Here is an old blackout poem I stuck in Tuesday’s letter, “Your next best friend,” which is about making good friends — with people and books.
We spend a lot of our lives as readers on the search for new books. But how many great books are already waiting for us on our shelves? How many favorite authors would we form deep relationships with if we simply read or re-read a few more of their books?
I really like the way this one turned out. You can read the whole thing here.
“The Inflatable Man” is a metaphor Meghan came up with on one of our morning walks. I thought maybe there was an essay or a newsletter in it, and went looking for them around town. Once I shot this footage, I decided to make a Weird Little Something out of it. I believe we should all make Weird Little Somethings once in a while.
Tuesday’s newsletter was “on sitting around and reading a novel” for nothing but the pleasure of it:
[The feeling] that you’re getting away with something […] is really important to the reading experience. Reading should feel a little subversive… because it is! To sit around and read a novel in the year 2025 is an act of resistance — you’re swimming against the current of the entire contemporary shitstream.
Readers left hundreds of recommendations in the comments of that one.
For a list of some of my favorite novels, check out a previous letter, “Big books for summer.”
This Easter I was reminded of this photo I took in east Austin, 2013. (The sign reads: “Don’t make your own easter eggs — ain’t nobody got time for that!“)
That’s one kind of Easter egg, but the other is a hidden feature or a message.
Not everybody knows this, but I hide Easter eggs in every one of my Friday newsletters — the “hey y’all” greeting and the “xoxo” signoff is always hyperlinked. (I can’t remember when I started this practice, but I know I stole from Laura Olin.)
Sometimes the links are random, but often they comment somehow on the list of 10.
Here’s the most recent Friday letter so you can see what I mean: “Art comes from other art.”
The last few newsletters have shown off how obsessed I’ve become with printmaking — I can’t seem to stop!
From “All is not well (but some things are”:
“Not everything will be okay but some things will.” Years ago, I saw that phrase on a slide at the end of a Maira Kalman talk. It has stuck with me. I wanted to put my own spin on it, so I made a block print with the words, “All is not well (but some things are.)” I was looking for material to print it on, and settled on a few thrifted copies of Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation.
I made these prints after writing today’s newsletter, “The subtle art of showing up”:
I get several forms of the question, “What good is making art in times like these?”
There are many decent answers, but the one that rings truest to me, I think, comes from art coach Beth Pickens: “Artists are people who are profoundly compelled to make their creative work, and when they are distanced from their practice, their life quality suffers.”
If I don’t show up for creative work, I suffer. I’m not a whole person. If I don’t show up to the studio, it’s harder for me to show up for the people in my life.
And, really, that’s all, sometimes, you have to do: just show up.
I’m getting many “what are you going to do with all these prints?!?” questions… so that might be the subject of next week’s newsletter…
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