Don’t let your dreams give up on you

10 things worth sharing this week

Hey y’all,

Keep Going — my guide to staying creative in chaotic times — is only $1.99 on ebook for the rest of November.

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

1. “Don’t let your dreams give up on you” was something I heard a fourth grader say a few weeks ago and I immediately knew I needed to make it into one of my lifted type collages. It’s become a mantra of mine ever since.
   
   

2. If you are in need a big dose of delight, read my typewriter interview with Lynda Barry.
   
   

3. One of Lynda’s favorite books is Marion Milner’s On Not Being Able To Paint. I turned to a random page this week and landed on the chapter “Preserving what one loves,” which begins with William Blake’s poem, “The Sick Rose.” (This kind of thing is why I believe in bibliomancy.)
   
   

4. “I no longer even have the energy to grind my own teeth. My brain has gone numb from this madness.” When I was visiting him in Bastrop, Ryan Holiday gave me a copy of Timothy Denevi’s Freak Kingdom: Hunter S. Thompson's Manic Ten-Year Crusade Against American Fascism and I devoured it.
   
   

5. I got rear-ended at a stoplight on the drive out to the Frio Canyon last weekend. I’m fine, but I’ve spent the week thinking about whiplash. Not just physical whiplash, but spiritual whiplash — when we feel the jolts of being whipped back and forth by life. “Sharp, sudden movements can cause your brain to smack against the inside of your skull.” How does one recover? In the short term, there’s no way to treat it directly: You have to be still, deal with the pain, and let the injury heal before you figure out what further action is needed and how to get up and moving again…

   
   

6. While I was in the canyon, I got to see the artists David Chang and Lanecia Rouse collaborating in the studio. David gave me a calligraphy lesson and gifted me a 1.5mm Pilot Parallel Pen — I went home and bought a gigantic 6mm nib and spent a couple hours on Tuesday practicing. On Wednesday I coped with the news by scanning and posting some of the 35mm film shots I took of David and Lanecia at work. Hiking in nature, making friends with strangers, and watching people work with their hands was just what I needed to fortify myself for this week.
   
   

7. I’m curious about all things related to the seasons and circular time. This weekend some other new friends taught me about “ordinary time” — the part of the liturgical year in between Easter and Christmas. (I guess I wasn’t paying much attention in all those years of Sunday School.) My research led me to Tim Dlugos’s poem “Ordinary Time,” which begins “Which are the magic / moments in ordinary / time? All of them, / for those who can see…”
   
   

8. Melville referred to “damp, drizzly November” of the soul. I am usually a “be the light or reflect it” person, but with all that’s going on and the recent time change, I’m going to let darkness do its thing on me for a little bit. Currently, I have “November Noir” as a theme for our family pizza nights: I don’t want to go too dark, but I’m thinking North by Northwest since they liked The Birds so much, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, and maybe even Dick Tracy. Feel free to drop me some recommendations:

   Once Thanksgiving is over, it’s all Christmas movies ’til the New Year!
   
   

9. Drummers drumming: I got into a series of 1973 live-in-studio sessions of Bob Marley & The Wailers after listening to the drumming episode of Walter Martin’s show. Dig them on The Old Grey Whistle Test and check out the comps Talkin’ Blues and The Capital Session ‘73. (And of course, their studio records from that year, Catch a Fire and Burnin’, are essential listening.)
   
   

10. “Anyone who says they’ve figured out how to make records sell more than 50 million copies is lying and smoking Koolaid. It doesn’t work like that. You just find a group of songs that touches you and gives you goosebumps. I go by my goosebumps.” RIP “music titan” Quincy Jones. He shows up in one of my books, and might just show up in the next. I bought his book 12 Notes: On Life and Creativity a while back and I’ve been meaning to watch Quincy, the Netflix documentary co-directed by his daughter Rashida Jones. (If you’ve never read his 2018 Vulture interview with David Marchese, it is a wild ride.)

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xoxo,

Austin

PS. Seriously, do not miss the typewriter interview with Lynda Barry: