Weekly newsletter: You can be woke without waking up to the news

This week: not waking up to the news, surfing, and more...

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Hey y'all,

Here are 10 things I thought were worth sharing this week:

You can be woke without waking up to the news.
John Waters' "study art" signs.
I finally finished William Finnegan's Barbarian Days, and now I have surfing on the brain. A while back we watched Surfwise, a documentary about a family of 9 surfers who were homeschooled in an RV. (Streaming on Netflix, along with The Endless Summer, a 1966 documentary about surfing.) Now, I just checked Twitter and top of the feed was this piece about surfing from art critic Dave Hickey (who I love — read Air Guitar!), excerpted from his next book, Perfect Wave.
I had never her advice column, but I found this video of E. Jean Carroll at her home in upstate New York so charming. (Found via advice columnist Heather Havrilesky, author of How to Be a Person in the World.)
Artists swap iPhones and creativity ensues.
Before Nick Cave goes into the studio to write, he reads a poetry collection called Technicians of the Sacred. (A brand-new edition is coming out next month.) You can see it on his office desk in the film, 20,000 Days On Earth. (Tip from writer Geeta Dayal, who wrote the 33 1/3 book about Brian Eno's Another Green World.)
Last week I praised the wild online story, 17776 — here's a Q&A with creator Jon Bois.
A remarkable essay about Denis Johnson by his editor, Will Blythe. (If you still haven't read Johnson, seek out Jesus' Son or Train Dreams, both short, intense reads.)
Piano prodigy Yuja Wang riffs on Mozart. (Here's a New Yorker profile on her.)
A late RIP to Dahlov Ipcar. She was not only a great painter and children's book illustrator, she had a really interesting upbringing. She once said "I think painting keeps me alive."

Thanks for reading! If you like this newsletter, forward it to a friend, buy a book, or tweet me some love.

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xoxo,

Austin

PS. As I write this, Steal Like An Artist is a measely $1.81 on Kindle. Thanks to Wil Wheaton for this nice post about the book. Here's an awesome photo my publisher sent of some of the foreign translations: