Go on until you fall over

10 things worth sharing this week

Hey y’all,

Here are the 10 things worth sharing this week:

1. RIP artist David Hockney. I’ve had this newspaper clipping above my desk in multiple studios over the years. There are so many photos of him looking joyous, smiling, but I like his look in this one because it says to me, “What are you doing with your life? Why aren’t you working?” The photo had a prominent spot on my bulletin board when I was writing Keep Going, and I quoted Hockney in the last chapter from the article the photo was clipped from: “I’ll go on until I fall over.” (He did just that! Working from a wheelchair.)
   
   

   “The cause of death is birth,” he said. “The only real things in life are food and love in that order.” In the pit of the COVID pandemic, Hockney was a constant reminder: “Spring cannot be canceled.”
   
   My friend Wendy shared a lovely tribute to Hockney, which included one of my favorite quotes of his: “You need the eye, the hand, and the heart. Two won’t do.” One of my fondest art memories is meeting Wendy at the de Young in San Francisco in 2014 to go see Hockney’s “A Bigger Picture” exhibition. That show left a huge impression on me.
   
   “I wasn’t especially surprised,” Lawrence Weschler wrote of the death of his longtime friend and subject, “nor frankly was I all that saddened. If anything, as I kept telling the floodtide of sweet correspondents who kept showering me their heartfelt condolences across the days ahead, I was gladdened at the splendor of a life well-lived and the magnificence of a legacy well-left.” (I love Weschler’s book about Hockney.)

   
   “[Hockney’s] work was an argument for seeing as a form of collage,” wrote art critic Jerry Saltz. “We don’t see the world all at once. We gather it piece by piece. We assemble it in our minds.” I think this is the biggest lesson I took from him: it’s all about looking. (If I were forced to pick a favorite work, it would probably be Pearblossom Highway.)
   
   

2. Saltz said one more thing about Hockney that struck me: “It’s sort of astonishing how sophisticated Hockney’s art is while appearing effortless.” My friend Alan recently introduced me to the Italian word “sprezzatura,” which was defined in the 16th century by Baldassare Castiglione: “a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it.” Bob Gill linked looking easy to inevitability: “however difficult it is to make art, it should always look easy, never labored.” And Maya Angelou said, “It must look easy, but it takes me forever to get it to look so easy.”
   
   

3. Mason Currey on the best book on writing he’s ever read. (I’d never heard of it! But I will check it out because I believe every writing book is good.)
   

   
   

4. Father’s Day is Sunday! If you need a last-minute gift for a veteran or expectant dad, I’d highly suggest one of the Hot New Releases in the “Fatherhood” category on Amazon: My book Don’t Call It Art!

   

   You could also gift dad a subscription to this newsletter. (There’s even a handy gift subscription zine you can print out — no need to buy a card!)
   

   
   Speaking of zines, here’s a Deleted Zine I made for Father’s Day:

   

   

   Deleted Zine 09 Fathers

   1.84MB ∙ PDF file

   Download

   Download

   After you download the PDF and print it out, here’s a video with instructions for how to fold and cut the zine into a booklet:

   
   

5. Podcasts: Some really excellent parenting-related conversations dropped this week. “I haven’t had so much fun talking to someone in a while,” said Dr. Becky of our Good Inside episode. I talked to Kevin Maguire on The New Fatherhood about how children aren’t an obstacle to your creative life but an opportunity for it to grow. And Ben Tallon and I had so much fun talking on The Creative Condition that he posted a bonus 4-minute episode from our conversation after we stopped rolling about Mario Kart and safely destroying each other.
   
   

6. “Child is born / With a heart of gold / Way of the world / Makes his heart grow cold.” We watched Questlove’s newest documentary, Earth, Wind & Fire (To Be Celestial vs. That’s the Weight of the World). I need to make time to watch his appearance on Track Star: “Questlove Teaches Us How to Listen to Earth, Wind & Fire.” 
   

   

7. There’s a lot going on in this photo, so let’s start at the top: my neighborhood dad rock trio 2222 is playing our second-ever show at The Aristocrat Lounge on Saturday at 5PM if you’re in Austin and want to see me to push the “Permission to be bad!” chapter of Don’t Call It Art (and your hearing) to the limit. (I play bass and try to sing.)
   
   

8. My friend Winston Smith, the artist who wrote me the letter that changed my life when I was 13, made me one of his custom gold records (!!!) and he would be more than happy to make one for you. Amazing gift for the musician (or wannabe musician) in your life. Get one here.
   
   

9. I got an AKAI MPC Sample and a copy of Nancy For All Seasons for my birthday, and, much to my surprise and delight, my kids immediately absconded with both. My teenager has played with the MPC Sample for hours and hours — it looks like a toy, but it’s sturdy and pretty intuitive and would make a great first sampler for your aspiring beatmaker.

   
   

10. Don’t miss my latest typewriter interview with Jennifer Daniel. Several readers told me it was their favorite yet:

    

Thanks for reading! This month our air conditioner died and both our kids got braces, so if you’d like to support this hand-rolled publication, buy my books or get a paid subscription:

xoxo,

Austin