I had tacos with Chase Jarvis earlier this year and he asked if he could record part of our chat on voice memos.

I’ve written more about a lot of the topics we chatted about and wanted to link to them here:

• “Comfort Work,” like “comfort food” and “comfort viewing,” comfort work is work that I do when I don’t know what else to do. It is actual work, but it is comforting.
• “Creative tension” — a lot of creative work is the result of being pulled between two poles, and finding energy in the tension of that pull. Think of a guitar string: if it’s too slack, the string buzzes and makes no music; if it’s too tight, it snaps.
• Friction, or “Resistance is necessary.” Artists need something to push against. Like when you’re riding a bike — too much or too little friction means you won’t go anywhere.
• Subtraction: This gets a whole chapter in Steal Like an Artist, but basically the idea is that when you subtract certain elements and put some constraints on yourself, it actually activates your creativity rather than squashing it.

You can listen to the whole chat here and check out our typewriter interview.

This afternoon I doodled while watching artist Jeremy Deller’s documentary Everybody In The Place: an Incomplete History of Britain 1984?–?1992. 

Acid house is often portrayed as a movement that came out of the blue, inspired by little more than a handful of London-based DJs discovering ecstasy on a 1987 holiday to Ibiza. In truth, the explosion of acid house and rave in the UK was a reaction to a much wider and deeper set of fault lines in British culture, stretching from the heart of the city to the furthest reaches of the countryside, cutting across previously impregnable boundaries of class, identity, and geography.

At one point in the documentary he shows a bunch of students one of my favorite clips of all-time: a bunch of people in a club Detroit in 1981 dancing to Kraftwerk’s “Numbers.”

“I’m happy that I live on a planet where that happened once,” he says.

Same!

This is how so many newsletters of mine begin: just a few doodled mind maps in a notebook.

These pages led to the latest Tuesday letter, “Room To Think,” which was an excuse to mash up an Elisa Gabbert essay with my recent daily reading of Montaigne’s essays.

The subject line of last Friday’s newsletter “Don’t let your dreams give up on you” was something I heard a fourth grader say a few weeks ago. I immediately knew I needed to make it into one of my lifted type collages and it’s become a mantra of mine ever since.

You can read the newsletter here.

Today’s newsletter might be my favorite I’ve ever sent out:

I figured a letter sent out on such a Tuesday better be full of delight. Luckily, today we have the marvelous Lynda Barry with us. To celebrate the release of the paperback edition of her masterpiece What It Is, she answered a batch of my questions via the United States Postal Service…

No artist has had a bigger impact on my work, so you can imagine what this meant to me!

You can read the whole interview here.

Filed under: typewriter interviews

Today’s newsletter was an excuse to link these three books at my spot on the kitchen table — Roland Allen’s The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper, my late summer/fall diary (started on Oahu back in August), and Chris Ware’s Acme Novelty Datebook Volume Three, the final installment in his sketchbook series.

It was also an excuse to post these drawings from my sketchbook:

You can read the whole newsletter here: “On memory and notebooks.”

In the words of a reader, the newsletter is “super-juicy this week.” I had the most fun sharing a bunch of Halloween links:

2. Spooky reading: I really don’t think you can go wrong with the classics. I love Frankenstein, Dracula, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde — as with many classics, they’re much weirder than you can even imagine. I also love short story collections — a big favorite of mine in recent years was Lafcadio Hearn’s Japanese Ghost Stories.

3. Spooky ear candy: If you’re throwing a Halloween party, I made a silly little “Monster Mash” playlist you can throw on. (I love this Halloween Nuggets: Monster Sixties A Go-Go box set.) I also recommend Walter Martin’s Halloween episode. If you just want some solo October vibes, check out my mix “The October Country.” And I told you about Cindy Lee’s Diamond Jubilee back in April, but it’s now available on Bandcamp. Probably my favorite album released this year — check out the song “Dracula.”

4. Spooky viewing: We watched the original 1942 Cat People with the kids and they seemed to dig it. I love those old horror movies produced by Val Lewton — we might try I Walked With A Zombie on them next year. Other hits with the kids are the classic Universal monster movies like Frankenstein and Creature from the Black Lagoon. I’ve heard Over the Garden Wall is good, but haven’t checked it out yet — there’s a new two-minute stop motion film coming soon to celebrate its 10th anniversary. If you need something lighter, there’s always It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown — preferably from a bootleg VHS rip with vintage commercials, since Apple TV owns the streaming rights now and it won’t be broadcast on TV. (I’ve stopped relying on streaming media for our holiday favorites and buy classics I know we’re going to watch again on physical media.) For really little ones, I recommend Room on the Broom.

You can read the rest here: “Digging deep.”

Couple of fun things: 

1. Over a quarter of a million people now subscribe to my newsletter. 

2. I sold my next book: 

These things aren’t unrelated: over the past decade, the newsletter has turned into a wonderful playground for me: a place where I can work out my ideas, share what I love, and show my work while I come up with the next thing…

In today’s newsletter I open up my commonplace diary:

You can read the whole letter here.

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The Blanton filmed me talking talking about the museum:

I love to copy paintings when I’m here, because drawing makes you slow down and actually look at the thing… We spend a lot of time looking at images. We’re on our phones, we’re scrolling… but there’s something about being in the presence of a real work of art that someone has made with their hands, that someone has sweated over. Seeing it in person and seeing it at scale… it is unbeatable. It’s infectious! It makes you want to go home and make stuff! I mean, a good day at the museum for me is a day that I get out of there and I think, “I really feel like going home and writing!” or “I really feel like going home and drawing!” There is a kind of mania that happens when you’re in an art museum. You start seeing everything around you as art. And that’s the greatest thing that art can do: help you see your everyday world in a new light.

I included the video in today’s newsletter about a good day in the museum, or how I like to look at art.

Some friends of the newsletter at Demco made my book truck dreams come true and shipped me this yellow beauty.

Inspired by the librarians at my local branch who give their book trucks names like “Shelvis Presley” and “Trolley Parton,” I’ve decided my new truck needs a name.

You can cast your vote in today’s newsletter.

I was interviewing Franz Nicolay about his book, Band People, and at one point I asked him, “Where do you think ambition comes from?”

Before he could answer, I blurted out, “I think it comes from a big hole in you!”

We laughed. He didn’t disagree.

Here’s Tony Schwartz on the two lessons he learned from being Donald Trump’s ghostwriter:

The first lesson is that a lack of conscience can be a huge advantage when it comes to accruing power, attention and wealth in a society where most other human beings abide by a social contract. The second lesson is that nothing we get for ourselves from the outside world can ever adequately substitute for what we’re missing on the inside.

Casually, and anecdotally, this is what I’ve often observed in my (thankfully limited) experiences around famous or quasi-famous people.

First, it’s hard to tell in the “suck-cessful” what’s ambition or drive or hard work or whatever you want to call it and what’s sociopathy.

Second, fame never fixes anything for anybody.

Because nothing from the outside will fill what’s missing on the inside.

Here’s another mixtape I made from a sealed, pre-recorded cassette I got for 99 cents at the record store. I tape over the cassette’s protection tabs and then I tape over the music and then I tape over the artwork.

I’ve made so many mixtapes this year that I think I’m starting to crack what I really love in a good mix.

Vibe.

What I really love in a mix is a vibe rather than a theme.

This comes up a lot this time of year when people post their Halloween mixes. All the songs are about witches or demons or whatever, but they don’t really cohere musically.

(I make exceptions for Bob Dylan’s brilliant Theme Time Radio Hour, which ruled completely, and also had a Halloween episode. Also: a radio show is different than a mixtape — the DJ can add context, switch the mood, etc.)

Anyways, I named this mix after Ray Bradbury’s collection:

“October Country . . . that country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and mid-nights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain. . . .”

I wanted it to sound like what October sounds like to me — in feeling, if not in lyrics. (To be honest, I barely listen to lyrics most of the time, which might be surprising to hear from a writer, but I’ve been a musician a lot longer than I’ve been a writer?)

SIDE A
– Chris Isaak, “Wicked Game”
– Tom Waits, “Down in the Hole”
– Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, “Little Demon”
– Ty Segall, “Girlfriend”
– Leonard Cohen, “Waiting for the Miracle”
– Scott Walker, “On Your Own Again”

SIDE B
– Depeche Mode, “Enjoy the Silence”
– Fever Ray, “Shiver”
– Thee Oh Sees, “Ghosts in the Trees”
– Ravyn Lenae, “Sticky”
– Keith & Tex, “Run to the Rocks”
– Bjork, “The Anchor Song”
– Charles Simic, “We Were So Poor”
– Portishead, “The Rip”

Originally, I had a wizards vs. witches thing going with the sides, and I was going to do Bjork, Fever Ray, and Ravyn Lenae and more on side B, but, again, I throw out concept and theme for vibe when I do these things.

The Charles Simic poem was kind of an accident — I was just looking through Spotify at my “Liked” tracks and tried to find a short snippet to fit the rest of the tape. (On the actual cassette, I play a tiny little portion of “The Rip” to end the side, but I think it goes nicely as a full song at the end.)

You can listen to the mix on Spotify.

I’ve made 11 of these things so far this year! If you want, you can listen to a big 10-hour playlist of them all.

Filed under: mixtapes

My latest typewriter interview is with Chase Jarvis, who has interviewed me many times over the years. You can read the whole thing here.

I guess this really is a series now? I’m sending out questions to a new batch of folks this week, so stay tuned. (You can read the others here.)

I made this blackout last week and put it at the top of Friday’s newsletter about getting in and out of trouble. Unfortunately, it was prophetic, because I was up at 4 a.m. this morning…

Today’s newsletter, “Human Resources,” is about what we can learn in art, business, and family life from how Duke Ellington ran his band, as detailed in Ted Gioia’s How To Listen To Jazz:

“Almost every important piece Ellington ever composed was written to showcase the key skills he heard in his band members. Music almost became a platform for Ellington’s management of human resources… Ellington’s executive skills could be compared to Benny Goodman’s, and the contrast was striking. Goodman was a perfectionist who was rarely pleased with the musicians he hired, and they burnt out on his intensity, many leaving the band after only a short stint. Ellington’s orchestra thrived, in contrast, because the boss didn’t demand perfection, and instead built everything in the ensemble’s repertoire on the demonstrated strengths of his personnel. I suspect that this approach to leadership could work in any environment…”

Many readers mentioned how much they liked the drawings, which pleased me, as they’re all over a decade old, many from when I was drawing a lot at Austin City Limits tapings.

You can read the newsletter here.

I usually don’t make art specifically for the newsletter, but I needed a top image for today’s edition, so I cut out Words from ads in the April 1935 issue of National Geographic.

Read the newsletter: “Verbify!”

First, off: “verbify” is a word. It means what it sounds like: use something as a verb.

In 2015, the late comedian Norm Macdonald tweeted about the time he met Bob Dylan.

According to Macdonald, they talked about all kinds of stuff, like their favorite books of the Bible. (Norm said he liked Job, Bob said he liked Ecclesiastes.)

At one point, Macdonald said, “I remember he talked over and over about verbs and about ‘verbifying’, how anything could be ‘verbified.’”

The writer Tony Conniff wrote a piece about Dylan’s use of verbs and used “Tangled Up in Blue” as an example:

They drove that car as far as they could
Abandoned it out West
Split up on a dark sad night
Both agreeing it was best

She turned around to look at him
As he was walkin’ away
She said this can’t be the end
“We’ll meet again someday on the avenue”

Tangled Up In Blue

“So much of the story,” Conniff writes, “is in the rich, vivid, and active verbs. It’s something you can find in almost any Dylan song.”

Of course, it ain’t like no other songwriter has ever talked about verbs before.

“When you’re writing a song,” said Chuck Berry, “nouns and verbs will carry you right through.”

UPDATE (9/20/2024): A reader sent me this Calvin & Hobbes cartoon about “verbing”:

Filed under: Verbs.

Today is the release of Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr.’s monograph Citizen Printer. 

In the foreword to the book, I write:

Kennedy’s work is evidence of the head, the heart, and the hands together at play. His is a physical process, done by a human body in time and space with the real materials of ink and chipboard and wood and machinery, pressing them all together into something new. In this digital age, it’s inspiring to see someone using their digits. Among the many images in this book that bring me joy, my favorite might be the photograph of his ink-stained hands… To hold a thing in my hands that he’s made with his hands makes me want to make things with my hands.

You can read the whole foreword in today’s newsletter, “A Man of Letters.”