The cease-and-desist of winter

10 things worth sharing this week

Hey y’all,

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

1. “The old is dead, and I don’t know what the new is. The only way to find the new is to start different things and see if there’s something that can come out of experimentation. It’s somewhat unsettling, but it’s a hopeful thing in a way. I’ve been here before, lots of times.” RIP filmmaker and artist David Lynch. I’d love to wipe my brain so I could watch Twin Peaks for the first time — the first two seasons are streaming for free on Pluto TV and The Criterion Channel is streaming the documentary David Lynch: The Art Life for free until the end of the month. Lynch “didn’t fully trust words” as his friend Kyle MacLachlan put it, but he wrote a good book about his approach to creativity called Catching The Big Fish, and I just picked up a book of his interviews called Lynch on Lynch. Even if he didn’t fully trust them, he dished out many words of wisdom: “An artist doesn’t have to suffer to create.” “Keep your eye on the donut, not the hole.” “Fix your hearts or die.” “Every day, once a day, give yourself a little present.”
   
   

2. “There are moments in our lives, there are moments in a day, when we seem to see beyond the usual — become clairvoyant. We reach then into reality. Such are the moments of our greatest happiness. Such are the moments of our greatest wisdom. It is in the nature of all people to have these experiences; but in our time and under the conditions of our lives, it is only a rare few who are able to continue in the experience and find expression for it.” That’s Robert Henri in The Art Spirit, a book David Lynch said had a big impact on him.
   
   

3. “You just have to be able to notice when you are boring yourself.” My 3 tips for self-editing.
   
   

4. “Parents kept secrets in those days. Everything was a secret. So in order to make my own secrets, to establish my own way out of things I couldn’t understand, you draw. And it’s a way of not just escape, but of survival.” RIP cartoonist and writer Jules Feiffer. (Like many artists, Feiffer and Lynch were world-builders and map-makers — see the flyleaf map for The Phantom Tollbooth and the hand-drawn map of Twin Peaks.)
   
   

5. The Public Domain Image Archive is a hand-picked collection of thousands of out-of-copyright works, free to browse, download, and reuse.
   
   

6. The Oscar-shortlisted generative documentary Eno is streaming today for 24 hours starting at noon EST — I wrote about the film in my letter “Drawing Eno.” (I’m currently enjoying Brian Eno’s songwriting workshop and looking forward to his next book, What Art Does.)
   
   

7. “He could’ve been playing with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra or with Miles Davis, but he was with us, and we were lucky to have him.” RIP Garth Hudson, multi-instrumentalist and last surviving member of The Band. (I recommend watching The Last Waltz of course, but Pluto TV comes through again with a free stream of Classic Albums: The Band’s The Band, which has some great stuff like the making of “Up on Cripple Creek.”)
   
   

8. Family pizza night hit: Freaky Friday (2003) with Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis, who, believe it or not, reunited for a sequel. (“That’s what happens if you wait,” Curtis joked on The View. “If you’re very patient, Lindsay Lohan will get to be old enough that you believe that she’s the mother of a 15-year-old.”)
   
   

9. I love these rubber stamps by artist Carmela Gross. (I’m currently trying to make my own by carving up Pink Pearl erasers.)
   
   

10. I shared an excerpt from the “Plant Your Garden” section of Keep Going and it went viral on Instagram, so I wanted to share it with y’all here:

Thanks for reading. This hand-rolled, ad-free, AI-free, and anti-algorithm publication is possible thanks to the 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

A blackout poem from Keep Going