Austin Kleon - Can we pretend?

Hey y’all,

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

1. I made 30 zines in the first four weeks of quarantine. Here they all are, together, along with tips for making your own.
    
2. I’m reading S.C. Gwynne’s Empire of the Summer Moon in bed and May Sarton’s Journal of a Solitude at the kitchen table. (If you’re having trouble focusing on reading, I made a list of my favorite short books you could finish in an afternoon.)
    
3. Tips from someone with 50 years of social distancing experience.
    
4. Interviews with quarantine icons: Larry David, Fran Lebowitz, and David Hockney.
    
5. I wrote about how weird it is to keep your distance from world while never being closer to the people you live with.
    
6. “One of the things it’s easiest to forget about children is that they are aliens recently descended from another planet.” 
    
7. I never really understood the appeal of Weird Al Yankovic, but this wonderful profile by Sam Anderson changed that. (Sam’s book Boom Town was on my list of favorite reads last winter. I also made the collage at the top of this newsletter for him.) 
    
8. Eye candy: The Letterform Archive is now online and Gary Hustwit is streaming his new documentary about designer Dieter Rams for free.
    
9. Ear candy: I’m working to the new Nine Inch Nails ambient albums. (I particularly like Ghosts V: Together.)
    
10. RIP Bill Withers. (“Can we pretend / the pain is gone / and go our merry way?”)