Austin Kleon

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Interview with Crazy Good Turns

I had a very nice conversation with Frank Blake on his podcast, Crazy Good Turns. It began like this:

FRANK BLAKE: I come from the business world and you’re an artist, but what you say and the thought processes you have as an artist are applicable far more universally than I ever would have thought.

I don’t know if other people have said that to you, but it’s extraordinary. I quote you all the time to business leaders.

AUSTIN KLEON: Well, I’m thrilled to hear it…. I’m thrilled to hear whenever my work is used in other fields because I’m someone who has been inspired by things outside of my own field.

Maybe one of the key takeaways from my books is that to be a voracious devourer of things outside of your field of expertise and do what Brian Eno calls import/export, where you export something from one field and import it into your own and sort of make it yours.

It’s a point I’ve tried to make over the years that others often make more successfully: My books aren’t just for “creatives,” but people doing all kinds of work.

The folks at CGT are giving away a bunch of my books and 1o of my favorites here.

Recent candor

It’s not like I was holding that much back before — unfortunately, I tend to do my thinking out loud — but for better or worse, I’ve been more candid than usual in recent interviews. I don’t know what’s brought it about, really, other than: Being truthful and open feels really good, but even more than that, it’s not boring. So many podcasts are so boring and who wants to be boring? I’m also just genuinely happy and relaxed right now, so, I dunno, I just don’t feel like bullshitting. (You’d think the opposite would be true? That I’d have more patience for bullshitting now that I’m happy and relaxed? Life is weird.)

My interview with Jonathan Small on Write About Now:

And my interview (in two parts) with Chris Do on The Futur:

Filed under: interviews

Interview with Texas Monthly

Listen to “#86 Austin Kleon: "Scumbags and Lowlifes Can Create Beautiful Art”” on Spreaker.

I had a fun and very candid chat with Andy Langer on Texas Monthly’s The National Podcast of Texas. (Listen here or wherever else you listen to podcasts.)

To quote Tristan Tzara, “thought is produced in the mouth.” Only an extrovert or a poet would say that, and, unfortunately, I’m both. Sometimes I don’t know quite what I think until I say it. (And often what I say out loud is articulated much better in the books.)

Here’s a part of our conversation about what I saw on book tour that I was happy to see highlighted:

“People are anxious about feeling like they should be doing more. Information is not their problem. A lot of these people that I meet, they’ve read all the blogs, bought all the books, and they know they’re supposed to get up and do their three morning pages and share something every day. They know they’re supposed to write down their dreams and thoughts and do their bullet journal. They know they’re supposed to be doing this stuff, but what they really need is someone to just take them aside and remind them this is supposed to be fun. This work we’re talking about isn’t about running an Etsy shop. It’s about like feeling like a human being. It’s hippie stuff like that people really need someone in my position to share. They need someone to say, ‘I watched three hours of Justified last night.’ You would be amazed how many nights I spend drinking whiskey and watching reruns of my favorite shows. The purpose of this work is not to build a side hustle. It’s about being a human being, and there are just so many people out there right now that just need a little bit of affirmation.”

On a sidenote, it was good to visit the Texas Monthly office, too, because they gave me one of my first reviews almost a decade ago.

SXSW interview with Debbie Millman

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

Going to church with Chase Jarvis

Chase Jarvis is one of my very favorite people to talk to, so I was thrilled that he agreed to interview me on the Seattle stop of the Keep Going tour. Here’s the video of our conversation:

The setting was a little different than what we’re both used to: We spoke in the University Temple United Methodist Church, across the street from the University Book Store.

Here’s a photo of the EXIT signs I mention during the talk:

I grew up in a Methodist church, so it brought back all sorts of feelings for me. Singing in the choir. Half-listening to sermons while reading the Bible. Lighting candles on the altar. Meeting my best friend while plonking on an old piano in Sunday school.

I think the setting gave this conversation a different tone than our others. Maybe more pensive. I don’t know.

Here’s our first conversation, from 2013:

Here’s us in 2014, riding around in the back of a car at SXSW:

And here’s our third conversation, from 2016:

Chase always makes it fun. My many thanks to him, his team, the University Book Store, and the great audience who turned out.

Podcast roundup

To promote Keep Going, I spent the past two weeks recording podcasts all afternoon, so here’s a little roundup of the first ones to post.

1. I was totally flattered to be the first male guest invited on the Crafty Ass Female podcast.  We talked about a bunch of stuff, but my favorite part of the conversation was when we talked about how feminism is the way out of the nightmare of being a man. (A strong belief of mine!)

2. Had a great time talking to the fellas on the He Shoots, He Draws podcast.

3. Enjoyed chatting again with The Kindle Chronicles. Len excerpted this bit:

“When I first started out, if you had told me that my books were going to be shelved in Self Help, I would never have believed you. And when I first got started I had no idea there was such a thing as an illustrated gift book. I just didn’t know that those genres existed in publishing. The really fun thing for me about doing this kind of book is that it allows me to be as weird as I want to be in a mainstream format.  That is the great gift that these books have given to me.”

This is going to be one candid book tour, lemme tell you!

My interview with Mac and Laura from Superchunk

I somehow missed that video of my 2018 SXSW interview with Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance from Superchunk is now online.

I asked them about their newest record, What A Time To Be Alive, running Merge Records, and how they’ve managed to stay creative for so long.

Here’s a picture of how I prepped for the interview (basically, blasting the record and re-reading Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records):

They are super sweet people and I was honored to speak with them.

Coffee with an old friend

Back in February I sat down with Mike Rohde and recorded a conversation for his Sketchnote Army podcast about how I work. It was recorded on an iPhone in a noisy coffee shop downtown, but it has a casual, candid feel to it that I enjoyed.

I was right in the middle of writing the talk that would become my new book, and while I don’t talk about the book at all, I talk a lot about the process of getting to it: going back to daily blogging, putting out the newsletter, having a repeatable daily practice for generating work, reading Thoreau’s journals, watching Ralph Steadman draw, etc.

Listen here.

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