But This Is Wondrous Strange, Week 1
It Begins
Hallo! This is the first newsletter of the new year, and dare I say the new decade, despite what many pedants—and to be sure, I'm often one of those—would say. What should I write?
What It Was Be Damned, It Is What It Is
I spent a few years, since November 2017, writing a more or less daily blog. It was a good discipline, and valuable for that alone. Discipline is what turns talent into productive craft and leads to better art. But it wasn't that hard to bang something out at the last minute. And by that I mean it's not a challenge nor a sustainable practice, in my opinion. A regular discipline is artistically demanding and fulfilling, as opposed to a mere obligation.
I'm an inveterate procrastinator, and "last minute" has begun to seem like it's not going anywhere. There are lots of art advice blogs and feeds out there, and the world doesn't need more of that. It was the easiest thing to churn out when I didn't know what to say, and I think it's time to steer toward a more personal experience of artmaking and worldviews. Also, it only rarely felt like a personal voice. As one of teh gays, I see lots of new voices and faces, and I've been feeling remiss in lack of expressing that part of who I am. I'm making that a prominent outpost in 2020. I wanted to switch to a different, more thoughtful format for this arbitrary new time marker. So here we are.
The Radar and What's On It
I consume quite a lot of stuff, music, text, and video, but here are some mainstays that I'm trying to pay more attention too. Austin Kleon's sons are 7 and 4, and they have fascinating artistic expression, as most kids do. Owen makes music, Jules draws. A lot. Drawing inspiration from kids is invigorating. They just make stuff without regard for likes, comments, applause, or favorites. Putting art into the world is valuable, in my opinion. You should be working first because you want to, need to, and the rest is an afterthought. That's my guide star for 2020 and beyond.
Delightful Discoveries
I listen to a lot of music, and I'm surprised and invigorated by how much of it I love. Here's some of what's tickling my muse currently:
- Juliana Hatfield's fantastic album of covers of The Police songs
- JH is a longtime stan of mine, always intriguing and heartfelt. Her choices of which songs to cover are as fascinating as her interpretations are wonderful.
- An aside; Only Everything, an album that fueled many an hour of drawing in 1995, is as near perfect to my ears as anything that came out of that fertile 90s indie rock banquet. Hatfield starts out with a roar, then turns introspective and nuanced as each track progresses.
- Moon Tooth - Crux
- Four Tet's ever-evolving public playlist
- King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard - Infest the Rat's Nest
- Always weird, but never boring, the mercurial—peripatetic?—Aussie band taps 80s thrash metal for their latest album, and it's both relevant and true to its forbears. Early Metallica meets climate activism.
Stuff to Be Consumed
It's a little distasteful to put it in terms of "the market," but there are plenty of media things I think are worth sharing. Bojack Horseman continues to be a superb study of existential crisis through the lens of Hollywood pampered privilege. For those of us plagued by depression and self-destructive tendencies, it can be hard to watch. But it's deftly written, and imbued with a razor sharp sense of humor that's essential for anyone who finds modern existence absurd.
The Mandalorian's first episode is fun, but that's as far as I've gotten in the series. There are a couple of immediacies to recommend it. First and foremost is Ludwig Göransson's masterful score. It's a to-the-minute combo of EDM and symphonic soundtrack. Also of note is its ability to instantly communicate that it's basically a space western. Shades of Morricone and John Ford are inherent from the beginning, and once I grasped that framing, I abandoned any other expectations.
It's a little frustrating that so much work worth viewing or reading or hearing is out there, but such is the cornucopia of our times.
I'm working my way through Tim Maughan's Infinite Detail, which is a terrifyingly plausible near-future novel, but I'm eternally distracted by current events. One of the things I've resolved to change this year is my ratio of in-the-moment text trying to grab my attention vs. staid old media like books. But the latter are where we absorb ideas and formulate our own, whereas social media feeds and the 60 minute news cycle (RIP 24 Hours) are merely insubstantial, transitory distractions.
PS
I don't mind admitting I'm addicted to streams of posts from people I follow on social media. Instagram, Twitter, Reddit. I gave up Facebook after the 2016 election, when it seemed irredeemably toxic. And yet, I still can't shake the urge to check the Trump-outrage-of-the-moment daily, and its counterpart, r/aww, an endless river of cute to sopoforically push back the anxiety of feeling resignation or despair. Neither of these extremes satisfies, like a bag of Cheetos or a handful of gummy bears, and I'm ever hopeful I can track my gradual disconnection from such junk food of the internet. We'll see, right?
Thanks for engaging, I like you.