Cheers!

Outside of an office park somewhere outside London, there is this:

Depending on your worldview it is either an uplifting goal, or a demoralizing co-opt of an idea that is, in itself, an oxymoron. You decide.

P.S. I'm pretty sure they've used Bell Centennial, designed by Matthew Carter for use in the phone book. A lot more people are using that lately. The tipoff is those little cutouts where the Ns diagonal stroke joins the stems.

And P.P.S. I'm told by a British friend that Chiswick is pronounced "chissick", with a silent W. I was also told that Chiswick is very "swish".

Yeoman's Work

Back when I worked at Marvel Comics, I was introduced to the concept of yeoman's work by my boss, editor Nel Yomtov. He always talked about writers and pencillers and inkers who put in a hard day's work with deep respect.

So I'm intrigued and a bit inspired (and confused!) by this interview with Henry Rollins in Time Out Magazine from January 31, 2011. Henry Rollins, punk performer extraordinaire (and major teenage crush material) has turned 50 (fifty!), and he talks about creativity, or his lack thereof.

I have to say, I honestly believe that 99% of life is just showing up. Keep showing up, Henry.

Image: Chapman Baehler



Q: 
Are you still feeling restless? What’s next for Mr. Henry Rollins?

Rollins:
I’m not artistic nor am I all that creative. I’m more reactive to things. With Nick [Cave], he is a creative person. He’s brilliant that way. I’m not. I’ve got nothing like that. I’m kind of a hack. Or I’m workmanlike. And that’s no bad place to be—it's just different. I say yes to opportunity. I come from the minimum wage working world of the late ’70s, early ’80s. That’s what I know. I know a time clock, a boss and repetitive work. With the talking shows, I have a point of view; I want to tell a story. I am one of those awful hams who would pay you to let me be onstage. I don’t think I am an artist or I am creative. And so when you ask me is there anything else you’d like to do, I don’t know, what do you got.

The best moment of the day

I've been on a major reading jag lately, most recently finishing up Nicholson Baker's book The Anthologist, which is about a poet who is procrastinating writing the introduction to an anthology of poems. Like Fellini's 8 1/2, a movie about a director who doesn't know what to make a movie about, Baker's book is a game of formalism, where writing about not being able to write becomes the novel. Towards the end of the book, the main character, Paul Chowder, gives a lecture about writing poetry, and there is a bit of business about the best moment of the day that is just absolute loveliness.

And then a man of forty or so, with a French accent, asked, ‘How do you achieve the presence of mind to initiate the writing of a poem?’ And something cracked open in me, and I finally stopped hoarding and told them my most useful secret. The only secret that has helped me consistently over all the years that I’ve written. I said, ‘Well, I’ll tell you how. I ask a simple question. I ask myself: What was the very best moment of your day?’ The wonder of it was, I told them, that this one question could lift out from my life exactly what I will want to write a poem about. Something that I hadn’t known was important will leap up and hover there in front of me, saying I am—I am the best moment of the day. I noticed two people were writing down what I was saying. Often, I went on, it’s a moment when you’re waiting for someone, or you’re driving somewhere, or maybe you’re just walking diagonally across a parking lot and you’re admiring the oil stains and the dribbled tar patterns. One time it was when I was driving past a certain house that was screaming with sunlitness on its white clapboards, and then I plunged through tree shadows that splashed and splayed over the windshield. You, windshield shadows, you are the best moment of the day. ‘And that’s my secret, such as it is,’ I said.
—Nicholson Baker, The Anthologist (Simon & Schuster, 2009)

Here's the best moment of one of my days recently...a winter's afternoon at the Great Swamp in Chatham, NJ.

Show Your Work!

One of my favorite new/young writers is Victor LaValle (and I love the cover design—designer credit?—of his latest book Big Machine). But this great passage comes from his earlier book, The Ecstatic. The protagonist is talking about his philosophy of cleaning houses for money, but it totally applies to the design process as well. Actually, it probably applies to any client relations!

"In the living room I ran the vacuum. I lifted the couch on its side and left it there.

People don't want to return to a neat house. They want to enter fifteen minutes before the finish, when the rooms are still a little disarrayed. If they see no proof that works been done they quibble about hours, swear that the appliances were that shiny before I got there. They cut even cheaper with the tip and I'm not talking about generous clientele to begin with. It's necessary to let people think they're backstage at the theater minutes before the show. They want to be the producers, not the audience."