Let me eat and not be eaten

10 things worth sharing: bicycles and creativity, Kate Bush, a message for graduates, and more...

“Every animal, in order to survive, has to solve a conundrum: how to eat without being eaten.”
—Iain McGilchrist

Hey y’all,

Tuesday I wrote about how we create the world with the kind of attention we pay to it. It was more popular than I expected. I never know what’s going to hit or not hit, which is a big part of the adventure of writing these missives.

It is going to be a long, hot, brutal summer down here in Texas, so plan on things staying light around here for the near future. (I’m declaring this my summer of Campari.)

Here are 10 things I thought were worth sharing on this first Friday of June:

1. I’m still nuts about my bicycle. I wrote two new posts about riding: “Bicycles and re-enchantment” and “Is a bike ride creative?”
   
   

2. I love reading comics at the kitchen table. Two great ones: Box Brown’s Cannabis: The Illegalization of Weed in America (he also has a strip called Legalization Nation) and Two Heads: A Graphic Exploration of How Our Brains Work with Other Brains, which is pairing well with all the Iain McGilchrist I’ve been reading.
   
   

3. Dan Chaon’s “By The Book” NYTimes interview is one of the best I’ve read. (It took me until this very moment to realize the title of that column is a pun: Buy the book.)
   
   

4. I have read Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day to my kids probably a 100 times, so this interview with Judith Viorst and her son, the real Alexander, was a real treat.
   
   

5. I had no idea: “The sound of the Honda hybrid is synthetic, created to replace the engine noise of a traditional car. Which means someone had to make that sound.”
   
   

6. Sadly, I haven’t seen the Coconuts in many months, but one of the screech owlets I follow on Twitch fledged last night, so you might want to tune in while the other two are still around!
   
   

7. RIP Dave Smith, the “Father of MIDI.” (In a weird coincidence, yesterday I was trying to explain MIDI to my older neighbor. She’s a pianist, and I was telling her how my son learns songs on the piano without reading music: he downloads MIDI files, imports them into GarageBand, and watches the notes.)
   
   

8. Kate Bush’s 1985 single “Running Up That Hill” hit the top of the charts last weekend thanks to the TV show Stranger Things. As good as any time to remember that nobody gushes about Kate Bush like Big Boi, who claims to have recorded “a monster hit” with her.
   
   

9. What it’s like to go for a walk when you’re Liam Gallagher. (I try to read each and every interview by the Gallagher brothers I come across. Noel Gallagher’s commentary on Oasis videos never fails to cheer me up.)
   
   

10. A message for graduates.
    

Thanks for reading. This newsletter is a reader-supported publication. The best way to support my work 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 and help keep Fridays free for everyone. You can also give a gift subscription to a recent grad or someone you think could use it:

xoxo,

Austin