All is not well! (But some things are)

10 things worth sharing this week

Hey y’all,

Here are 10 things I thought were worth sharing this week:

1. “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.
   
   

2. Kurt Vonnegut: “Where do I get my ideas from? You might as well have asked that of Beethoven. He was goofing around in Germany like everybody else, and all of a sudden this stuff came gushing out of him. It was music. I was goofing around like everybody else in Indiana, and all of a sudden stuff came gushing out. It was disgust with civilization.”
   
   

3. “What is civilisation? I don’t know.” In “The Seductive Enthusiasm of Kenneth Clark’s ‘Civilisation,’” Morgan Meis argues that the TV series Civilisation succeeds “despite its underlying ideas, not because of them…. Clark is an indispensable guide not so much because of what he knows—though he is deeply knowledgeable—as because of his unabashed enthusiasm for the art that he shows us.” (This is something I remember from watching Sister Wendy in art class. It makes me think of a line from physicist Brian Greene: “My best teachers were not the ones who had all the answers. They were the ones deeply excited by questions they couldn't answer.”)
   
   

4. Enthusiasm is a big topic that came up in my chat with the musician Walter Martin. We are both people who are simply being enthusiastic about the things we love in public. (Robert Gottlieb: “Publishing is making public your own enthusiasm.”)
   
   

5. “I never thought of a career in music. What I do is goof off — and try to get away with it.” RIP singer songwriter Michael Hurley, whose music I first heard about on Walter’s radio show. Walter shared an hour-long love fest and a 3-hour playlist of Hurley’s music and Will Hermes shared a 2-hour playlist of Hurley and other musicians playing his songs.
   
   

6. “What else can I get away with?” is the professional motto of writer and director Noah Hawley. (To quote The Medium is the Massage, “Art is anything you can get away with.”)
   
   

7. “Rock drumming is an intense and physically demanding activity with peak heart rates well in excess of age predicted maximum.” RIP Blondie drummer Clem Burke.
   
   

8. At the movies: I was disappointed that our crowd for A Minecraft Movie wasn’t rowdier. During the previews, which were all remakes of old, already great movies like Snow White, Superman, and Lilo & Stitch, I thought of the words of The Studio creator Seth Rogen: “A lot of people look at the movies and are amazed that so many bad movies get made. But when you work in Hollywood, you are amazed that any good movies are made.”
   
   

9. TV: I’m fighting White Lotus withdrawal by reading a bunch of behind-the-scenes stuff like this oral history of the show and the props master on the books the characters were reading. I even watched this ridiculous video of composer Cristobal Tapia de Veer showing how he made this season’s intro music. (He uploaded an uncut version of the theme to his YouTube, which also includes videos of him drumming with what appears to be a real bone. Unfortunately, he won’t be returning for season 4.)
   
   

10. Some good news courtesy of the raptors: Athena’s owlets are hatching and Jackie and Shadow’s eaglets are strong and curious.
    

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xoxo,

Austin

PS. Be the weird you wish to see!