I shall be released!

My new book comes out next week (and 9 other things worth sharing)

I’m ready to sign some books

Hey y’all,

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

1. It is go time: Don’t Call It Art is out next Tuesday, June 2nd! If you haven’t pre-ordered yet, there’s still time to get your preorder goodies:

   

   I am headed to BookPeople today with a huge box of magenta markers to sign and personalize hundreds and hundreds of preorders!
   
   If you live in Austin, Texas, you can get the book one day before everybody else by coming to the book release party at Bookpeople on Monday, June 1.

   

   After that I’m headed to Nashville on June 3 and Cleveland on June 8. These are free shows, but tickets are going fast, so grab a spot while you can.

   

2. “Each morning, he made himself a to-do list and crossed out items as he completed them as straightforwardly as any middle manager.” Keith Haring’s ordinary, extraordinary to-do lists.
   
   

3. “Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the floor of the sky. The landscape one longed for when one was far away, the thing all about one, the world one actually lived in, was the sky, the sky!” Unexpected reading delight: I loved Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop. Recommended if you like episodic books about friendship, adventure, and New Mexico. Why the heck haven’t I read more Cather? I really liked My Ántonia in high school, but that was the only other book of hers I’ve picked up. I might re-read it and try O Pioneers! and A Lost Lady next. (Many of Cather’s books are in the public domain — check out her page on Standard Ebooks.) Also: If you recommend an essay about Death Comes for The Archbishop or Cather in general, I would love to read it.
   
   

4. “Humanity, created by God in all its grandeur, is today facing a pivotal choice: either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together.” Pope Leo dropped a 42,300 word open letter about artificial intelligence. (I haven’t read it, but I did take a look at the infographics.)
   
   

5. The trailer for Wild Inside, a documentary about Flaco the Owl. (You should watch it and then watch my interview with director Penny Lane on the art of filmmaking.)
   
   

6. My latest mixtape captures my attempt to get over the depression and anxiety that can accompany “The Gulp” in between when you finish something and finally push it out into the world. (Don’t worry, it has plenty of bops!) You can listen to the mix on Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube:

   

   Listen to the mixtape on Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube

   I recommend the YouTube playlist because Loretta Lynn’s “Portland, Oregon” and Freddie MacGregor’s cover of “I Shall Be Released” are not on streaming services! (Thankfully, I have Van Lear Rose on vinyl and Studio One Kings on CD. Physical media, y’all!)
   
   

7. I wrote about 7 books that helped me learn from my kids.

   

8. Those kids finished school this week — my youngest graduated elementary school!!! — so we did our annual blasting of Alice Cooper’s School’s Out. (They’re still a bit too young to watch Dazed and Confused, so we’ll have to find something else to watch for pizza night.)
   
   

9. I’m in love with this thought about journaling and tracking your own microseasons from Melissa Kirsch: “A journal this year becomes a calendar next, a way to anticipate and follow along with the microscopic variations, inside and out.” (See also my letter “When does a diary pay off?”)
   
   

10. RIP jazz giant Sonny Rollins. If you don’t know his work, start with Saxophone Colossus. Here’s a cool animated short about his time playing with Monk and practicing on the Williamsburg Bridge. I was very taken by this section of his biography, which I could’ve used in the “Don’t Take Things Too Seriously” chapter of Don’t Call it Art:
    
    "While he was in this world… he learned ‘not to take life too seriously,’ he said. He made tentative plans for gallows humor on his tombstone: ‘Thanks to Andy Capp, Bob and Ray, and Mad Magazine.’ He kept his Bob and Ray comedy tapes for life, was a lifetime subscriber to Mad, cut out Andy Capp comics and carried them around for a rainy day. ‘These characters have enriched my life and hit the right note.... It’s one of the things that has made my life bearable. It’s very important to me, my sense of humor.’ When he was not here anymore, he knew his music, and that sense of humor, still would be.”
    

Thanks for reading. This hand-rolled, AI-free, anti-algorithm publication is made possible thanks to the kind support of readers like you. The best way you can support my work right now is by pre-ordering the new book!

It makes a huge difference, truly, and it doesn’t matter where you pre-order it, it helps me the same. (If you get it from your local indie bookstore, you’re helping us both.) I know I already said it, but this book really is the most beautiful object I’ve ever published. I can’t believe it’s finally coming out. Phew!

xoxo,

Austin