The 10th anniversary gift edition of STEAL LIKE AN ARTIST.
📚 first time in hardcover
🔎 bigger trim size
💅 fancy ribbon bookmark & endpapers
🔭 new afterword
Get it now:
I wish I had learned this a little earlier: The point of any real relationship, and any real collaboration, is to go somewhere neither of you could go alone.
“As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people... On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
–H.L. Mencken
As someone who’s worked from home for the past 8 years I recommend:
1) wearing a robe with pockets for your pencil and notebook
2) a long walk in the middle of the day to contemplate how beautiful life is and how much working in an office sucks ass
3) buying good coffee beans
I have a rule that serves me well: Don’t think too much about your life after dinnertime. It's a recipe for despair. Everything looks better in the light of the morning. Cliché, maybe, but it works.
HOW TO BE HAPPY
(notes to myself)
1. Read old books.
2. Go for long walks.
3. Play the piano.
4. Make art with small children.
5. Watch screwball comedies.
6. Listen to soul music.
7. Write in your diary.
8. Take naps.
9. Look at the moon.
10. Make dumb lists.
To all my talented friends: please think about going back to a simple blog or newsletter that you update at a regular frequency. It would be so nice to meet your thoughts and words and images on your own turf, in a simple, peaceful context again. This site is no place to be.
How to teach kids to read:
1. Read to them
2. Read to them
3. Read to them
4. Let them see you reading
5. Cover every surface of the house with books
6. Let audiobooks read to them
7. Turn captioning on the TV
8. Read to them
9. Read to them
10. Read to them
DOOKIE is 25 years old. I can’t tell you what a huge impact this record had on me when I heard it. (Age 12?) Made me want to learn guitar and start a band. (And I did!) thanks
@GreenDay
Ray Bradbury’s advice for being more creative
Every night read:
- one short story
- one poem
- one essay
Do that for a thousand nights and you’ll be stuffed full of ideas
Reading books is one of the few enjoyable, inexpensive, inexhaustIble activities you can do on your own, in private, without hurting anyone, and somehow we’ve managed to attach all sorts of rules and hangups to it
It's not hard to be an artist, you just have to dedicate every single day of your life to it and be ready for the universe's indifference or downright hostility
NBD
“The antidote to envy is one's own work. Always one's own work. Not the thinking about it. Not the assessing of it. But the doing of it...”
—Bonnie Friedman, WRITING PAST DARK
RIP Laura Helen Wilson Davis, my grandma, who died this morning of complications from COVID-19.
Today I will listen to big band music, watch Astaire & Rogers dance, play the piano, and dream of her fried chicken and apple pie.
Here she is with my son, Owen, in better days:
Something I’ve noticed out in the world right now: basic pleasantries seem to be a superlubricant when dealing with anyone in the service industry. Your average person must just be an unbelievable asshole?
“Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.”
—Andy Warhol
“When I write a song and release it to the public, I feel it stops being my song.”
Nick Cave is so SANE on the “art” vs. “artist” thing (and other things, too):
Elon Musk on public transit: "It’s a pain in the ass. That’s why everyone doesn’t like it. And there’s like a bunch of random strangers, one of who might be a serial killer, OK, great."
“I want to keep the assholes in my life to an absolute minimum, if not zero. That’s worth real, real money — to not have assholes in your life.”
—Anthony Bourdain
“Real wealth is never having to spend time with assholes.”
—John Waters
I feel like we were given this cultural chance to just shut it down and take a minute pause catch breath gape into the void a bit and instead we’ve rushed to fill the void with livestreams and podcasts and zooms calls and more shit I’m supposed to keep track of?
Every time I see this meme — which seems to be everywhere — it bugs me seeing my words out of context.
So I fixed it.
Everyone deserves time to do nothing.
An idea I’ve been toying with for 2023:
THE YEAR WITHOUT STREAMING.
No Spotify, no Netflix, no nothing.
Just record stores and physical media and trips to the library.
I went to a museum today and asked for a map and was informed that they had gone “paperless” and I could scan a QR code… to get a PDF of the paper map. Small thing, but it just felt like one more example of how stupid the world has become.
We don’t have internet or furniture in our new house yet so at night all we do is talk and drink beer and play checkers and go to bed at 10PM and honestly I’ve never felt so good
“perfect all of your memories” is wild on many levels but it also misunderstands what photographs do for us over time: the thing you think is ugly or boring in a photograph now will be the most interesting thing later (something
@claytoncubitt
taught me)
Can I make a gentle suggestion?
Instead of saying, “Glad I’m not trying to raise a kid right now,” say something like, “Godspeed to anyone trying to raise a kid right now.” We need the encouragement.
Also? You ARE raising my kids. You’re making the world they’re growing up in.
Many claim that writing is about having something to say and sharing it with the world.
No, that is *publishing.*
Writing is about finding out what you have to say.
It is the art of finding what you didn’t know you were looking for.
This puts eloquently and beautifully a major thing I was unequipped for as a parent: how your kids dredge up all the things you’d tamped down in yourself.
Two boys were born in Pittsburgh in 1928. One was poor, one was rich. Both had sickly childhoods. One was devoutly Catholic, the other became a Presbyterian minister. Both of them took the popular mediums of the late 20th century and changed American culture.
My six-year-old just announced, “I finally know what to do! For the first time in my life!”
Then he got off the couch, walked into the kitchen, and came back with a box of raisins.