Friday, March 19, 2021

You have to be obsessed

In this week's newsletter: positive obsession, books, music, movies, and more...

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A newsletter from the desk of Austin Kleon
a colorful collage made of tape and magazines

Hey y'all,

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

  1. You have to be obsessed
     
  2. Books: I finished Octavia L. Butler's Parable of the Sower, which is terrifying, in that it feels like we're living the prequel, and Dave Hickey's Perfect Wave, which is not his best book (hard to beat Air Guitar), but contains some really great essays. I finally picked up a copy of Christoph Niemann's Pianoforte, which is about learning to play the piano.  (I put it on top of my piano for inspiration.)
     
  3. A drawing workshop with Lynda Barry
     
  4. TV: I'm late to the party, but I'm loving Steven Soderbergh's The Knick and Cliff Martinez's soundtrack. (If you have Apple Books, there's a Show Your Work! style book about the production, The Knick: Anatomy of a Series.)
     
  5. Movies: It's weird how you can sleep on certain works by your favorite artists. Paul Thomas Anderson's adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice came out in in 2014 when we had a 2-year-old and wouldn't have paid for 3 hours of babysitting, but we finally caught it and really liked it! We chased it with Orson Welles' The Lady from Shanghai
     
  6. Music: Billy Nomates' new EP, Emergency Telephone. (Made in her shed!)
     
  7. Questions nobody asked me about one bad year.
     
  8. Even if I didn't have kids, I'd still watch City of Ghosts, a beautiful animated Netflix show in which kids go around Los Angeles interviewing ghosts and learning about their city. (I love it there and miss visiting.) My boys and I also watched The Sword in the Stone, which I don't rank quite as highly as Disney's Robin Hood, but has the same chill pace.
     
  9. A good laugh: Richard E. Grant asks Elton John if he can write a song out of oven instructions. Elton obliges
     
  10. An update on the owls in our backyard.
Thanks for reading. This newsletter is free, but not cheap. To show your support, you can forward it to someone who'd like it, read my books, shop for some of my favorite gear (I get a cut), or buy a t-shirt.

If you're seeing this newsletter for the first time, you can read previous issues and subscribe here.

xoxo, 

Austin
a drawing of owls
Austin Kleon

Austin Kleon is the author of Steal Like An Artist and other books.

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