Like a ghost went through me
10 things worth sharing this week
Here are 10 things I thought were worth sharing this week:
The writer John Green discovers he has aphantasia — the inability to form mental images.
A gorgeous book I got in the mail: Illustrators' Sketchbooks: Inside the Creative Processes of 60 Iconic and Emerging Artists, edited by Martin Salisbury. (The cover art is by my friend Oliver Jeffers — he also has a new book out called Begin Again.)
The director Wes Anderson recreates Roald Dahl’s writing shed.
“[I made collages] not as an art practice, but as a writing practice. Collage reminded me that even in nonfiction, there are so many more ways for things to be related than in a linear, causal manner.” Jenny Odell on the collage artist Jess. (There are a few good books about Jess in print: To and From the Printed Page and O! Tricky Cad and Other Jessoterrica for a look at his work, and An Opening of the Field, which is about the scenius he created with his partner, Robert Duncan.) I shall add Odell to my growing list of writers who collage.
I like this term, “good-handedness,” to describe “the immediate feeling on reading the first lines of a book, or starting a movie, etc, that you are in good hands.”
Our fifth grader was complaining about how quickly his pencils go dull in math class. So we got to introduce him to… wait for it… mechanical pencils. (He gives these chunky triangular Paper Mates the thumbs up.)
I enjoyed reading about Joseph Grigley’s show at MASS MoCA, In What Way Wham? The artist, who is deaf, covered the walls of the exhibit with some of the 30,000+ notes he’s collected “written during conversations with people who do not know sign language.” The notes reminded of Beethoven’s conversation books, which he used to converse with people after he lost his hearing. (Thanks to Gerry for sharing this in our comments!)
Movie: If you’re looking for a spooky season action flick, I highly recommend Blade — there’s a beautiful 4K transfer streaming on Max. (I feel like we need a Wesley Snipes renaissance — I loved him in Dolemite Is My Name.)
Ear candy: I have had the new Oneohtrix Point Never album, Again, on repeat this week. (I especially enjoy the single, “A Barely Lit Path.”) Amanda Petrusich recently profiled Daniel Lapatin in The New Yorker. (I first got into his work via the Uncut Gems soundtrack.)
This week’s assignment via Albert Einstein: “It is the same with people as it is with riding a bike. Only when moving can one comfortably maintain one’s balance.” Keep going.
Thanks for reading. This is a hand-rolled, algorithm-free, completely reader-supported publication. If you’d like to support my work, buy my books, hire me to speak, or become a paid subscriber:
xoxo,
Austin
PS. This is what my diary looks like when I start vs. when I finish:
Thank you so much for point # 7 - I am fascinated by Joseph Grigley’s work - this whole post it note thing has so much meaning for me; huge part of my up bringing with a crazy loving mother who used them ad nauseam - her kitchen table looked much like Grigley’s piece at Mass MoCa. For me, notes presented in this way form a kind of contemporary patchwork; my most preferred way of working in my textile art practice .
Love that quote and the term good-handedness! I’m obsessed with first lines of books and really do use it as a gauge on whether it’s a book for me or not when I’m book browsing--because if the writer took the time to make it great, there’s a higher chance they took time with everything else too. I also keep a reading journal and record the first lines of books as part of my entry. And as a writer, I can’t really get into writing the book until I’ve found just the right first line to crack open the story for my brain. It’s like finding the right key to a lock. It’s often the one line that, once I land on it, doesn’t change through all the editing phases.