Friday nerd fest: Obsessed with making these little paper wheels that spin 🛞 Paper is a wonderful interactive technology!

austinkleon.com/tag/paper-is-a…

“It’s good to be in something from the ground floor. I came too late for that, I know. But lately, I’m getting the feeling that I came in at the end. The best is over.” Rewatching THE SOPRANOS, and it’s even better now.

@mattzollerseitz and @sepinwall say the same in their, book, THE SOPRANOS SESSIONS

A batch of some of my favorite books I read this spring SPRING CANNOT BE CANCELLED: DAVID HOCKNEY IN NORMANDY

A wonderful portrait of Hockney in lockdown and all his thoughts about art. Bought it last year and saved it for the next spring. Right book, right time. Loved this.

tips for a better life with books from the READ LIKE AN ARTIST zine🧵 Stop reading books you don’t like

I love this C.S. Lewis observation so much and its truth was recently renewed in a very specific way for me: right now, even in my beginner state, I’m the dude you want to actually ask about getting a bicycle 🚲 If you ask an avid cyclist right now how you should even get started — they often won't know where to begin! They’re simply too far ahead of you to be a great help right away.

But if you asked me, I could download all the dumb stuff I’ve learned in the past two months.

Is art about self-expression? 📢

(thread 🧵 ) 1. “People think it’s about, like, self-expression or something, and it’s not about that. You do it because it’s involving and stimulating and you like the process of doing it.”
—Ethan Coen

Years ago, @szacharek wrote that the end of a list is “where the oddball magic really happens.” And it’s ALWAYS true of my own lists!!

This year, I listed another 10 books with important lessons that didn’t make my top 21, for whatever reason

🧵

austinkleon.com/2022/01/01/21-… 1) The “harmony of tensions” — the idea that opposites form the field of possibilities that we play on/in — from Heraclitus’s FRAGMENTS

austinkleon.com/2021/11/11/her…

I did this year in 101 quotes newsletter but I had dozens and dozens of quotes left over that didn’t really fit together, so I might post a few here. 🧵 austinkleon.substack.com/p/my-year-in-1… “My superpower is that I mind my own business. And I actually think that helps my productivity more than anything.”
—@NifMuhammad

nytimes.com/2021/11/14/boo…

This painting of his wife Betty Jean is probably my favorite of his — I think I saw it at the Crocker in Sacramento

nytimes.com/2021/12/26/obi…

https://twitter.com/wendymac/status/1475202625058394112

Wayne Thiebaud, “Untitled (Mountain and Clouds), 1965

Brian Eno famously divides artists into “cowboys” and “farmers” — cowboys explore for new frontiers, farmers and a plot of land and cultivate it.

Today I learned that he stole the idea from the musical OKLAHOMA!

The irony of Eno’s “cowboys” and “farmers” division is that he’s both — a “cowboy” always searching for new ideas and musical frontiers, but also a “farmer” planted in his studio, cultivating his work. (He is fond, as I am, of gardening as a metaphor for creative work.)

I love what my friend Alan Jacobs calls “swimming upstream” — getting into an author, reading who they read, then reading who they read read

Recently: Thoreau > Emerson > Goethe “Swimming upstream” is counter to the way school is usually taught

(think of all the American history classes you were in that didn’t even make it to Vietnam m)

I feel that history should be taught backwards: starting with a contemporary event and tracing how we go here

This was good — I really like Haring’s work but didn’t know a lot about his life.

https://twitter.com/austinkleon/status/1334976413846401024

Interesting to me that those black panels in the subway that Haring chalked over were there because the city was so broke advertisers weren’t buying ads to fill the spaces — also that he was savvy enough to send a photographer around to capture them

Looking for a movie to watch? For two Christmases, my friend Lance recommended movies to watch at Christmastime:

achristmasmovieaday.tumblr.com My favorite Christmas movie? Still BAD SANTA. achristmasmovieaday.tumblr.com/post/181234458…

What book do you love that has an unusual but brilliant structure? Fun responses! I’m less interested in typographic/layout shenanigans (Danielewski) or publishing experiments (Chris Ware’s BUILDING STORIES, which is a bunch of books/booklets in a box) but bound books, read front to back, which have cool structures (extra points for nonfiction)

Suddenly faced with not sending your kids to school? Consider NOT trying to replicate school at home right now.

One of the things that good homeschooling books talk about is how there’s a “detox” period in which kids & parents re-adjust to being at home.

This can take awhile. Adults don’t call what we’re doing “homeworking,” we call it “working from home.”

Consider not calling it “homeschooling.”

Consider thinking about it as “learning from home.”

JANUARY 2020 TOP 10

1. The hawk
2. PARASITE
3. @shamblanderson’s BOOM TOWN
4. Sturgill Simpson
5. SEX EDUCATION (s2)
6. Learning @AphexTwin’s “Avril 14” on piano
7. @_DavidShields’s MARSHAWN LYNCH: A HISTORY
8. Diogenes!
9. A LITTLE HISTORY OF THE WORLD
10. Chicken parm sandwich FEB. 2020 TOP TEN

1. Blind contour drawings
2. Tokarczuk’s DRIVE YOUR PLOW...
3. Lunch zines
4. DOLEMITE IS MY NAME!
5. Stars over Dripping Springs
6. Rooney, NORMAL PEOPLE
7. Boys making valentines for their classmates
8. BOJACK HORSEMAN
9. Gang of 4
10. Solving Rubik’s cube

The most important thing you can do as a creative person and lifelong learner? Abandon the notion of linear progress. austinkleon.com/2018/02/26/the… This was one of my favorite parts of @JamesWLoewen’s book: “progress” is a notion sold to us about America. We’re always progressing, always moving forward. (Yeah, right.)

https://twitter.com/jameswloewen/status/1083730954399744001?s=21