Roll up your sleeves!

10 things worth sharing this week

Hey y’all,

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

1. “Get off your phone and touch an instrument instead.” That’s advice from musician Sasami in issue 4 of Synth History, a fantastic zine I’ve been reading that’s full of good interviews. (My friend Alan Jacobs has the same advice for when you feel enraged: “Reach for your instrument!”)
   
   

2. The news is for the birds, so let’s have some news from the birds: Jackie and Shadow, the bald eagles documented by a live webcam in Big Bear Lake Forest, just had hatchlings. (Here’s a video of Jackie feeding the chicks before a big snow storm blew in.) I was delighted to find out that Penny Lane is directing a documentary on HBO about the story of Flaco The Owl. Meg spotted one screech owl in a tree by our house last month, but so far the owl boxes are occupied by squirrels and The Coconuts have not returned, so I doubt we’ll get owlets this year. However! Elsewhere in Austin, Athena the Great Horned Owl has returned to the Wildflower Center, already laid an egg, and her live webcam will be up shortly — here are the highlights from last year. (“Listen to the birds,” counseled Captain Beefheart. “That's where all the music comes from.”)
   
   

3. I wrote about how writing is often just pointing at things.
   
   

4. SXSW has begun and while I have no plans to attend the official festival this year, there are a plenty of things going on around town available to folks without badges: the Austin Public Library is hosting two days of NASA’s Createspace this weekend, next week KUTX is doing their Live at Scholz Garden series, the Flatstock poster show is always interesting, and maybe most exciting to our family, next Friday KMFA is hosting Power Up: The Art of Video Game Music. (If you’re visiting, last year I shared a letter with a list of Austin recommendations that I think hold up pretty well.)
   
   

5. Morning pages: By my spot at the kitchen table I keep my old diaries and logbooks going back in 5-year increments — 2020, 2015, 2010, etc. — and if I have nothing to write about, I’ll dip into them and do a little time travel. Flipping through my logbook covering SXSW 2010 is particularly wild to me, because that was when I held my first book Newspaper Blackout in my hands for the first time. I was 26 years old! Life felt like it was just beginning. Salad days! (If you want to see my nerdy diary from that time, scroll down to the P.S. at the bottom of this letter.)
   
   

6. On art, ambition, etc: I was a guest on my friend Ryan Holiday’s Daily Stoic podcast — you can watch our conversation on Youtube or listen on the platform of your choice.
   
   

7. Bass lines: I’ve always wanted a decent bass amp to play my little short scale Squier Jaguar Bass through (love that thing!), so I bought myself a 50-watt Orange Crush. I’ve been putting it through its paces, slapping like Larry Graham on “Thank You” and plucking like Marshall Jones on “Skin Tight.” One night I opened up my copy of The Beatles: Complete Scores and just noodled on McCartney’s parts for an hour — never quite realized how much he took from the Motown lines of James Jamerson!
   
   

8. “There are two things I’m happy about: I was born poor. And I stuttered.” I loved this interview with artist McArthur Binion.
   
   

9. Ear candy: Aphex Twin made a 12-hour “mostly mellow” playlist you can stream on Spotify or YouTube. One of the artists in that mix is Domenique Dumont, whose soundtrack for the movie People on Sunday I’ve been playing a bunch. I’m also enjoying Panda Bear’s new album Sinister Grift — I had this weird (but not uncommon for me) experience where I found the first half of the record really irritating, turned down the volume, ignored it, recognized the song with Cindy Lee, got into it, then the album re-started from the beginning and I was suddenly listening to it over and over. (Especially the downbeat second half.) A good lesson in listening: try to give a record at least one pass through before you move on to something else.
   
   

10. RIP David Johansen, the last New York Doll. RIP vibraphonist Roy Ayers, whose song “Everybody Loves the Sunshine” was sampled by over 200 artists. (Here’s a Tiny Desk Concert from 2018.) RIP Alfi. RIP Dolly Parton’s husband Carl Dean.
    

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xoxo,

Austin

P.S. Here’s that diary blast from the past: