Welcome back to Rising Tide, the weekly digest of things I’ve discovered or been into this past week and consider worth sharing. Enjoy!
1. Look at the ordinary, and see the extraordinary.
2. California Typewriter is an insightful and “all the feels” kind of documentary, covering everything from typewriters themselves to the creative process, and more. (It’s on Hulu.)
Read Royal Road Test too.
It was too directly bound to its own anguish to be anything other than a cry of negation ; carrying within itself, the seeds of its own destruction.
– Edward Ruscha, Royal Road Test
With that, my birthday is coming up in a couple months, so I’m accepting any of the following as gifts:
- Smith Corona Silent
- Smith Corona Skyriter
- Hermes 2000
3. Do your best work by prioritizing Always, Sometimes, Never.
4. Bob Dylan turned 78 yesterday! NPR asked,
My answer:
- You Ain’t Going Nowhere
- Man Gave Names to All the Animals
- Shelter From the Storm
- anything from the Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid Soundtrack
- …too many more to mention here!
What are some of your favorites?
5. Choose fun over success and legacy.
Don’t look up to somebody just because they’re successful. You should mistrust your culture. You should mistrust, I think, the people who dominate the cultural hierarchy, because they may be in place for the wrong reasons. So I don’t look up to successful artists, and I don’t look up to successful designers. I just look to people who are doing things that somehow grab my attention and I might be interested in.
Success has a lot to do with what you have access to and how you use it. If you’re healthy, you’re halfway there. If you have the benefit of some family and friends who are supportive, you’re another halfway home. And then if, economically, you have the possibility of eating and being housed somehow, you’re in a very small minority of the population.
– Sheila Hicks
6. Own it, like Bo Diddley.
7. And, per the usual, here is some music:
8. Ever wonder how I make my weekly playlist?
That’s it for this week! Until next time…