Shades of Blue. Yo La Tengo, Stuff Like That There. Gary Numan, The Pleasure Principle. Wilco’s The Whole Love. Pandora jazz stations.
Getting into classical. Listening to Beethoven with my son. Mitsuko Uchida playing Mozart’s piano sonatas.
Singing my son’s favorite songs: Little Anthony’s “Shimmy Shimmy Ko Ko Bop,” Jonathan Richman’s “The Wheels on the Bus,” James Brown’s “Hot Pants,” and Buck Owen’s “Tiger By The Tail.”
John McPhee’s essays on writing.
Looking at the world through the eyes of my son. Looking at kid’s drawings. Looking at drawings that look like kid’s drawings.
Finding a newspaper clipping from a friend who passed away.
Emily Dickinson.
Knowing I don’t deserve it and keeping on. Giving thanks. Writing down prayers. Drawing prayers.
Morning mind maps.
Seeing Kehinde Wiley’s show in Fort Worth.
Dumb Amazon reviews.
Nutty medieval paintings.
Brian Eno’s concept of “Import and Export” and starting from unpromising beginnings.
Meeting Edward Tufte.
Going on a two-week vacation to Rhode Island. Reading in the hammock. Stones from Moonstone Beach. Walking trails. Outdoor showers. Newport. Walking around Providence. RISD with Ben Shaykin. A rainbow over the Dunkin’ Donuts. Monahan’s and Matunuck Oyster Bar. Rhubarb pies from the farmer’s stand. Fire pit smores.
Seeing boredom as a luxury.
Coming home and putting a new spin on old work with the newspaper popouts.
Glitch rugs, quilts, and embroideries of microbes.
Peppermint tea.
T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets.
That hour or two with my wife after the kids go to bed.
Bourbon.
Putting out The Steal Like An Artist Journal. Going on tour and perfecting the talk. Having such good fans that we had a great turnout at every event.
Watching my work go out in the world. Seeing how people are using their journals. Heather Champ’s 30-day journal marathon. This photo.
Saying “it wasn’t for me” and moving on. Knowing there are several potential reactions to art.
Being a tourist in my own town.
Practicing cursive. Jennifer Daniels on why Microsoft Word sucks. Hallie Bateman’s handwritten Pen Parade newsletter. Knowing when you should write with a pencil and when you should use a keyboard.
Clive Thompson on reading War and Peace on his iPhone.
Looking for the helpers.
Sophia Lauren making pizza.
Posters by the Stenberg Brothers.
Watching Road Runner cartoons, Robin Hood, and Singin’ In The Rain with my sons.
Warren Ellis’s story about Nina Simone wanting “some champagne, some cocaine, and some sausages!”
Walking three and a half miles with a double stroller every morning.
Going to the library with the boys. Reading James Marshall’s George and Martha, Souther Salazar’s Destined for Dizziness!, Blexbolex’s, Ballad, and Richard Scarry’s What Do People Do All Day?
Doing mundane suburban stuff with my wife and the kids, like walking the mall and having lunch at the Nordstrom’s cafe, feeding the ducks at the pond, fiddling with instruments at Guitar Center, scoping the view from the top of a parking garage, eating hot dogs at Costco, etc.
Playing a guitar with four strings. (Who needs more strings than fingers?)
Rainbow makers.
TSA pre-check.
Redesigning my website so I don’t have to think about it for a few more years.
Getting an original Wayne White painting for my birthday. (Related: having an amazing wife.)
James Sturm’s Market Day.
David Markson’s “anti-novels.”
Watching Spongebob Squarepants and reading Carl Hiassen in Florida. Seeing Salvador Dali’s pixelated painting of Abe Lincoln at the Dali Museum.
My son sharing my obsession with signs. Recycled signs. Hacked signs. Signs of danger. Borrowing life advice from an old Spaghetti Warehouse sign.
Getting up in the middle of the night to see the blood moon over Gdansk, Poland. Looking at the moon. My son telling me it’s following us. Pluto! Getting binoculars for Christmas.
Speaking at LucasFilm and seeing the Marin headlands.
New York City. Walking the Highline at sunset. Running into Kelli and Frank at the Whitney. Walking the Hudson at sunrise. Neue Gallery with Maria K. Brooklyn bagels. Paulie Gee’s pizza.
Good television. Broad City. Fargo. Louie. Justified. The Americans. South Park.
Having people make you a list. Adam Koford’s list of favorite old movies. Making a soul playlist for my friend Mike.
People getting fed up with authenticity nonsense and artisanal crap. The Search For General Tso.
Jon Ronson’s So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed.
Accepting that a life in the arts is like Groundhog Day and that “tomorrow is another day, another chance to work and play.” Accepting the dailiness of it all. Getting up on The One. Edward Tufte on how to have better mornings. Tim Gunn’s Sunday routine. David Letterman’s paper cups. Azealia Banks’ 3 a.m. routine. Forgetting the noun and doing the verb.
David Allen’s Getting Things Done. Buying a filing cabinet and practicing inbox triage.
Not worrying too much about productivity. Christoph Niemann on the importance of inefficiency. Agatha Christie on having messy notebooks.
Trying to be a teacher while remaining a student. Re-thinking art education. Sister Corita Kent. Paul Thek’s Teaching Notes. John Waters’ RISD commencement address. Robert De Niro on being screwed. Draw It With Your Eyes Closed: The Art of The Art Assignment. Re-mystifying art. Wendy MacNaughton on Periscope. Teaching blackout poetry workshops to high schoolers.
Being real about money and fighting the “do what you love” crowd. How Deerhoof makes a living on the road. Having 90,000 Instagram fans and still serving brunch.
Looking at art. The woodcuts and paintings of Felix Vallotton. The work of Margaret Kilgallen. The work of Hedda Sterne. Jim Darling’s airplane window drawings. Penelope Umbrico’s Flickr suns. Paul Thek’s 96 Sacraments, butterflies, and notebooks. Georgia O’Keeffe’s watercolors. Paintings by Souther Salazar. Paintings by Matt Forsythe. Animated GIFs by Lille Carre. Paintings by Shane Walsh. Flying saucer paintings by Esther Pearl Watson. The illustrations of J. Otto Seibold. Paul Klee’s arrows. Drawings by Andy Warhol. Watching Saul Steinberg and Tove Jansson draw. @rabihalameddine’s Twitter feed.
Texting my wife when we’re in the same room.
Long phone calls with artist friends.
Paper. The work of Kelli Anderson. Gay Talese’s love of collage. Articles with headliness like “Don’t write off paper just yet” or “Paper notebooks are as relevant as ever.” Nick Bilton on seeing the value of print books after his mother’s death. Merlin Mann on the problem with fancy notebooks. Neil Gaiman’s notebooks. Basquiat’s notebooks.
Great writing about art. Dave Hickey’s lectures, Air Guitar, and Pirates and Farmers. Blake Gopnik on Corita Kent, Andy Warhol’s student work, and Andy Goldsworthy’s throwing sticks.
Oliver Jeffers’ dipped paintings.
Grimes’ demo for “Realti.”
Music stories. Synth Britannia. John Seabrook’s The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory. How the Eurythmics recorded “Sweet Dreams.” How two white synth geeks helped Stevie Wonder make his best records. The producer who got Ace of Base’s demo stuck in his tape deck. Elvis singing to an actual hound dog.
Learning how to be a better parent. Andrew Solomon’s, Far From the Tree. The best parenting advice: “Don’t Kill Them.” Thinking about toys for children. Raul Gutierrez on the best kinds of toys.
The power of a simple kitchen timer.
Sharpening pencils and sniffing them.
Buying a house. Never spending another second on Zillow. Courtney Barnett’s “Depreston.”
Animals attacking drones.
Ron Swanson on creativity. Kimmy Schmidt on following your bliss. Crazy Eyes on her writing process. Marty McFly on creative frustration. Dana Scully on genius.
Oliver Sacks on a motorcycle.
The inside cover of ZZ Top’s Tres Hombres.
Unpretentious restaurants. Maudie’s. Mi Madre’s. Tam Deli. Little Deli. S&H Donuts.
Detroit-style pizza from Via313.
Record shopping as therapy.
Los Angeles. The Last Bookstore. Echo Park with Vijay. LACMA with Adam. Mexican with Mike and Erika and the gang. Taking the train to Pasadena. Seeing the Martian at the ArcLight with Jamie.
Tove Jansson. Moomin comics. Being Moominpapa.
Patrice O’Neal, Elephant in the Room.
Watching movies. Mad Max: Fury Road. Creed. Only Lovers Left Alive. Don Hertzfeld’s World of Tomorrow. Sullivan’s Travels. John Wick. Magic Mike XXL. Das Boot. Far From The Madding Crowd.
Re-reading books like Slaughterhouse-Five.
Re-watching movies. No Country For Old Men. Road House. Best In Show. Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Jurassic Park. Moonrise Kingdom. Zoolander. Moonstruck.
Doing it yourself.
Figuring out how to stay alive.
Turning the ship around.
Hot fudge sundaes with nuts and whipped cream.
The birth of my son Jules.
Taking a nap.