Here are 10 things I thought were worth sharing this week:
“The ampersand [&] originated as the ligature of the letters et — Latin for ‘and.’”
“Optimization presumes a kind of certainty about the circumstances one is optimizing for, but that certainty is, more often than not, illusory.” Mandy Brown wrote “against optimization” after reading Deb Chachra’s book How Infrastructure Works. Mark your calendars, because I’m interviewing Deb at Bookpeople here in Austin, TX on Thursday, June 20 at 7 p.m. We’re going to talk about writing, the hidden systems that shape our world, and why the Texas power grid is so terrible. Details here.
“When you read your notebooks, you remeet ideas. You reintroduce them to who you are now.” That’s from writer Max Porter’s interview in the book The Work of Art. (As you may know, I’m a huge believer in the importance of revisiting notebooks.)
More stuff that helps: in Tuesday’s letter about sticking with it, I included a little list of what’s helping me write now. I forgot to link to my studio gear page, which features a long list of some of the stuff I use in the studio.
Music to write to: I like writing to music, but it has to have this very unique combination of elements: it can’t have lyrics, it can’t be too slow, it needs to have a good beat but can’t distract, it needs to be energetic but ultimately ignorable at low volume. Few albums fit this bill, but one that’s worked wonders for me lately is the jazz album Overseas, recorded by pianist Tommy Flanagan with the great Elvin Jones on drums.
Music I can’t write to: Deerhoof is one of the best live bands around, and they have released a free triple live album as pay-what-you-want on Bandcamp.
Instagram: I enjoy following @louisianachannel, which features short clips from weekly Louisiana Channel videos of artists talking about their work. (Most recently I loved this clip of writer Ali Smith talking about her laziness, a subject I know something about.)
RIP Jamaican Gold, one of KOOP’s longest-running radio programs in Austin, TX. For years and years, Art Baker’s show has been the soundtrack to my Sunday afternoon. You can listen to old shows on his Mixcloud, and tune in to Sunday’s replacement, Roots Train.
RIP Suso, the canine co-host of Draw Together, and pup of my friends Wendy MacNaughton and Caroline Paul. Because there are no coincidences in life, my friend Sam Anderson just published a beautiful meditation on what his Walnut dog taught him about mortality. (Check out Sam’s new podcast series, Animal.)
A good reminder from last summer: “These are the good ol’ days.”
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xoxo,
Austin
PS. Shoutout to my friend Gregory Day at Bookpeople — here he is with another stack of signed copies of my books ready to ship:
In re: meeting your ideas again, I loved this quote from an interview with Richard Linklater: “The most fascinating relationship we all have is to ourselves at different times in our lives.”
A friend hired an artist to design the type for his company of three people. When he got the draft he said to the artist, "You forgot the Ampersand." The artist said, "You didn't tell me you had added a fourth person."