Tag: Austin Kleon

Liked Love what you do in front of the kids in your life by Austin Kleon
Want your kids to read more? Let them see you reading every day. Want your kids to practice an instrument? Let them see you practicing an instrument. Want your kids to spend more time outside? Let them see you without your phone. There’s no guarantee that your kids will copy your modeling, but they’ll get a glimpse of an engaged human.
Replied to A Slow Start (Austin Kleon’s weekly newsletter)
If you’re interested in songwriting, parenting, or the creative process, I recommend Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy’s memoir, Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back). I listened to him read it on audiobook, which is rare for me. (I don’t have a commute, I like reading with a pencil, I use words all day so I can’t listen to them, and I usually like taking my walks without headphones in.)
Austin, I am intrigued. Did you listen to Tweedy’s memoirs because it was read by him? I find listening to an author read their own work really compelling. For example, I not only love the way Douglas Rushkoff writes, but am grabbed by his prowess as a reader too. Although false, it makes me think I am somehow closer to the truth of the text.
Bookmarked If you want to be a writer, you have to be a reader first by Austin Kleon
It’s been said a million times — it’s one of the main points of my books Steal Like An Artist and Show Your Work! — and yet, it still seems to be controversial or confusing to young people who are starting out: If you want to be a writer, you have to be a reader first.
Austin Kleon provides a collection of quotes outlining the importance of reading before writing. It is interesting to think about this in regards to J. Hillis Miller’s argument that reading itself is an act of writing:

As we read we compose, without thinking about it, a kind of running commentary or marginal jotting that adds more words to the words on the page. There is always already writing as the accompaniment to reading.

Liked In praise of Garageband by Austin Kleon
One afternoon a few years ago when we were bored, I showed my son Owen (now 6) how to make simple tracks on his little iPad mini, and ever since then, he’s been completely obsessed with the program. He spends, on average, at least an hour a day in Garageband. (He would spend way more if we didn’t limit his screen time, and we have to, because if we don’t he gets that weird zombie recording glaze in his eyes. [Musicians will know what I’m talking about.])
Liked Close listening by Austin Kleon

Though I didn’t become a professional musician or producer or recording engineer, I like to think that this kind of exercise — studying something you love in depth — is valuable no matter what the field or the genre. The results don’t matter. When you study something so closely, in so much depth, you learn what it is to really pay attention. And paying attention is the art that builds a more meaningful and creative life.