More for me!

10 things worth sharing this week

Hey y’all,

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

1. As I rapidly approach middle age (I’ve got exactly one week before the big 4-0), something I’ve been saying a lot to myself lately is “More for me!” Oh, the kids are rolling their eyes at something I like? More for me! People have soured on an artist I like? More for me! Not only one of my favorite conversational shortcuts, but a way to stay focused on minding my own business and doing my work.
   
   

2. Last week we went back to Ohio to visit family and friends, and things got a bit existential when I went through a bunch of my childhood stuff. (In case you missed it: my letter about nostalgia, “These are the good ol’ days,” prompted some wonderful comments and rabbit holes to fall down.) This week we’ve been catching up, swimming in the pool a lot, unschooling (unspooling?) ourselves.
   
   

3. Jazz: I somewhat randomly put on Miles Davis’s Milestones in our rental car and it quickly became the soundtrack of our trip. I’m a little nuts about it — I think I’ve listened to it a dozen times in the past two weeks. I’m even listening to it as I type this! (Here’s a nice writeup of what makes it special: “Milestones deserves special notice as a kind of warm-up to Kind of Blue, Davis’ undisputed masterpiece and arguably the greatest jazz album of all time. It’s Miles’ Revolver to his Sgt. Pepper, a brilliant rough draft to a perfectly realized work of art.”)
   
   

4. RIP artist Françoise Gilot, who lived to 101. I really liked some of her work and enjoyed some of the interviews she gave in her later life. For years I’ve been meaning to read her famous memoir, Life With Picasso, which is where I found the story about the screech owl they kept as a pet.
   
   

5. Podcast: When I was looking for some interviews of Gilot, I came across Studs Terkel interviewing photojournalist David D. Duncan in 1974 about his book, Goodbye Picasso. (Picasso had died a year earlier.) It’s an interesting recording because Duncan was friends with Picasso, but the interview is also sandwiched between clips of people responding to the dedication of the Picasso sculpture in Daley Plaza in 1967. (I somehow didn’t know anything about Duncan or his photography — it turns out his archive is at the Harry Ransom Center here in Austin, TX!)  
   
   

6. Another podcast: The making of Surfer Rosa by Pixies, one of my all-time favorite records. I especially loved Steve Albini’s contributions, his ambivalence over his influence on the record, his humility, and his praise for Kim Deal. Maybe the most mind-blowing tidbit: Joey Santiago’s 9th chord in the breakdown of “Bone Machine” was inspired by Prince’s “Kiss.”
   
   

7. RIP “The Girl from Ipanema” singer Astrud Gilberto. RIP pianist George Winston. RIP the Perry Mason reboot. RIP Jack Lee of the band The Nerves, writer of “Hanging on the Telephone.”
   
   

8. Books about the built world: I finished my re-read of Sara Hendren’s excellent What Can A Body Do? and now I’m reading an advance copy of her colleague Deb Chachra’s How Infrastructure Works: Inside The Systems That Shape Our World. (Here’s Deb on what her book is about.)
   
   

9. Hallucinations: If you can’t afford Apple’s $3500 Vision Pro goggles but you’d still like to see what isn’t really there in front of you, just get yourself some tape, a ping pong ball, and a radio, and try out The Ganzfeld Procedure.
   
   

10. A look at Sylvia Plath’s visual notes.

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xoxo,

Austin