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Here are 10 things I thought were worth sharing this week:
“The air is getting hotter / there’s a rumbling in the skies…” My buddies and I rode our bicycles down to see Bob Dylan in Waterloo Park here in Austin, Texas on Monday, the Sarahan Dust blowin’ in the wind, birds flyin’ high by the light of the (full) moon, Mercury retrograde just like the night playin’ tricks on the bar register when you’re tryin’ to be so quiet. Bob did the whole set hooded in the back of the stage like some old blues wizard, plunkin’ on a piano, bringing the harmonica out a few times. Highlights for me were “Black Rider” and “Tryin’ to Get to Heaven.” The man is 85 years old, and, in the words of Tim Stegall in The Austin Chronicle, he “still treats the stage as a laboratory rather than a jukebox.”
“It sounds like Bob is embracing his crone phase,” is how Meg put it after I described the show on our morning walk. Here’s what Bob himself said about being (over) 80: “The best thing about being 80 is that you outlive the clocks that have been chasing you. It’s freedom from that lie that nothing was ever under control. You don’t chase the parade anymore. You’re an old king from some vanished country. You’re harder to program. You’re not rushing to become anything, and you’re not haunted by the things that you did. You’re haunted by how little of it really mattered in the way you thought it would.”
“Every professional, in order to stay fresh and have an edge, has to retain a bit of that amateur spirit that all kids have.” I swapped words and pictures with David Epstein about creating like a kid again. (He previously swapped some words and pictures with me in his typewriter interview.)
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“It’s not just about the creative process… but a creative worldview, which children so naturally have and then we, as adults, crush in ourselves and in them. In Don’t Call It Art, Kleon is drawing on kid-inspired insights to pull creatives out of a rut (and I would say to bring back your love of the game). As he does in all of his books, he communicates the essence of writing and creating art better than anyone else I can think of.” —Ryan Holiday
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Anarchist calisthenics: “Every day or so break some trivial law that makes no sense, even if it’s only jaywalking. Use your own head to judge whether a law is just or reasonable. That way, you’ll keep trim; and when the big day comes, you’ll be ready.” (Or, in the words of Wendell Berry, “Every day do something that won’t compute.”)
“Bromance is a portmanteau of bro (or brother) and romance.” I recommended five Bromance novels and asked y’all for your favorites. Kimberly made a case for Frog and Toad, and I loved that so much that after starting Gustave Flaubert’s bromance, Bouvard et Pécuchet (the Polizzotti translation), I have been picturing the titular characters as Frog and Toad, respectively. (“Why should we read Bouvard and Pécuchet? They are we, and we are they.”)
“I am an average man who doesn’t want to be average, and art allows me to express that frustration.” RIP “paintoonist” Jerry Moriarty. (The Believer has dropped the paywall on his conversation with Chris Ware.)
Another assignment for the holiday weekend, from Don’t Call It Art: “Get offline as much as possible. There’s so much input to be found in the real world outside of the internet. Go old school. Listen to radio shows. Browse the recently returned stacks at your local library. Buy weird old books at thrift shops. Visit a museum you’ve never been to. Find a good record store and chat up the clerks. Interact with real people in meatspace.”
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