Weekly newsletter: A scissors and paste man

This week: the best thing ever written about "work-life balance," remixing comics, and more... View this email in your browser. Hey y'all, Here are 10 things I thought were worth sharing this week:  James Joyce wrote, "I am quite content to go down to posterity as a scissors and paste man." I've written before about collage as a restorative practice. Lately, for fun, I've been chopping up the pages from my son's daily Peanuts calendar and turning them into new comics. (Related: creator Alex Norris is letting you make your own Oh No comics.)   The best thing ever written about "work-life balance."   I finished Denis Johnson's The Largesse of the Sea Maiden. A terrific swan song. (I took my time and read one story a night.)   Newsletter recommendation: Kottke.org has long been one of my favorite blogs, and now there's a weekly roundup called Noticing.   Some recent podcast appearances: I was on The Learning Leader Show, Jocelyn Glei's Hurry Slowly, and Chase Jarvis reposted our epic chat.   Streaming on Netflix: I'm catching up with Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown, which isn't even so much a food show as it is a travel show that gets surprisingly deep into the cultural issues and politics of each place Bourdain visits. (I highly recommend the Houston episode [S8:E5], which is a celebration of American immigrants and an underrated, terrifically diverse city.)   Ear candy: the Emerson Quartet playing the only string quartets of Debussy and Ravel. Debussy wrote his at 31 in 1893. Ravel wrote his ten years later at the age of 27. It's fun to listen to them back to back to hear the influence. (Film buffs might recognize the 2nd movements: Ravel's is featured in the credits of The Royal Tenenbaums, and, if I'm not mistaken, PTA used Debussy's in Phantom Thread.)    Extra ear candy: the 50th anniversary remix of Sgt. Pepper's really does sound great. Flipping through the CD booklet, I fell in love with this photo of Paul McCartney moving a microphone.   More from my daily blog: Thoreau on how every thought is a nest egg, how I think we act like we all want to be bored to death, how I feel about putting work in the world, and how 90% of your work is crap, but it's better than nothing. (Here's a post about how I got into daily blogging again.)    RIP Mark E. Smith and Ursula K. Le Guin. One of my favorite books I read last year was her great translation of the Tao Te Ching. She also kept a sweet old-school blog, although many posts have been taken down and collected in No Time To Spare. Thanks for reading! If you like this newsletter, forward it to a friend, buy a book, a calendar, or tweet me some love.  If you're seeing this newsletter for the first time, you can subscribe here. xoxo,  Austin PS. Next time you hear from me it'll be February. How the heck did that happen? Good news is: the new calendar is cheap now! Austin Kleon is the author of Steal Like An Artist and other books. Subscribe to this newsletter Follow me elsewhere: Twitter Instagram Tumblr Copyright © 2018 Austin Kleon, All rights reserved. You're receiving this newsletter because you signed up for it at www.austinkleon.com My mailing address is: Austin Kleon 4301 W. William Cannon Dr. Suite B 150 #241 Austin, Texas 78749 Add us to your address book unsubscribe from this list    update subscription preferences

Weekly newsletter: Who I want to be

This week: in praise of hobbies, walking, pencils, Boulevardiers, and more...

This week: in praise of hobbies, walking, pencils, Boulevardiers, and more... View this email in your browser. Hey y'all, Here are 10 things I thought were worth sharing this week:  In praise of the good old-fashioned hobby.   I am two stories deep into Denis Johnson's last book, The Largesse of the Sea Maiden, and I don't want it to end. If you aren't familiar with his work, I highly recommend his novella Train Dreams and the collection Jesus' Son as great books to start with. (Train Dreams was on my best of 2014 reading list.)   Quick thoughts about walking.   A wonderful look inside one of America's last pencil factories. (See also: Mr. Rogers at the crayon factory.)   I've been thinking a lot about how an artist has to fall in love with her material.   Recommended newsletters: If you care about education and technology, subscribe to Audrey Waters' HEWN, and if you, like me, are looking to fill the Writer's Almanac shaped hole in your inbox, try Matthew Ogle's poem-a-day newsletter, Pome.   You have to have something to look forward to. (Even a bowl of soup.)   If you enjoy cocktails, I highly recommend The Boulevardier.   Ear candy: two great 90-minute (!) mixes of Kraftwerk, the first weaving in clips from a good Krautrock documentary. (There are a ton of other mixes on that site. Poke around.)   RIP Dolores O'Riordan. ("Oh my life / is changing every day / in every possible way.") Thanks for reading. If you like this newsletter, forward it to a friend, buy a book, or tweet me some love.  If you're seeing this newsletter for the first time, you can subscribe here. xoxo,  Austin PS. It's never too late in the year to start your journal! Austin Kleon is the author of Steal Like An Artist and other books. Subscribe to this newsletter Follow me elsewhere: Twitter Instagram Tumblr Copyright © 2018 Austin Kleon, All rights reserved. You're receiving this newsletter because you signed up for it at www.austinkleon.com My mailing address is: Austin Kleon 4301 W. William Cannon Dr. Suite B 150 #241 Austin, Texas 78749 Add us to your address book unsubscribe from this list    update subscription preferences

Weekly newsletter: Remember your heroes

This week: reasons to be cheerful, good theft and bad theft, defining success, and more... 

This week: reasons to be cheerful, good theft and bad theft, defining success, and more... View this email in your browser. Hey y'all, Here are 10 things I thought were worth sharing this week:  If you're stuck, remember your heroes.   A new copyright case is in the news — Lana Del Ray vs. Radiohead — so, since people have asked me, here's the difference between good theft and bad theft and my thoughts about copyright.   Great advice from writer Roxane Gay: define your creative success by what you can control. (My version: work like Phil Connors in Groundhog Day, every day, without hope and without despair.)   David Byrne's reasons to be cheerful.   A great Virginia Woolf essay on Henry David Thoreau. (I'm reading entries from the abridged editions of both of their diaries: Woolf's is called A Moment's Liberty and Thoreau's is published by NYRB classics.)   I finished my daily reading of A.R. Ammons' Tape For The Turn of the Year, which you can go back and read here.   This week I learned that faking old paper is really hard and vintage paper is quite valuable. (Paper is a wonderful technology!)   Worth watching: I've become a big fan of director Taika Waititi: I loved What We Do In the Shadows and really liked Hunt for The Wilderpeople and this week we watched Boy. (I haven't seen the Thor movie, but if the blooper reel is any indication, it will be fun, too.)    Ear candy: The Balanescu Quartet doing Kraftwerk's "The Robots." (I highly recommend their album containing 5 Kraftwerk covers, Possessed.)   More from my blog: collaging robots out of the Restoration Hardware catalog and new blackout poems: "The Pasture," "A Great Sheep," and "How To Improve." (And, in case you missed it, here are 100 things that made my 2017.) Thanks for reading! If you like this newsletter, forward it to a friend, buy a book, or tweet me some love.  If you're seeing this newsletter for the first time, you can subscribe here. xoxo,  Austin Austin Kleon is the author of Steal Like An Artist and other books. Subscribe to this newsletter Follow me elsewhere: Twitter Instagram Tumblr Copyright © 2018 Austin Kleon, All rights reserved. You're receiving this newsletter because you signed up for it at www.austinkleon.com My mailing address is: Austin Kleon 4301 W. William Cannon Dr. Suite B 150 #241 Austin, Texas 78749 Add us to your address book unsubscribe from this list    update subscription preferences