Austin Kleon - All good things must begin

Hey y’all,

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

1. Octavia Butler wrote, “All good things must begin.” And, so, I’ve begun. Here’s how I plan to spend the next 100 days.
    
2. At the kitchen table this week I read Essays in Idleness and Hōjōki, two wonderful works of the Zuihitsu genre. (Imagine reading the blogs of medieval Japanese monks.) Essays in Idleness reminded me a lot of the fragmentary, writing-to-one’s-self quality of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, a book that Zadie Smith says inspired Intimations, her forthcoming collection of short essays written in the first days of quarantine.
    
3. I’m halfway through Stefan Zweig’s memoir, The World of Yesterday, and I can’t remember the last time I was so swept up by a book. (I’d previously only read his wonderful short biography of Montaigne.)
    
4. If you need some summer reading, I made a list of 10 good books I read this spring.
    
5. I was terribly sad to see that Andy Goldsworthy’s Spire was damaged in a suspected arson. His works in the Presidio mean a lot to me. It strikes me that his work, which is, among other things, about nature and impermanence, could be very healing these days. Like the best art, his work changes how you see. (And it inspired many lakeside sculptures during our Lake Erie sabbatical.) A re-watch of Rivers and Tides might be in order.
    
6. Parents: it was a rough week for our kiddos, but we got by with endless episodes of Floor Is Lava and What’s On My Butt?
    
7. The Bears are back and summer is saved a little better. (Related: “Ideas are like fish.”)
    
8. Ear candy: I’ve been listening to Bob Dylan’s latest album, and it is very, very good. The man is almost 80-years-old! Heck, I remember listening to Time Out of Mind in high school and thinking it was a perfect swan song. That was 23 years ago! Incredible. (I love thinking about him at his Malibu estate, welding iron gates.) Here’s a rare, recent interview with the NYTimes.
    
9. Eye candy: I hadn’t seen The Grand Budapest Hotel since it came out over half a decade ago, and it’s just great. Here’s Wes Anderson on how Stefan Zweig inspired the film. (I dug out Annie Atkin’s book afterwards to read about the prop design.)
    
10. Learn to be alone.