OLDSOULS
Reblogged from austinkleon
Stewart Brand, working in a shipping container, from How Buildings LearnMy research library was in a shipping container twenty yards away—one of thirty rented out for self-storage. I got the steel 8-by-8-by-40-foot space for $250 a month and spent all of $1,000 fixing it up with white paint, cheap carpet, lights, an old couch, and raw plywood work surfaces and shelves. It was heaven. To go in there was to enter the book-in-progress—all the notes, tapes, 5x8 cards, photos, negatives, magazines, articles, 450 books, and other research oddments laid out by chapters or filed carefully.
…
I knew from editing Whole Earth Catalogs that the most important tool for organizing projects is lots of horizontal space and immediate-to-hand storage. Boat carpenter Peter Bailey built it cheap and sturdy. He told me I would regret using plywood for pinning up photos and other graphics on the walls, and he was right…
People asked, “How can you stand it in there without windows?” All I could say was “A library doesn’t need windows. A library is a window.” In February I was using the flat space to organize Chapter 12 with the 5x8 cards on which all the book’s raw research was taped. By this time I had followed Peter Bailey’s advice to have sheet steel on the walls, and little magnets holding up the photos.
Lots of horizontal space…
This reminds me so much of David Hockney’s work method for Secret Knowledge, how he pinned up the whole history of western painting on his studio wall:
Read more on shipping container architecture and see my friend John T Unger’s plans for his studio made of shipping containers.
Filed under: lay it all out where you can look at it
"It is almost like a church, because you’re going to that room, you know your purpose, you know what you’re going to do in there, and you don’t have to take anything in with you that you don’t want to take in there."
Reblogged from austinkleon
Sade on the recording studio, but it could really be Sade of any sacred creative space (via austinkleon)
"Young people ask me about becoming a writer, and they really haven’t read, not even read bad stuff. They haven’t experienced reading as happiness, as it were. So without some knowledge of what other writers have done, it’s very hard to find your own way, I think. We’re all thieves, I suppose."
Reblogged from austinkleon
John Updike (via austinkleon)
"When in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess’d,
Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least.
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings."
Sonnet 29
William Shakespeare
My most important New Year’s resolution is to kiss someone next New Year’s Eve. For serious.
I think @itswilltime should drive to Portland and have some whiskey with me. #friendship #roommateship #WillandAndyChristmas
"Do not worry about your difficulties in mathematics; I can assure you that mine are still greater."
Albert Einstein
