It was not a request

This week’s 10 things worth sharing

“Loretta Lynn” a poem from Newspaper Blackout

Hey y’all,

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

1. A few weeks ago they didn’t deliver my paper and I completely missed this interview with my hero, Lynda Barry: “The big difference I’ve seen over the last few years in the people I work with: They don’t have a big relationship to their hands. I’ve had to show them how to cut a circle out of paper.”
   
   

2. A profile of artist Steve Keene: “I love the idea of doing sixty paintings a day, and finishing them, more than the idea of trying to make one that I think is perfect. The whole system is based on trying not to beat myself up.”
   
   

3. Podcast: The great Sam Anderson on Longform talking about how he writes some of the best stuff out there.
   
   

4. After having a few readers recommend it to me and finding out Sam uses one, I think it’s time to check out the Remarkable 2, ”a tablet that feels like paper.” I mostly want it to read and mark up PDFs. (If you have one, let me know how you like it.)
   
   

5. I gotta get some of these Peanuts stamps.
   
   

6. I went on a Lou Reed binge after writing about Songs for Drella. His voice sounds right in the autumn air. I’d somehow never heard American Poet, an official release of a 1972 bootleg from the Transformer tour. Reed’s backing was a bar band of teenagers from Yonkers called The Tots. Really fun set. (Here’s “White Light/White Heat.”)
   
   

7. Another album I’ve had on repeat is Leonard Cohen’s New Skin for the Old Ceremony. You might’ve heard PJ Harvey’s cover of “Who By Fire” in the opening credits of the show Bad Sisters. (I didn’t realize that song’s connection to Yom Kippur: “The phrase comes from the solemn prayer chanted every Yom Kippur, the Unetaneh Tokef, which gravely asks us to consider what fate the next year may hold for each of us, who will die and who will live.”)
   
   

8. Even more music: The Syrian Cassette Archives preserving a disappearing history.
   
   

9. Eye candy: we watched Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse with the kids for pizza night, and it was awesome. Looking forward to the sequel next year. (In the meantime, I let the kids borrow my Penguin Classics collection of The Amazing Spider-Man.)

   
   

10. RIP country legend Loretta Lynn. A few years ago, I put Van Lear Rose on my list of 31 perfect records. Here is a beautiful remembrance by Hanif Abdurraqib.

Thanks for reading. This newsletter is a reader-supported publication. The best way to support it is to buy my books, hire me to speak, shop for some of my favorite gear (I get a cut), or become a paid subscriber:

xoxo,

Austin

PS. This photo of The Steal Like an Artist Journal by @markragland brought back fond memories of that book tour in 2015, when I shared a slideshow of notebooks that inspired me. (Here’s a video.)