To begin at the beginning. No, hang on, that opener's already been used (and if this gets made into an audio book, Richard Burton isn't available, dammit). So. Let's just jump right in where we are.
'So what?' you may ask. 'I don't know' is the answer, but it might be fun to figure it out together. Richard Herring publishes a blog post every day, primarily, he says, as an exercise. On Tuesday last he wrote:
Sometimes writing the blog feels like a waste of time (I would have wasted it [in] any case), but it has proved invaluable so many times and whenever I dip back into the past I will find something that I have actually totally forgotten. Hopefully when I am old and senile they can just project it into my brain so that I know who I was. Or, if they’re kind, they will project the blog of someone more interesting in so I can pretend to be them.
Doing a thing for its own sake seems appealing. And achievable. Maybe it's lockdown, but only things that are done for their own sake seem achievable right now (cf. Duolingo Dutch; I mean, a brief chat with a 12-year-old in the back streets of Groeningen will confirm they
possess a better grasp of English linguistics than the average native speaker, so the ability to proficiently declaim "de olifant is onzeker over zijn tenen" is of limited utility). But perhaps unforeseen benefits will emerge.
A heads up: there is a very real danger of this becoming an Austin Kleon fansite, as, invariably, whatever idea is floating around, he's had something to say about it. ('Start a blog' is on his checklist of things to do next at the end of Steal Like An Artist.) Kleon considers his writing not as a mere vehicle for opinions, but as a means of discovering what he's got to say. He's learnt 'to embrace this kind of not-knowing'.
Every time I start a new post, I never know for sure where it’s going to go. This is what writing and making art is all about: not having something to say, but finding out what you have to say. It’s thinking on the page or the screen or in whatever materials you manipulate.
This nature table can be a place for found things. They can be laughed at, admired, researched, ignored. It doesn't matter. For me, it's the picking up that's the important bit.
Austin Kleon has a lot to say on newspaper blackout work, mainly patiently reiterating how he absolutely stole the idea and has never claimed it as his own, but also that it is fun, quick and surprising, 'like if the CIA did haikus'. I like it as an easy practice that throws up a lot of nonsense, but also unexpected avenues of thought. It can be the way to start small here.
Question of the week: What is the equivalent of 'observant' for being good at listening? There ought to be a word. (I hesitate to suggest there will be a German word for it, but if there isn't, can someone who knows this actually useful language please make one up?)
Tot straks!
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