Posts Tagged ‘Austin Kleon’
“The commonplace is miraculous if rightly seen”*…
… and used. Consider, for example, this affecting example of literary collage from Jez Burrows…
The valley was enclosed by rugged peaks, security fencing and annihilative firepower—a state secret. Nothing for miles around. They sat opposite one another they sat in the shade of a tree.
“Repeat the words after me: A fish is an animal.”
“A fish is an animal.”
“A cow is an animal.”
“A cow is an animal.”
“We go to the zoo to see the animals.”
“We go to the zoo to see the animals.” She nodded in affirmation.
“Very good.”
“Very good.” She looked up with an absent smile and burst out laughing. Its mouth snapped into a tight, straight line and there was a fraught silence. Her body tensed up.
“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to insult you!” She leaned forward to take its hand and a cross-current of electricity seemed to flow between them. She felt guilty now, and a little uneasy. She looked at it warily, this naive, simple creature, with its straightforward and friendly eyes so eager to believe appearances—a shimmering evanescent bubble of cycloid scales and yellow fur agleam in the sun. Circuitry that Karen could not begin to comprehend. Since Parker’s research did not pan out too well, now she was the linchpin of the experiment. Her voice wobbled dangerously, but she brought it under control.
“I’m really sorry if I hurt your feelings.”
To her astonishment, it smiled and emitted a sound like laughter. She felt an inward sense of relief.
“I want an apple.”
“When you ask for something you should say, ‘Please.’”
“Please give me an apple.” It rolled the word around its mouth. She smiled distantly.
“I’ll think about it, amigo.”
Collins COBUILD Primary Learner’s Dictionary
Collins English Dictionary
Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary
My First Dictionary
New Oxford American Dictionary
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
More very short stories composed of example sentences from dictionaries: “Dictionary Stories” from @jezburrows.
Apposite: Austin Kleon‘s newspaper blackout poetry. For example…
(Image at top: source)
* Charles Simic
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As we juxtapose, we might send carefully constructed birthday greetings to Gertrude Stein; she was born on this date in 1874. An American ex-pat in Paris, Stein was an author, poet, and memoirist (The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas). But she is probably best remembered as the host of a Paris salon where the leading figures of modernism in literature and art– including Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Ezra Pound, Sherwood Anderson, and Henri Matisse– regularly met.
Hemingway described her role as both a host and a mentor to a generation of artists in in A Moveable Feast. The Mother of Us All was the title of a Virgil Thomson opera for which Stein wrote the libretto. While the subject of the opera, Susan B. Anthony, certainly deserves the epithet, so, many have observed, did its author.
“Man, sometimes it takes a long time to sound like yourself”*…
Ian Leslie on why we need to take control of our influences and what we can learn from artists about how to do so…
We live in age of social influence, and while there is no shortage of advice on how to take advantage of that – how to influence others, how to build a following, how to change minds – there is a dearth of thinking on how to be influenced. Which is odd, because that seems, to me, to be one of the key questions of the age…
Being influenced by others is inevitable and essential. But it’s also true that when we over-conform to influences, we surrender individuality. We get infected by harmful behaviours: smoking, anorexia, even suicide are all subject to social influence. We swallow conspiracy theories and false beliefs. We become mindless creatures of habit unable to imagine new possibilities. Conforming to influence can generate anxiety: we become worried that we’re not conforming well enough. There are externalities to be considered, too. Over-conformity is a kind of free-riding. The over-conformer takes from the shared pot of memes but fails to contribute to it. A society with too much imitation is liable to decay and degenerate, because it stops creating, thinking and innovating.
Each of us, then, has to try and strike a balance. Be impervious to social influence and you get closed off from the best that your fellow humans have to offer. Be defenceless against it and you become easily manipulable, boring, and unhappy.
But it’s harder than ever to strike this balance, because we live in societies where influence is everywhere, pressing upon us from all sides. We can instantly find out what strangers think, or at least what they say they’re thinking, on any given topic. We can consult with our friends every second of the day. It’s easier to outsource your opinions than ever; it feels good, it feels safe, to side with a crowd. There are higher costs to non-conformity, too: online communities assiduously police the boundaries of acceptable thought and behaviour…
… on the one hand, we have access to a broader range of information and insight than any generation in history, which ought to make us all more interesting. On the other, it’s very difficult, amidst the crossfire hurricane of influence, to think and act for yourself – to be you.
I could leave it there, with the conclusion that we’re all being influenced all the time and we’re not remotely prepared for how to manage these influences, and that maybe we should think about that a little more. But I want to add this: that there is a group of people who have a lot to teach us about how to live in the age of influence, because they have confronted this question with a special intensity for hundreds of years.
Artists (in the broad sense – painters, novelists, composers, etc) are pretty much defined by the struggle to be themselves; to absorb influences without surrendering to them; to be open to others and stubbornly individual. Consequently, artists have a different relationship to influence than the rest of us do. The core difference is this: artists do not absorb their influences passively. They choose their influences, and they choose how to be influenced by them…
Read on for sound advice: “How To Be Influenced,” from @mrianleslie via @TheBrowser.
Apposite: “The Age of Algorithmic Anxiety,” from @chaykak
* Miles Davis
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As we steal like an artist, we might recall that it was on this date in 1790 that the first U.S. patent was issued to Samuel Hopkins for an improvement “in the making of Potash and Pearlash by a new Apparatus and Process.” It was signed by then-President George Washington.
A number of inventors had been clamoring for patents and copyrights (which were, of course, anticipated in Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the Constitution), but the first session of the First Congress in 1789 acted on none of the petitions. On January 8, 1790, President Washington recommended in his State of the Union address that Congress give attention to the encouragement of new and useful inventions; and within the month, the House appointed a committee to draft a patent statute. Even then the process worked slowly: Hopkins’ patent was issued over six months later.
“Short was good in a book”*…
With the kids in the house all day I am finding it terribly hard to concentrate when reading. Hopefully you’re the opposite, and having a fine time, tackling Moby-Dick or War and Peace or Ducks, Newburyport or whatever. But, if not, here, copy and pasted from an old newsletter, are some of my favorite short books:
Novellas:
- Tove Jansson, The Summer Book
- Denis Johnson, Train Dreams
- Nathanael West, Miss Lonelyhearts
- Jenny Offill, Dept. of Speculation
Short stories:
- Joy Williams, Ninety-Nine Stories of God
- David Eagleman, Sum: Forty Tales of the Afterlives
Lectures:
- Ursula Franklin, The Real World of Technology
- Italo Calvino, Six Memos for the Next Millennium.
Memoir:
- Eve Babitz, Slow Days, Fast Company
- Joe Brainard, I Remember
- Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts
Poetry:
- T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
- Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching (Ursula K Le Guin translation)
- A.R. Ammons, Tape for the Turn of the Year
Comics:
- Eleanor Davis, You & a Bike & a Road
- James Sturm, Market Day
Art:
- John Berger, Ways of Seeing
- Walter Murch, In The Blink of an Eye
Staying sane:
- Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves To Death
- Alan Jacobs, How To Think
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Biography:
- Stefan Zweig, Montaigne
- Nathaniel Philbrick, Why Read Moby-Dick?
Essays:
- Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments
- Donald Hall, Essays Over Eighty
- Robert Louis Stevenson, An Apology for Idlers
- Montaigne, On Solitude
- Elisa Gabbert, The Word Pretty
You could read many of these in a single afternoon. Happy reading!
(Buy from your local bookstore or Bookshop if you can.)
Characteristically-good advice from the estimable Austin Kleon (@austinkleon): “Short was good in a book.”
* Charles Portis, Gringo
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As we concentrate on the compact, we might send charming birthday greetings to Ludwig Bemelmans; he was born on this date in 1898. An author, illustrator, and artist, he is best known for his six Madeline picture books.
In an old house in Paris, that was covered with vines, lived twelve little girls in two straight lines… the smallest one was Madeline…
“If you fake the funk, your nose will grow”*…
Prince would get mad when people called his music magical: “Funk is the opposite of magic. Funk is about rules.”
Here’s Bootsy Collins laying down the #1 rule of funk: Keep it on the one…
Collins learned about The One from his former bandleader James Brown. Collins thought he was “killin’ ’em” with all his wild playing, but Brown set him straight:
“Son, give me the one. You give me the one, you can do all those other things.” So, I started to understand: If I give you the one, I can do all these other crazy things.” James Brown was the one that told me: “Son, you need to give me the one.” […] He didn’t know the power of that. That changed my whole life. Once I learned where the one was at? It was on.”…
Austin Kleon on the musical maxim that is also a life lesson: “Keep it on The One.”
* Bootsy Collins
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As we return to first principles, we might recall that it was on this date in 1977 that The Fonz jumped a shark on Happy Days, introducing– and immortalizing– the phrase “jumping the shark” as a metaphor for something past its peak, trying too hard.
“The bad artists imitate, the great artists steal”*…
Here, via the Economist, a wonderful preview of the (broadly applicable) ideas that animate Austin Kleon‘s upcoming book:
* Pablo Picasso (or was it…?)
As we apprehend appropriate appropriation, we might wish a harmonious Happy Birthday to Aaron Copland; the composer, writer, teacher, and conductor was born on this date in 1900. To Austin’s insights above, it’s worth noting that Copland’s best-known composition, “Appalachian Spring,” relied centrally on the “stolen” Shaker hymn, “Simple Gifts.”
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