No urge to be doing

Hey y’all,

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

1. “There are days… when one sees as though one had been blind the rest of one’s life. Such clarity – perfection in everything, not merely in the extraordinary. One lives in the very present moment; lives intently. There is no urge to be doing: being is the highest good. However… doing of some kind there must be.” I finished Post Captain, the second of Patrick O’Brian’s seafaring Aubrey-Maturin novels, and immediately started the third, H.M.S. Suprise. As I mentioned a few letters ago, the naval jargon threw me at first, but I’m locked in now, deep into the bromantic adventures, and letting the language wash over me, alternating between the ebooks and the wonderful audiobook recordings by Patrick Tull.

4. “When I don’t love you, I’ll let you know.” Our Hitchcock pizza night viewing peaked once again with Notorious (1946). That kiss! Highly recommend the Criterion edition and Francois Truffaut’s book of interviews with the director.

5. I have an addition to my “How To Read Like An Artist” zine: Learn to skim and skip! Skimming and skipping has saved my reading life, letting myself glide through the text, then slowing down, backtracking, underlining when I hit gold.
   

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6. I ordered a $13 PILOT Kakuno fountain pen after reading Mark Frauenfelder’s recommendation. It’s nice! I will probably mod it with my own inks like I do my color brush pens. (Speaking of stationery: thanks to James Talarico for this ad.)

   

7. Four Tet is one of my favorite electronic acts, and his new “Wingdings” album is great. (If you like that stuff, check out Soundfounder’s recent Aphex Twin birthday show.) Here are my notes from an interview with Four Tet about making music:

   

9. “I had a beard, you know, but it wasn’t near the beard they had. And so I shaved it…” RIP ZZ Top drummer Frank Beard. I highly recommend the 2019 documentary ZZ Top: That Little Ol’ Band From Texas. A deeper cut for fans: this interview from 2013. Later today I’m going to play the clean $12 vinyl copy of Tres Hombres I recently found at Love Wheel Records and gaze at the all-time greatest gatefold art. (ZZ Top is on my list of 7 kinds of deadline music.)

10. “I think art depends on being in touch with something ageless + eternal within — which might require rejecting so called ‘culture,’ you know?” My latest typewriter interview is with writer George Saunders!

    

Thanks a ton for reading. This Friday email is free but not cheap. If you’d like to support this hand-rolled publication, buy my books and become a paid subscriber:

xoxo,

Austin