Things fall apart
Sam Neill on imposter syndrome, Venetian bridge brawls, Tish Murtha at the Baltic, Robert Smith’s eighties, etc.
Hello hello, here are some things.
Sam Neill on tackling depression and imposter syndrome when you’re between jobs:
“Most people are between jobs. What are you between jobs? And if you think of yourself as an actor, and you’re not actually acting, you’re kind of no one. This is how it’s possible to see yourself. The way out of that is to actually separate yourself from your profession. That’s what I do, that’s not what I am. I do acting but I’m not an actor. I don’t think of myself as an actor actually.”
He was talking about acting, but it’s absolutely the same in any freelance job. The idea of being on 24/7 is exceedingly unhealthy. As Austin Kleon says in Keep Going: forget the noun, do the verb.
Bit of a tangent, but while we’re celebrating Neill … is Jurassic Park the only film that product-places its own making-of book?
Mister Rogers visits Eric Carle’s studio and paints with him. WHOLESOME. And a few more from the ever-dependable Kottke and his fine hypertext-harvesting ways: Venetian bridge brawls in 17th and 18th century art; what if chess had an offside rule?; the many lives of medieval wound man.
Close to Home – a new landmark exhibition of documentary photographer Tish Murtha’s work at the Baltic, alongside a newly commissioned work by Newcastle–based artist Kuba Ryniewicz.
Elizabeth Goodspeed on a fantastic haul of DIY VHS labels, and her love for design by non-designers:
“When I tell people this, they usually think I’m talking about punk flyers, or the kind of sweetly naive drawings of fruit that one might find in a church cookbook. While I do love both of these things, and other things like them, this is not what I’m talking about when I say “design made by non-designers.” What I have in mind is far more banal—something closer to visual debris, the less-than-ephemera produced by ordinary people during the course of their daily life. Manila folders scrawled with Sharpie, post-it note grocery lists, WordArt on printer paper (ideally stuffed into a frosted binder sleeve and taped to the side of a bodega freezer). If cookbook marginalia is akin to folk art, this stuff is closer to outsider art—information delivered by people with absolutely zero formal design training besides the odd elementary school typing class.”
Tom Gauld’s cover designs for a series of highbrow literary novels.
Robert Smith’s favourite songs of the eighties. A delightfully varied selection, including Yoko Ono, Mel and Kim, Psychedelic Furs, Chaka Khan, and – a new discovery for me – Cristina’s festive banger Things Fall Apart. The post has a Spotify playlist, but I’ve recreated it in Apple Music if that’s more your thing.
Ooh this looks like a handy listicle: twenty brilliant books you can read in a day. Of course with all the distractions, so many distractions, one day may be a tad wishful thinking, but I like the sentiment.
I’ve been trying out Pith sketchbooks, as recommended by the fabulous Ian McQue. So far: NICE. The exposed binding and resulting lay-flatiness is a particularly nice feature.
Behold the work of Romanian/Spanish TV producer Valerio Lazarov, behind a number of music TV specials on Spanish TV in the 70s. Expect crazy video effects, dancing with kittens, Demis Roussos flying through the air on a champagne cork, somebody giving birth to a can of film, the absolute works.
That is all.
…oh one more thing, just because I want to try out buttondown’s survey tool thingy and this seemed as good a question as any:
