Austin Kleon

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Bird bulletins

Owls on the bulletin board by my desk

From Friday’s newsletter:

The news is for the birds, so let’s have some news from the birds: Jackie and Shadow, the bald eagles documented by a live webcam in Big Bear Lake Forest, just had hatchlings. (Here’s a video of Jackie feeding the chicks before a big snow storm blew in.) I was delighted to find out that Penny Lane is directing a documentary on HBO about the story of Flaco The Owl. Meg spotted one screech owl in a tree by our house last month, but so far the owl boxes are occupied by squirrels and The Coconuts have not returned, so I doubt we’ll get owlets this year. However! Elsewhere in Austin, Athena the Great Horned Owl has returned to the Wildflower Center, already laid an egg, and her live webcam will be up shortly — here are the highlights from last year. (“Listen to the birds,” counseled Captain Beefheart. “That’s where all the music comes from.”)

Read the rest: “Roll up your sleeves!”

The next 100 days

Bulletin board
The bulletin board

I spent the first 100 days of quarantine on fun, repeatable daily projects: blind contour drawings, mini zines, and collage houses.

These have been needed and welcome distractions but they’ve also been productive procrastinations from the big project I’ve been avoiding: The New Book.

I plan to spend the next 100 days chasing a first draft. I’m saying this out loud for accountability, so I’ll stick to it, and also because it means things might get a little quiet around here and on social media. (Or, a little choppier, a little more fragmented. More bits and bobs and snapshots. I don’t know yet. I’ve been reading Yoshida Kinkō’s Essays in Idleness, which may become an inspiration.)

As always, thanks for reading. I’ll still be sending out my weekly newsletter no matter what, so if you haven’t already, I encourage you to subscribe.

Amplified to rock

“Are you amplified to rock?
Are you hoping for a contact?”
—Guided By Voices, “Hardcore UFOs”

I haven’t written a book in this office yet. Yesterday, my wife hung my guitars and my Guided By Voices poster and then she hung up a blank bulletin board with my father-in-law’s 3 Axioms:

And it’s been nice and wet and cloudy in the mornings:

And it’s starting to feel like it’s time to really get down to business around here.

Count the days that we have wasted from the start
Speak the words and build a playground
In your head

The bulletin board


I pin photos and magazine clippings and index cards on a bulletin board above my desk for inspiration when I’m writing. I keep a box up on my bookshelf labeled “bulletin board,” and whenever I start a new book, I take a photo of whatever’s left up there, clear off all the contents, and dump them in the box. Going back through the box is like digging through a little time capsule. Above is 1/3 of the current board. (Clockwise from the left: David Hockney, Sister Corita Kent, Bill Cunningham (photo by Andy Warhol), Tove Jansson, Walt Whitman, Phil Connors, Lynda Barry, Nina Katchadourian, Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Marcel Duchamp, and Hannah Höch.)

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