No urge to be doing

10 things worth sharing this week

Some collage studies using dried-up block printing ink

Hey y’all,

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

1. “There are days… when one sees as though one had been blind the rest of one’s life. Such clarity – perfection in everything, not merely in the extraordinary. One lives in the very present moment; lives intently. There is no urge to be doing: being is the highest good. However… doing of some kind there must be.” I finished Post Captain, the second of Patrick O’Brian’s seafaring Aubrey-Maturin novels, and immediately started the third, H.M.S. Suprise. As I mentioned a few letters ago, the naval jargon threw me at first, but I’m locked in now, deep into the bromantic adventures, and letting the language wash over me, alternating between the ebooks and the wonderful audiobook recordings by Patrick Tull.
   
   

2. “That mixed flavor—of high spirits and melancholy—is essentially comic, and page for page, book by book, Patrick O’Brian is one of the funniest writers I’ve ever read.” I was delighted to find Joshua Corey’s The Aubrey-Maturin Review, in which he’s shared one essay — and sometimes two! — on each one of the books. (I also might pick up a copy of A Sea of Words, Third Edition: A Lexicon and Companion to the Complete Seafaring Tales of Patrick O’Brian.)
   
   

3. “How can you know happiness until you’ve known deep sadness?” Vini Reilly of the Durutti Column released his first album in 16 years, Renascent. Beautiful stuff.
   
   

4. “When I don’t love you, I’ll let you know.” Our Hitchcock pizza night viewing peaked once again with Notorious (1946). That kiss! Highly recommend the Criterion edition and Francois Truffaut’s book of interviews with the director.

   
   

5. I have an addition to my “How To Read Like An Artist” zine: Learn to skim and skip! Skimming and skipping has saved my reading life, letting myself glide through the text, then slowing down, backtracking, underlining when I hit gold.
   

   

   A book so short and easy-to-read you don’t have to skim or skip!

6. I ordered a $13 PILOT Kakuno fountain pen after reading Mark Frauenfelder’s recommendation. It’s nice! I will probably mod it with my own inks like I do my color brush pens. (Speaking of stationery: thanks to James Talarico for this ad.)

   

7. Four Tet is one of my favorite electronic acts, and his new “Wingdings” album is great. (If you like that stuff, check out Soundfounder’s recent Aphex Twin birthday show.) Here are my notes from an interview with Four Tet about making music:

   

   
   

8. Two great Brit(pop) trailers: season 6 of Slow Horses and Oasis: Don’t Look Back In Anger. (Although nothing Oasis-related will beat Noel Gallagher’s DVD commentary on their videos.)
   
   

9. “I had a beard, you know, but it wasn’t near the beard they had. And so I shaved it…” RIP ZZ Top drummer Frank Beard. I highly recommend the 2019 documentary ZZ Top: That Little Ol’ Band From Texas. A deeper cut for fans: this interview from 2013. Later today I’m going to play the clean $12 vinyl copy of Tres Hombres I recently found at Love Wheel Records and gaze at the all-time greatest gatefold art. (ZZ Top is on my list of 7 kinds of deadline music.)

   
   

10. “I think art depends on being in touch with something ageless + eternal within — which might require rejecting so called ‘culture,’ you know?” My latest typewriter interview is with writer George Saunders!

    

Thanks a ton for reading. This Friday email is free but not cheap. If you’d like to support this hand-rolled publication, buy my books and become a paid subscriber:

xoxo,

Austin