Austin Kleon - A tiny triumph

Hey y’all,

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

1. Every time we make something, it’s a tiny triumph.
    
2. Earlier this week I finished Olivia Laing’s book of collected essays, Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency (her book The Lonely City was a favorite of 2016); Anne Truitt’s Daybook; and the second Alice book, Through The Looking-Glass, in The Annotated Alice, which is quite excellent. 
    
3. I’m currently reading John Berger’s exploration of drawing, Bento’s Sketchbook; an advance copy of Edward Carey’s telling of Geppetto’s time in the belly of the fish, The Swallowed Man (his novel Little was on my favorite reads of 2018); and Eleanor Perényi’s Green Thoughts: A Writer in the Garden, one of my wife’s favorite books, which I’m reading at the kitchen table. (I practice what I preach!)
    
4. I made it to 100 blind self-portraits. 
    
5. Solid advice from Emerson: “Work and learn in evil days.”
    
6. I celebrated Bob Dylan’s birthday this week by writing about his songwriting process and artistic thievery.
    
7. Eye candy: penguins visit the Nelson-Atkins (wonderful museum), how to draw the Coronavirus,  an ancient Roman mosaic floor unearthed beneath an Italian vineyard, and a seed catalog from 1893 with illustrations that resemble my Pansy Luchadores!
    
8. Ear candy: Kelli Anderson hipped me to this 1982 album by Yasuaki Shimizu called Kakashi and I basically know nothing about it but I love it. Elsewhere: Robert Moog explains synthesizers (I want a Data DUO so bad!), Richard E. Grant reads a passage from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and making glorious noise with household appliances.
    
9. TV: My wife and I rewatched the entirety of the What We Do In The Shadows TV series. It’s so funny, and it’s a show that’s essentially about the pain of having roommates for eternity, so, you know, super relevant right now. (The original movie, of course, is brilliant, too.)
    
10. A message for graduates.