19 Comments
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Alexandra Taber's avatar

Hi Austin- I am trying to remember the name of the short movie (or YouTube clip) you shared last year about artists' notebooks. In part of it, it showed a female artist in her studio who kept a notebook of her art and her inspirations. She cut out pieces of paper and collaged in her art notebook, and then that turned into a book. I loved the movie and the inspiration I got from it, and would love to watch it again. I've been searching in your archives without luck....

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Debbie Galant's avatar

Crazy. I just got Timequake at a used book sale, started reading it last night and read (and loved) that quote!

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Ricki Henschel's avatar

I was at the Brandywine Museum of Art today, enjoying the amazing art from the Wyatts and a special exhibit: Tell me a Story Where the Bad Girl Wins: The Life and Art of Barbara Shermund.... amazing! She was almost forgotten... we are blessed her work was rediscovered. Anyway, your books were in the bookstore!

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Christine Havens's avatar

Thanks for number 8, especially! Though “love is a mixtape” makes me smile. My playlists on Apple Music are all about love—reminders of good times with people I love, reminders of what I love doing, and what I love about myself, what I love about the world.

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Kenneth Buff's avatar

I disagree that writing should be a choir (the scraping or whatever to find the right words).

Writing should be fun. Writing is just expressing yourself via written words. Thus, it's just thinking. If you can talk, you can write.

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GWF's avatar

Austin, do you know about Music from the Hearts of Space?

https://www.hos.com/home

Your mixtape reminded me of this. We used to listen to it all the time back when I was at college in Portland. There may be something there for you…

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Austin Kleon's avatar

I don't know this! Thanks

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Mary Anne Shew's avatar

The first thing that told me a casual boyfriend had deeper feelings for me than he expressed was when he created a mixtape for me. This was back in the mid-80s and done all the time. I still have that tape and a device to play it on. And I remember the boyfriend fondly, though I went on to marry someone else.

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Liz Whitehead's avatar

Today I am working on a prototype. Then you wrote “ Frankly, these are the moments of synchronicity I live for.” Then I read Sarah Hendren’s piece on birthing prototypes.

What a good day!

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Mason Currey's avatar

Thank you for the Manguso quote, needed it today

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Austin Kleon's avatar

She’s got a typewriter interview coming up :)

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Ann Collins's avatar

Thank you for the mixtape, Austin! This will definitely be a helpful part of the mind-space I'm trying to cultivate for something I'm writing. Isn't it magic the way music can create a perfect workspace like this--one we can return to with a flip of a switch? :-)

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Lynda Beth Unkeless, J. D.'s avatar

I got shivers when I heard

Lonely Flowers, too!🥀

Such blazing telling of his truth!😳

Bravo!👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏✍️

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Kelly Turner's avatar

Oh, thank you for the mix tape explainer. My husband and I have tried to explain this to our kids more than once. In our lecture, we especially like to highlight the anticipation of waiting for a song to play on the radio and getting it on a mix.

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Pamela Barclay's avatar

I too felt a million years old when I saw that video!

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Liz's avatar

The video unlocked so many GenX memories for me! I was wondering how you were going to tape over the cassette, and then you applied the literal TAPE and my memory exploded. Another fun thing might be to try and erase it with a magnet. I remember borrowing a friend's Depeche Mode tape and my brother got ahold of it. He was sitting across the table from me, fidgeting with a refrigerator magnet in his hand and the tape in the other. When we went to listen to it one more time before returning the prize cassette, we were horrified to discover there were blank spots on it, apparently caused by the magnet (this made more sense when I worked at a college radio station later, and we used a cool giant "bulk" magnet to clear the "carts" that contained our promos before we recorded new ones. It would also make your watch run backwards).

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B.A. Lampman's avatar

I love Oliver Burkeman, and I especially loved his recent post Navigating by Aliveness. I'm also going to link to that one in my next newsletter. For the second time since I've been getting his newsletter, I replied to his email to tell him how great I thought it was, and for the second time, he took the time to write back 😭. He is quality through and through.

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Pamela Barclay's avatar

Absolutely! I thought when I was reading the newsletter “Oh Austin will FOR SURE be putting this in the newsletter!” I know I’ve said this before here—but Burkeman totally captured my life philosophy!

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B.A. Lampman's avatar

He's great 🥲

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