Our bookshelves in Berlin run over two floors. The only way to get to them is by using a harness.
Bookshelves
If you – like me – have more than one book and never know how to arrange them, watch this movie. It was made by the owners of Type bookstore in Toronto.
My ideal studio
Creative Arte TV gave me 8 minutes to draw my ideal studio space. For those of you who have already commented on the practical issues, like where the daylight might come from and where the toilets are: this is an idea, not a plan.
Little Printer
Connected to the Web, Little Printer has wide range of sources available to check on your behalf. We call them “publications”. Subscribe to your favourites and choose when you’d like them delivered. Right on time Little Printer gathers everything it needs to prepare a neat little personalised package, printed as soon as you press the button.
Check out the website or watch the video:
Fear of the First Line
Now and again, Blueprint magazine publishes one of my monthly columns on their website. This is the November column.
ONCE I KNOW what topic I want to (or have to) write about, the most critical decision becomes inevitable: how to begin? No evening class in Creative Writing, no journalism course fails to mention how important the first sentence is for the impression a text makes upon the unprepared reader. Norbert Miller, a German literary historian, published a collection of essays about what he called this ‘radical decision’. The first sentence compresses the infinite space for reflection into a finite object, settling on one version out of a multitude of variations and possible strategies.
Consider these alternatives: ‘It was a dark and stormy night.’ and ‘One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in his bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug.’
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Creative block
This seems to be a “trending topic”. Just read about seven tips by Mark McGuinness to avoid Creative Block (yes, captitalized) and went on to look what I had written to Alex Cornell two years ago when he asked me “What do you do to inspire your creativity when you are in a rut?”
I sent my answer in a short email, without thinking about it too much, mentioning only six strategies. I have since added a seventh. BTW: Alex is writing a book about the topic, to be published soon by Princeton Architectural Press.
I have seven strategies for this situation:
1. Avoid
Do something else, wash the car, back-up your data, do errands…
2. Think
Sit back and think about the issue, just let your mind go…
3. Research
Look up stuff, go through your old projects, but avoid Google — it takes too long to find anything useful…
4. Collect
We all have lots of stuff; there must be something in there that is waiting to be used…
5. Sketch
Drawing is great, even if you have no talent. Just visualising the simplest things makes them come alive…
6. Deconstruct
Take the problem apart, look at the parts and then put them back together…
7. Talk
Find somebody to talk to. I cannot really think unless I talk, and as I do, ideas come up.
I have uploaded a little brochure from the series that we publish at Edenspiekermann now and again. This one features the essay by Heinrich Kleist “On the gradual completion of thoughts during speech”. The brochure has the text in German and English, and the languages start at either end of the printed piece. The PDF, therefore, needs to be turned around to read it properly in English.
Warning to all bike thieves!
My old Rivendell road bike was stolen in June. I’d had it for a long time and losing it did hurt. I think stealing a bicycle like that is more than just a little misdemeanour; it is a wicked crime and shows really bad character.
The only way I could get over the loss was by going to see Bradley Woehl at the American Cyclery in San Francisco and have him build me a new bicycle. The frame is made by Waterford in Wisconsin, the paint job is pretty much the same as my Rivendell and the parts are mostly Campagnola. We put 28 tyres on it, which looks less elegant than 23, but if you have seen the roads here in San Francisco, you know that even that is too thin.
I’m publishing a few pictures here as a public record. If anybody dares steal this bike, there’ll be lots of people looking out for it.
On 9/11, by John Perry Barlow
John sends occasional messages to a list of friends. This particular one arrived on Sunday, September 11, 2011. All the sunday papers were full of statements, predictions, analysis and opinions about what happened and what it meant. But nothing I read was as concise and comprehensible as what JPB wrote – yesterday and ten years ago.
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My palm, interviewed
Normally, I don’t believe in horoscopes, Tarot cards, clouds in my coffee or reading the lines in my hand. Except when it suits me.
When Jesi Khadivi from Soma Magazine asked me to send him a scan of my right hand for some art project or other, I did so. Couldn’t do much harm and I tend to support most crazy arty ideas that people write to me about.
Little did I know that this was part of a major project that has Lena, a “professional” palm reader analyze peoples’ palms without knowing who they are. With uncannily accurate results, at least in my case which is the only one I can judge.
So here is my palm, between Moby and Tifanny Shlain’s – not such a bad neighbourhood.
