1.
The Long Earth — a poem by Adam Horowitz
From the Community
The Long Earth (after the book by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter) If all it took was just a sideways step to break your shackle to this tired earth, untangle the strings of quantum physics and shimmer down the mirror parallel, find worlds which Darwin could have barely dreamed, would you not do it? Would you not run? I'd be off faster than the starting gun to seek the Long Earth flickering unreamed; new genera; and what mutations dwell under different suns. I'd hunt strange musics courting river banks, mountains and the surf. If all it took were but a sideways step. Yet here we stay. There is no interstitial strait, just dreams; the faith of science. All that we create. - Adam Horowitz
Adam Horowitz rises from my hometown of Stroud, where the beloved poet Laurie Lee also lived and wrote from.
2.
Ways of Seeing… with Penguins — feat. John Berger, courtesy of Austin Kleon
From the Internet
I’ve talked about
many times in this newsletter. I’m a big fan, and I picked this up from his YouTube channel some time ago. He brings a nice balance between seeing one’s worth as an artist, and also not taking any of it too seriously.If you like this newsletter, you’d love his Substack too.
3.
On loving each other — a quote from Charles Bukowski
“We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.”
— Charles Bukowki
SUBSTACKS
What are some of your favourite Substack publications? Do you have your own?
There's a lot here to think about and digest. That Bukowski quote really is the whole game. If we aren't loving each other, we're failing at whatever the point of life is.
Adam Horowitz's poem is killer. I need to go back to it a few more times I think.
Yes! Demystify art! I started outlining an essay today with the working title, "What if There's No Such Thing as a Bad Poem?" It's a riff on something Lynda Barry wrote in either Syllabus or What It Is about there being no such thing as a bad drawing.
Thanks for another great and inspiring newsletter!