This Week
The cold I developed while on vacation has left behind a sinus infection so I've been some level of ill for almost three weeks and I'm kind of exhausted and I can’t help but feel vacation tricked me. So I’m running slowly these days.
Two related notes:
Last week I announced two new virtual speaker mentoring sessions up for grabs. Because no one had yet signed up and because I’m running slowly these days, I pushed these back until next Friday: jenmyers.net/mentoring
This week’s newsletter will be short and heavy on self-care links. Take the hint. (This is a message to myself.)
One unrelated note: here is a baby porcupine eating a gourd.
Links
An oral history of the making of Hustlers.
John Waters’s Criterion closet picks.
How Faber-Castell makes pencils.
The Creative Independent made a PDF zine on feeling healthy.
“‘Every culture should have a couple of outsiders bringing a message from outside of the dominant culture,’ Connors says. ‘I’d like to think there's something I too can add to the way we view the world.’” A fire lookout on what's lost in a transition to technology.
“I was surprised to find an epigraph by Agnes Martin at the start of Odell’s second chapter, which argues for the need for retreat to nature, to isolation, but then also return, back to the daily rhythms of one’s neighborhood and life, for only then is real activism and attention possible.” On line: the pulse of Agnes Martin.
“‘My class typically includes students who aren’t art majors, some of whom may never have made art before. I give them the same advice every quarter: Leave yourself twice as much time as you think you need for a project, knowing that half of that may not look like “making” anything at all. There is no Soylent version of thought and reflection — creativity is unpredictable, and it simply takes time. It can be hard for them to accept that, since they are steeped in a mind-set of productivity hacks.’” It’s taken me the better part of two years to consciously learn this lesson. On slowing down.
Reading/Watching/Listening
I have it in mind to write a longer piece on Hustlers. So for right now I’ll keep my review to: fuck yeah.
In the recent Hold Steady album fuss, I realized I somehow I had missed the newest album from the band’s frontman Craig Finn, I Need a New War, earlier this year. It’s the third of his solo album trilogy, all of which is good listening.
Be good to yourself.
Love,
Jen
Connections
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Today’s quote is from Seneca.