a notebook is a place
we are all just dogs on the escalator of life
A while ago I wrote about Jacques Cousteau and the importance of having a daily practice as an artist, something I wanted to do, but couldn’t find a way in.
When I wrote a tiny song everyday in 2021 I had a daily practice, but it was also a very time-consuming one. In my newsletter I wrote,
it is a goal of mine to start and keep a proper journal this year, to have a regular notebook which is fed by daily scribblings and lyric ideas and boring stuff and collected, collaged ephemera from everyday life. i will let you know how i get on.
Well, friends, I think I’m on the right track. I currently have a beautiful notebook which was once pristine and is now sporting a beat-up look, which is filling up nicely with words and doodles and observations.
My notebook inspirations are Austin Kleon and Lynda Barry. Kleon is a self-titled “writer who draws,” and has created a whole series of systems around his notebooks. Some of my favourite aspects of his practice is his notebook guardian, a picture that he places on the first page of the book; and his weighing of the book before and after he’s filled it.
Lynda Barry is a artist, cartoonist and writer who really got me going with my current practice in my book. She says that a notebook should be a place, rather than an object. I like the idea of knowing that, if I'm not sure where to go, I can go to my notebook.
Her book Making Comics helped me realise that drawing weird crappy drawings and writing down what I see and hear every day can create a wonderful bank of ideas. And more than that, it helps me use my creative brain every day so it stays sharp. Here is an exercise which I try to do every day in my book:
I have kept diaries in the past. My longest stretch was when I was a teenager — I wrote from 2005 to 2009. I bounced back in when I was a student, and also at various points in my twenties, but as my life became less and less about boys and more and more about… existential crises, the less of an interest I had in writing (who would!?). I think Lynda Barry puts it succinctly when she says that diaries can often either be “an obituary-like recounting of events or a hampster wheel of feelings of worry or dissatisfaction about our relationships with other people.” She’s not wrong.
I think keeping a diary to help me write songs is good, but often I don’t need to access the emotional content of my life gone by for creative purposes. I’m not gonna open a notebook and read “I didn’t sleep very well last night and I’m not sure what I’m gonna do today” and think WOW THE MUSE HAS STRUCK. This is what’s good about this daily diary of observations — it’s more about the strange or beautiful moments in ordinary life which come and go, and then when we take that scene or moment, when we write about it, we then infuse it with emotion.
What I’m saying is, you wouldn’t want to write a song about feeling uncertain about the future by just writing the lyrics, “I feel uncertain about the future.” But if you looked at your diary and saw that you observed a dog in the subway who gets picked up by its owner every time they get on the escalator, then maybe you start writing about that and then it becomes about uncertainty and the future, because you could be the dog wondering if the owner expects you to walk off the escalator when it reaches the top, or will they pick you up again and help you get off? We’re all just moving through life like dogs on escalators. And so your song/poem/art becomes something much more succinct and vibrant that way. I mean, maybe it’s an odd example, but you get the point.
How do you keep your notebook?
things i liked
✶ I went to see Fire of Love, the documentary film about Maurice and Katia Krafft, a volcanologist couple that travelled the world, chasing volcanic eruptions and collecting data. Naturally, I loved it.
✶ Two paintings I really liked by Henk Pander, this first one of Mt. St. Helens erupting:
✶ And this one of a burning ship
✶ Also I’m loving the work by Romanian artist, Rada Niţă Josan
✶ These beautiful aquatic drawings by Anna-Laura:
✶ New Jupiter just dropped:
Would you go into space? Like, if some mysterious suit came up to you a la X-Files and said, “I need to send you, an ordinary civilian, into space. For secret reasons,” would you go?
I remember going to a fancy dress party where you had to dress up as your worst fear and I went as an astronaut. Because a combination of claustrophobia, travel sickness and general anxiety and sense of doom probably doesn’t mix well with space travel.
I do love a good sci-fi novel though, and a terrible space movie. The other week I watched Moonfall, which is basically the premise of “what if the moon fell down?” It had some really good lines like, “The world needs you, Brian. You’re the key to our moon’s knowledge.”
But if someone could bottle up what it would feel like to see Jupiter from that angle, then I would take it. One day someone is gonna be the first person to see it that close in real life.
Hm.
Anyway, thus ends our newsletter. I thought for this week you could all present your own prize — please comment or reply with a weird Youtube video for us all to enjoy. I’ll see ya next week!
Olivia 🥐
I love this topic! I could talk about notebooks all day... I keep multiple notebooks on the go at once, though perhaps not updating each one every day. Probably have 10 on the go at the moment. I could share that post if you like? So glad I discovered your newsletter!