Austin Kleon's Blog

Friday’s newsletter, “Typewriter, tip, tip, tip” is named after the song from the movie Bombay Talkie.  Some of my Hindi-speaking fans on Instagram got excited that I was sharing a Kishore Kumar song. I’m not that cool, I’m just old and I’ve been watching Wes Anderson movies for 20 years.

Inspired by reminiscing about shopping at Borders around the turn of the century (yes, really) I started a new thing called “Tuesday Trio,” where I will recommend one book, one record, and one movie. The first in the series is “Radioactivity.”

Last Friday’s letter, “Little Rooms,” begins:

“Great things start in little rooms.” That’s André 3000 of Outkast in his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame acceptance speech, referencing Jack White of The White Stripes, who told young artists in his acceptance speech to “get your hands dirty and drop the screens and get out in your garage or your little room and get obsessed.” In my opinion, White’s “Little Room” is the greatest song ever written about success. He...

I’ve now published a baker’s dozen of typewriter interviews! The latest is with poet Matthew Zapruder.

On Tuesday I usually take an idea or two from my pocket notebook and expand them into a long letter. But last Tuesday, I had all these half-baked ideas in my notebooks I wanted to riff on, so instead of writing one long letter, I wrote 10 little letters!

You can read them here.

Here’s another new monthly mixtape made from a sealed, pre-recorded cassette I got for 99 cents. I taped over the cassette’s protection tabs and then I taped over the music and then I taped over the artwork.

I actually snapped the tape while playing this mix back, but I managed to fix it (maybe only temporarily) with some transparent tape and an x-acto blade. Old school!

This mix exists because I wanted to build a tape off of the Time Out of Mind outt...

From my letter, “Even the moon’s frightened”:

After one week, the scariest thing about having a teenager in the house is getting emails from tech companies essentially announcing, “Congratulations on your 13-year-old — HE’S OURS NOW.” (Bo Burnham: “They’re coming for every minute of your life.”) Also: I get annoyed by people who are annoyed by teenagers, so I scribbled this note to myself on the steering wheel of my car after school drop-off…

Also: I’m putting my teenager to work! Here’s a bit ...

From my letter, “The Art of Messing Around”:

Priya [Parker] asked me if my newsletter had a title (it doesn’t) but the more I think about it, it’s funny that her book is called The Art of Gathering, because a title for this newsletter could be, The Gathering of Art. (At least, that’s what I’m trying to do.)

I’m in a big input phase right now — the heavy lifting on the next book is pretty much finished until the release next year, and I’m casting about for what comes next, or at least what I wan...

Here is the first question from my typewriter interview with Pam Grossman.

This blackout is featured at the top of today’s newsletter, “Designed to break your heart.”