Plumbing the depths

10 things worth sharing this week + live chat announcement

A collage I built around a hydrant I saw on one of our morning walks past the new sinkhole

Hey y’all,

Here are 10 things I thought were worth sharing this week — stick around ‘til the end for a live chat announcement:

1. We had two plumbers out to the house and there was a water main break in the neighborhood that caused a truck to drive into a sinkhole, so I spent a lot of time in the past few days thinking about the miracle (and potential disaster) of modern civilization. (And how history is quite short: my mom grew up in a farmhouse without indoor plumbing!) I’ve recommended them before, but two good books on the subject are Deb Chachra’s How Infrastructure Works and Dan Nott’s Hidden Systems.
   
   

2. Every morning there’s a new bloom in Meg’s flowerbed, which inspired me to make an April bouquet out of a poem, some playlists, a few “dub” remixes, and some thoughts about money. (Another newsletter bouquet from two years ago: “Spring cannot be canceled.”)
   
   

3. “His work is his diary.” Two years ago, the artist David Hockney wasn’t sure he’d be alive to travel to Paris for his biggest show ever, which opens next week and takes up the entire Fondation Louis Vuitton. Hockney’s motto? “Love life.” Amen!
   
   

4. Another show I’d like to see across the pond is This Is What You Get, an exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford that explores the art that Stanley Donwood and Thom Yorke have made together for the band Radiohead. (Their early websites and interaction design had a big impact on me as a teenager, and made me want to create my own websites.)
   
   

5. The most interesting bit of this chat with Rick Rubin is that he originally enlisted Verlyn Klinkenborg to help him write after reading Several Short Sentences About Writing, which is high on my list of great books about writing. Despite the assistive technology of the team of ghostwriters he worked with, Rubin believes that A.I. could’ve helped him sort out the gigantic mess of his original drafts, since he thinks A.I. is good at what he calls “clerical work.” In my experience, there is no such thing as “clerical work” in writing: the donkey work is crucial to the process, as is having to sort through the mess of the draft — that’s the art of self-editing, and it’s the art of finding what you didn’t know you were looking for. (Before I get too agitated and start writing an essay about it all, go read John Warner’s More Than Words.)
   
   

6. “God wants us to walk, but the devil sends a limo.” RIP actor and collage artist Val Kilmer. He starred in two of my all-time favorite movies: Top Gun, which I watched over and over as a kid, and Heat, which I’ve watched over and over as a middle-aged dude. I don’t think Val is a great documentary, but it’s interesting and worth a watch. (I’ve never seen the 1985 comedy Real Genius, but a few smart people I know praised it as a movie about responsible tech innovation.)
   
   

7. RTFM: I love that when Newshour asked Alton Brown what special technique every home cook needs to know for their kitchen he replied, “Read the recipe.” Since I’m married to an excellent cook who is also an excellent editor, I was struck by how similar Alton’s technique for reading recipes is to her technique for editing: First, you sit down and simply read the recipe all the way through. “Don’t make notes, don’t make lists, just read.” Then you read it again, but this time, you read with a pencil… (“Above all, learn to enjoy recipes as you would literature.”)
   
   

8. Movie trailer: Sketch is a horror movie for the whole family about what happens when a 10-year-old’s drawings start coming to life. It’s like writer-director Seth Worley made a movie specifically for my crew of dark doodlers. Hits theaters in August.
   
   

9. Books with pictures: Critic Phillip Maciak asked, “What are your favorite non-fiction prose books — for grown-ups — that are illustrated?” Depending on how you define “illustrated,” we read several of my favorites in the Read Like an Artist book club, including Tamara Shopsin’s Arbitrary Stupid Goal, Tim Kreider’s We Learn Nothing, and Sally Mann’s Hold Still. (See also: my list of 21st century books with pictures.)
   
   

10. I really enjoyed this tour of Walter Martin’s schoolhouse studio. I’ve been listening to his music for well over half my life, so I’m looking forward to chatting with him live as part of “The Substack Sessions” on Monday, April 7th at 12 p.m. central. Hope you’ll tune in!

    

Thanks for reading! This hand-rolled, ad-free, AI-free, anti-algorithm publication is made possible thanks to the love and support of readers like you. If you want to help keep it going, buy my books, hire me to speak at your event, or, best of all, become a paid subscriber:

xoxo,

Austin

PS. Here’s my latest mixtape — you can stream it on Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube.(Read more about its origins in Tuesday’s newsletter.)