Summer plans

10 things worth sharing this week

A recent collage made out of tape and magazines. (Even the most boring collage I make with my hands is more fun than sitting at my computer.)

Hey y’all,

We survived another insane hail storm and now school’s out for summer here in Austin, TX. (Time for unschooling!)

Seasonal reminder: my books or a gift subscription to this newsletter make excellent gifts for the graduate in your life! (Also: as I type this, Steal and Show are $2.99 and $1.99, respectively, on Kindle and a few other ebook platforms.)

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

1. “Don't make anything you feel obligated to make. Just make the things you want to make. If it feels like homework, stop unless you enjoy homework.” A typewriter interview with writer Sarah Manguso.
   
   

2. Comic I devoured: Guy Delisle’s Muybridge. I think this book is a masterpiece? A cartoonist at the top of his game, a perfect meeting of subject and medium, and beautiful book design by Drawn and Quarterly. The story has it all: adventure, technological revolution, murder, etc. It might be my favorite thing I’ve read all year. (Read more: “Eadweard Muybridge’s extraordinary life told in a comic book.”)
   
   

3. “I know you are but what am I?” Director Matt Wolf adds another creative collector weirdo to his interesting filmography with Pee-Wee as Himself, a documentary about Paul Reubens, the man behind Pee-Wee Herman. My favorite parts were getting a look inside Reuben’s house in Los Feliz, learning about the scenius of The Groundlings, and hearing from Wayne White and Gary Panter, two of my favorite artists who designed Herman’s world. (HBO Max is also streaming Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure and all five seasons of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse.)
   
   

4. “What made you weird as a kid?” “When do you lose track of time?” The first 2 out of 7 questions in Dan Pink’s “How To Find Your Life’s Purpose” were put beautifully by Carl Jung: “What did you do as a child that made the hours pass like minutes? Herein lies the key to your earthly pursuits.”
   
   

5. “It’s very difficult to be very lazy. It takes a lot of imagination to do nothing and you have to be sufficiently self-confident not to have a bad conscience. You have to have a taste for life, so that every minute is complete in itself and so you don’t have to keep saying ‘I’ve done this or that.’ You need strong nerves to do nothing. Being lazy also means that other people’s opinions don’t matter. Nor does the idea of always having to prove yourself.” Françoise Sagan on the power of laziness. (For my fellow lazybones, see my letter, “The meaning of discipline.”)
   
   

6. “Boredom: the great engine of creativity. I now believe with all my heart that it’s only in the crushing silences of boredom— without all that black-mirror dopamine — that you can access your deepest creative wells.” Craig Mod on boredom and walking. (One good way to cultivate boredom: “Sky before screen.”)
   
   

7. Instagram: I must admit, when I want a little “black-mirror dopamine,” lately I’ve been watching a lot of @subwaytakes with Kareem Rahma. (I’m interested in how people discover formats that are endlessly repeatable. You know, like a weekly list of 10 newsletter.)
   
   

8. “The book is the greatest invention of man. It’s a shame that people read so little.” RIP the “world’s poorest president” José Mujica. (Some good Mujica-related links in my Oct. 2024 letter, “Book truckin’.”)
   
   

9. We watched Jaws last weekend, as we do pretty much every summer. In celebration of the film’s 50th anniversary, Steven Soderbergh talked about why he thinks Steven Spielberg’s movie is so great: “There’s no C.G. They were out there in the middle of a f*cking ocean. There’s a reason people don’t do that. There is no technological advance that has happened since that would make it any easier to do what they were doing. That shark was just a pneumatic mechanical device, in the actual ocean. There’s no shortcut to that, and nobody’s been able to come up with an easier, better way to do it, which is why people have stopped doing it.” (I like what Spielberg himself has to say in one of the behind-the-scenes featurettes on the Blu-Ray: “I think because I was younger, I was more courageous, or I was more stupid, I’m not sure which.”)
   
   

10. The title of cartoonist Carol Tyler’s current show could be my own motto: “Write it down, draw it out.”

    
    

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xoxo,

Austin

The best graduation gift