Meanwhile #074
A lot at one time at varying, sporadic points.
This is an old edition of Meanwhile from an inferior, more simian newsletter platform that has unhelpfully severed all the hyperlinks. It’s included here in the archive simply for sake of completeness.
“There is no one way to be a writer, no one way to tell a story, no one way to do this thing we do as a hobby or as a job or as an art form. Some write a little every day, in an office; some write a lot at one time at varying, sporadic points. It's all okay.” – so begins a fantastic and surreal thread of advice about ignoring advice from writer Chuck Wendig. Includes escapologist wizards, magic bees and Margaret Atwood’s infamous ursine transfiguration defence mechanism. And another good one from Bill and Ted scribe Ed Solomon, on how a little success requires a lot of failure.
Beginning to End is a new series from Spine, following a book idea from acquisition to bookshelf, starting with Erika Swyler’s Little Twitch.
For Modified Man’s new record sleeve, Tim Easley spent 80 hours sculpting a circuit board out of plasticine. I once spent 80 hours trying to get some purple-beige plasticine out of an expensive rug. One of these feats is more impressive than the other.
Civilisation, Richard Turley’s new magazine newspaper thing looks delightfully big and offline and yellow.
Sir Paul Smith and Sir Anish Kapoor amongst the many artists to take part in this year's Secret 7”. Also me. Not a Sir. Yet.
Cartographic underlings Ben Olins and Jane Smillie offer a peek behind the curtains at Herb Lester Associates. Would love to have a good rifle through their bookshelves.
Vintage cookbook jackets by Edward Bawden. Lovely.
Before he made films, Stanley Kubrick was a photographer. This new collection of his work from Taschen looks rather lovely. There’s currently an exhibition at The Museum of the City of New York to go along with it – hopefully it’ll come to the UK at some point.
Why are middle-aged women invisible on book covers?
Top ten books to understand happiness promises an awful lot, but it's churlish to argue with a list that includes such joymongers as Spike Milligan, Terry Pratchett and Richard Herring.
Solo costume designers Glynn Dillon and Dave Crossman on how to dress space dandies. (Have you seen Solo yet? Do. It’s ever so fab.)
That is all.