“No one diary entry is our life story.”
- Rick Rubin, “The Creative Act: A Way of Being”

I didn’t go to Los Angeles two weeks ago to buy a 35mm film camera though the trip was about photography I needed to see something different as a way into feeling something different on my skin like sunshine and warmth but that was incidental to my needing to feel inspired by art and place that I am unfamiliar with like and literally a vacation from the regular day-to-day life I choose daily as a human-type person I often relax in the illusion of consistency which is very different from discipline which is very different from knowing what you want to do and applying appropriate behaviors toward regardless of the consistency of the day-to-day living which is why I love the word “practice” to describe the approach I’m understanding more and more with each chapter of Rick Rubin’s book “The Creative Act: A Way of Being” (which I highly recommend) and so I’m trying to live toward behaviors that include writing and creating every day and something with a bicycle which is why I could never live in L.A. but really enjoyed my one day there recently at the Getty and getting to hang out with William Blake's expression of ideas and archetypes and meeting Arthur Tress’s fantastic photographs and especially from his “Dream Collector” series and then hanging out with Jason and Ray at Eagle Rock Camera and Goods all afternoon cruising through contemporary photography books—I’m especially inspired by Gabrielle Rossi’s “The Lizard”—and talking techniques with those guys so I did go to Los Angeles to have lunch outside and feel the sun on my skin and to be inspired by art which is the result of people behaving at their best over and over regardless of the consistency of their day-to-day lives and so the time felt right to start practicing new ways of seeing and I did pick up a Canon A-1 film camera which I’ll likely tell you too much about sometime but right now I’m really excited to share these things that recently inspired me too:

“Why the Magic” by Carl Zimmer - “One step towards understanding why mushrooms would go to all this effort to make psilocybin is to trace its evolution.” Fascinating article on why some mushrooms produce psychoactive compounds which also explains why mushrooms are so difficult to consistently taxonomize over time.
“Learning to Play Piano When There Is No Recital” by Kelsey McKinney - “...I made a joke, but the question felt serious. How do I make room for myself to be more creative? How do you be creative at all? … How do you do anything with a goal entirely separate from the life you’ve chosen to live?”
“The Creative Act: A Way of Being” by Rick Rubin - I freaking love how Rick Rubin (music producer for The Beastie Boys, Run DMC, LL Cool J, Johnny Cash, Danzig, Metallica, and others) describes and defines creativity, craft, artmaking, artist, being, enoughness and how we can shape our thinking toward a way to practice these as a way to be open to possibilities in our lives as well as creative processes.
Sierra Hull covers “Mad World” by Tears for Fears - stripped down bluegrass band and exposed vocals…lovely
“Surround” by Hiroshi Yoshimura - Yoshimura was an early electronic music composer and I love working to the music on this album which is available on YouTube and Amazon Music and maybe other places too.