“It’s very difficult to be very lazy. It takes a lot of imagination to do nothing and you have to be sufficiently self-confident not to have a bad conscience. You have to have a taste for life, so that every minute is complete in itself and so you don’t have to keep saying ‘I’ve done this or that.’ You need strong nerves to do nothing. Being lazy also means that other people’s opinions don’t matter. Nor does the idea of always having to prove yourself.”
—Françoise Sagan

“I’m a really lazy bitch, but I have a punitive superego. The two go together.”
—Colson Whitehead

“I’m pretty lazy, but I’m very disciplined.”
—Hanif Abdurraqib

“Self employment, for me at least, is a never-ending contest between the world’s worst manager and the world’s laziest employee.”
—Daniel Akst

“Nobody really cares whether you do it or not. You have to make yourself do it. I’m very lazy and I suffer as a result. Of course, when it’s going well there’s nothing in the world like it. But it’s also very lonely. If you do something you’re really pleased with, you’re in the crazy position of being exhilarated all by yourself.”
—Robert Stone

“Now relieved of the financial need to write a line for 10 years, I may discover abysses of laziness within myself and do just that.”
—John Updike, letter

“To be silent the whole day long, see no newspaper, hear no radio, listen to no gossip, be thoroughly and completely lazy, thoroughly and completely indifferent to the fate of the world is the finest medicine a man can give himself. The book-learning gradually dribbles away; problems melt and dissolve; ties are gently severed; thinking, when you deign to indulge in it, becomes very primitive; the body becomes a new and wonderful instrument; you look at plants or stones or fish with different eyes; you wonder what people are struggling to accomplish by their frenzied activities; you know there is a war on but you haven’t the faintest idea what it’s about or why people should enjoy killing one another!”
—Henry Miller

Happy Friday. Let’s get lazy.

Here’s a new mixtape, which was really inspired by me being depressed and watching Deerhunter do “Nothing Ever Happened” live in 2011 and getting really obsessed with the late Josh Fauver’s short scale bass. (The title comes from one of my favorite Bob Pollard lyrics: “I climb up on the house / weep to water the trees.”) I tried to make a sequel to last year’s “Chlorine” pool party mix, but just didn’t get there. Felt fitting to end this one with a live TV version of King Krule’s “Out Getting Ribs.” (Of course, that’s not streaming, so you’ll only hear that if you listen to the YouTube playlist or come to my studio and listen to actual mixtape.)

By the way, if you find any of these TDK D90 cassettes they are handsome as hell and sound better than normal bias usually do — I hit this one real hard with the DB at around +3 for the peaks and it sounds gooood.

Listen to the mixtape on Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube.

The latest typewriter interview is with violinist and author Vijay Gupta. A reader said he wished I’d included audio of the musical notation, but I think it’s a nice little treat for those of us who’ve spent years learning to read music. Walk yourself over to your instrument and check them out for yourself!

Mark Haddon let it slip on his Instagram that he’s working on a typewriter interview for me:

before i even get started i need to celebrate the questions which are a) some of the best i’ve ever been asked (swipe for a selection) b) arrive *in the post* and c) come with a fabulous hand-made card. three cheers for austin kleon, prince of analogue…

This delighted me, of course. One of the ways I pitch people (that is, if I have to) on the typewriter interviews is to emphasize how easy and fun they’re supposed to be: I mail you the questions, you fill them out and mail them back. That’s it!

I saw a meme the other day that said, “Stamps are stickers with a job.” That made me laugh. I truly delight in sending things through the mail. It is a kind of magic.

Another kind of magic I’m addicted to is keeping a diary by hand. I’ve just taken a look at my tour diary from last month, which covered one of the hardest couple of days I’ve had in a while, and it’s incredible how it puts me right back where I was when I made the pages.

When I was putting together the Don’t Call It Art tour talk, I decided to throw in some pages from the 10 years it took to get the book together. Those pages put me right back in those days — much more than the (many) photographs I took, actually. (You can see more in my letter, “Diary of a book.”)

Here’s a doodle of guitarist Joel Paterson I made while watching Bob Dylan in Waterloo Park. (See my letter, “The air is getting hotter.”) I can’t seem to sit through any kind of live event anymore without a little notebook and pen in my hands — but even looking at something you scribbled in the dark seems to bring you back to a time and place…

Jennifer Daniel did not accept the analog constraints of the typewriter interview, and that’s what made this one extra great.

Every Friday night around 5PM, before I’m about to make our pizza night martinis, I turn on KUTX and listen to “Old School Dance Party” — the “Happy Feet Dance Party with ever-lovin’ John E. Dee playing the music that got you in trouble.”  (More recently, Confucius Jones has been taking over as host.)

One of the things I absolutely love about Old School is that the DJs never try too hard to be hip or obscure or anything like that. Most of the tracks they play are certified bangers and stuff you’ve probably heard before. (“It’s a grown folks thang!” as John E. Dee says.)

For this month’s mixtape, I basically wanted an “Old School” episode to play poolside. I named it “In a (Summer) Funk” because summer is not an easy time around here. You got to keep your shit together, and it helps to remember the rules of Funk: “Keep it on The One.” (The artwork came from some repurposed holiday cards made by my friends at Butler.)

You can listen to the mixtape on Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube.

Filed under: mixtapes

Buy the book

Finally — finally! — after 7 years, there’s a new book of mine out in the world: Don’t Call It Art: 10 Ways to Create Like a Kid Again is now available wherever you buy books.

Don’t Call It Art is a creative liberation handbook of art lessons I learned while being a studio assistant to my two young boys. It will teach you to unlearn what you’ve learned, give yourself permission to be bad, and treat yourself with the care of a loving parent so the wild 4-year-old in you will come out and play.

Publisher’s Weekly said it’s “cheery,” “upbeat,” and “full of fun, wryly witty wisdom.”

Here’s a peek inside the book..

Hope y’all love it. (If you do, a 5-star review on Amazon or Goodreads goes a long way!)

Buy the book

My latest mixtape captures my attempt to get over the depression and anxiety that can accompany “The Gulp” in between when you finish something and finally push it out into the world. (Don’t worry, it has plenty of bops!)

It’s also the first time I’ve ever given a mixtape an epigraph. (From James Hollis’s Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life.)

You can listen to the mix on Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube.

The latest typewriter interview is with Brad Neely. Several people told me this is the best one yet.

From my letter, “Fledging season”:

I spent an afternoon scanning diaries from 2023 for a speaking gig and I came across all the spring entries from when we had owlets in our backyard owl box. I was obsessed with those owlets and I couldn’t help comparing them to the two young humans we had in our house, except the owlets developed at super speed: They hatched in April, and by this time of May they had already fledged. (To fledge is to leave the nest after you get your feathers.) Our youngest is fledging from elementary school later this month. Counting down the drop-offs we have left. Fledging season.