you didn’t think i’d forget a tuesday, did you?
i didn’t. and actually i assume that nobody was actually tapping their fingers on their desks nervously looking at the clock wondering where this week’s newsletter had gotten itself to. and if you were - well. sorry. read a book or something.
as my weeks sometimes do, i got very busy in the past ~72 hours. i am hosting a trivia night on Zoom tonight with a friend and we had to write a bunch of questions, which always takes longer than i think it will. and this weekend some friends had birthdays, and having two birthday parties on a saturday, one in the afternoon and one at night, and enjoying being around people again so much that you overdo it a little bit on hard seltzers, and being 31 years old, those are all factors that do not lead to productive Sundays. in my experience.
also, this morning was the memorial service of the woman i briefly wrote about a couple weeks ago. it was outside in a park and a whole bunch of people including the current actual governor of the state she lived in got up and told stories about how she had touched their lives and it was a very beautiful little event that opened a lot of windows onto her life and illuminated things i had not known about. i didn’t know her very well but we had been working together on one thing or another almost since i started my current job four years ago. so we had a bit of history at least. she was a remarkable lady and positively affected a whole lot of people.
and to couple with that, my apartment building informed me when i got back that it’s time to start thinking about whether i want to renew my lease in the fall. something i was hoping to avoid thinking about for at least another three weeks. endings and beginnings and continuations.
ok here we go.
1. painting
sometime soon i’m going to take two or three hours and learn a lot more about the journey these files take from my iPad to this substack and how all those transitions impact the color rendition. and who knows what it looks like when it finally ends up in front of you!
this week started like some of these have, with kind of a mental image that hadn’t really been fit into a frame yet. sometimes i come into these illustrations or paintings or whatever you want to call them with a pretty firm idea of how the frame and composition are going to sit. other times i don’t! so here’s a look at how i think through that stuff sometimes. lower right ends up being the departure point. there are some other ideas on that sheet that might end up somewhere in the future too.
you might recognize some themes and especially color schemes here. that’s fine. that’s what i was going for. the one on the right is one of my personal favorites although i have a soft spot for the one on the left as well.
this process is pretty different from the more “painterly” pieces i’ve done for this newsletter before - there’s a lot more emphasis on linework. once i have a composition in place, i’ll redraw the linework anywhere from 2-5 times, refining it and adding a little more detail each time. in this case, the idea is to show those trees through the windows on the sides of that building - which works OK as a linework sketch idea, but the color scheme and time of day i ended up going with here actually made that much harder as i went along. oops.
here’s the final linework.
and here’s a pretty basic pass at the colors.
for these type of drawings, most of these colors are on separate layers for a long time while i’m getting them figured out. digital art means you can tweak each one individually, or paint over just one, or add elements in between layers more quickly, and so on. while i’m still kind of holding my breath to see if the colors are going to even come together and work, that flexibility is nice to have.
this one is closer to the end. shortly before this, i flattened all the non-linework layers into one, and went through and tweaked things, added little bits and pieces, reworked some colors, added highlights, and so on. the linework layer is still on, but it’s been recolored from just black. at the very end, i added some stars and mist, and then as usual there’s a color overlay over everything, which you will see if you scroll up to the final.
this type of drawing is fun because spending so much time on the linework gives me a pretty good baseline that i start from, and it’s much less daunting to just throw stuff on the canvas and see if it works. colors, textures, blobs, splotches, etc.
at some point in the next 5 years i’d like to do some kind of illustrated story in this style. a kids book probably. which i think is a cliche for artists to say but you know what they say about cliches.
2. poem
“dust poem” - summer 2021
all our lights are out —
passing each other shoulder to shoulder in the dark
if you came up across the creek, i didn’t notice
and if you came through one of these rooms before
i don’t think i saw you
someday someone will sand down
these corners of our doors
someday someone will tip us gently into envelopes.
3. roasted cauliflower tacos
another easy one this week! i wonder if that’s just kind of how it’s going to be for the summer. we want our crunchy bites. we want our crisp cold veggies.
a friend of mine sent this recipe to me kind of out of the blue and i would just like to say, feel free to do that. if you send me something interesting and vegan i will more than likely make it. i’m not scraping the bottom of the barrel here but i’m also not as fired up about trying to alchemically transmute various soy products into seafood replicas as i was this spring. for example.
anyway the recipe is here i think and if it’s not that one, it’s something similar, it looks like there are a million different versions of this floating around various minimalist food blogs.
and i can say that with that note of slight disdain because this is not a food blog.
first up we will be roasting our cauliflower. i’ve noticed - and maybe you have too - that when i’m writing this i am switching between “i” and “you” and “we” pretty constantly for reasons that are not immediately obvious to me and which i have not taken any time to examine, unpack, or otherwise poke at. i trust my instincts when it comes to writing, which i think is probably one of the first habits they try to break you of when you go to writing school to become better at writing.
season the cauliflower with the spices and oil, toss it up, and put it into a 400 degree oven. the spices here are paprika and cumin and salt i think although it probably doesn’t matter much. if you’re in the paprika-chili-powder-cumin-coriander section of the spice rack i don’t think you can go wrong here.
here’s the stuff for the romesco sauce. i don’t know what romesco sauce is actually. per wikipedia it comes from Catalonia originally and was made to be eaten with fish! i could see that. it has more of a citrusy zip than i expected.
olive oil, lime, maple syrup, chipotle peppers, salt, paprika, cumin, fresh garlic, garlic to be roasted, cashews to be roasted (i’m allergic to almonds and i was out of pine nuts) and fire-roasted tomatoes. lots of roasting happening. they love that kind of thing in Catalonia.
the cashews and garlic go in with the cauliflower for some of the time, in order to roast them a bit too.
once the garlic and cashews are roasted, they and all those other previous ingredients go into a blender, and that’s where romesco sauce comes from!
in addition we have our cauliflower, some avocado, cilantro, red cabbage, and lime. i feel like i have been trying to get rid of the red cabbage in my fridge for like a solid year now and it keeps regenerating somehow.
pile it all up into some warm tacos and sprinkle some lime juice over it, and there ya go! tacos. delicious!
the romesco sauce is very good and is definitely the highlight here. i had some again yesterday with some roast broccoli too. one secret to being vegan, i think, is getting better at making sauces.
4. remarkable books
lots of things i could have written about this week for about three paragraphs, i think! but i’ve been thinking about this little topic for a while and it’s kind of light and fun and that’s how i’m feeling right now so i’m going to go for it.
i read quite a bit. mostly fiction, and a lot of what these days they are calling “speculative” fiction. other stuff too but i think that is the bulk of it. and one thing about “speculative” fiction - probably fiction in general, too, more broadly, just going by how much of the stuff there is - is that a lot of it is extremely medium. C minus to C plus level stuff. i think probably 80 plus percent of the stuff i read is in that range, which is something that really only occurred to me pretty recently in terms of a way of thinking about it.
the last real evolution in the way i thought about reading was a few years before that, when i actively decided to start bailing on books that didn’t grab me. some of you are already cool with this, some of you are made anxious by the thought of it but do it anyway, and some of you have not yet granted yourself permission to bail early on extremely predictable stories with clunky prose and underdeveloped characters. and i’m not going to tell you how to live your life but i’d say, you know. feel free to start bailing more.
anyway, speculative fiction. they used to call it science fiction i think and they still do, but since it’s been getting more “literary” attention, i think they’re calling that wide umbrella speculative fiction now. some of it is bad, like very bad - sometimes people who cannot really write are struck by an idea for some kind of cool spaceship or mysterious alien artifact or something and rather than, i don’t know, drawing or painting it or learning Blender and modeling it, find themselves compelled to attempt to hang an entire narrative on it just so they can talk about vast expanses of slate-gray armor plating and asteroids decelerating at rates that can’t be explained by science and aliens that actually have five limbs and get this, radically different consciousnesses from human beings to the point where war is inevitable!
not all of it is bad, though. some of it is medium. and some of it is good, but in a way that i don’t think is remarkable. well constructed, tightly plotted, fun characters, something interesting going on speculative-wise, but not remarkable. and that’s what this short list is about.
books i have read in the past oh i don’t know five years that i found remarkable - that is to say, unique in some way and “good” and (crucially) - worth actually reading.
this isn’t exhaustive. i just scrolled my Goodreads history and thought about them until Substack told me i was out of space for this week.
also - most of these are sci fi and speculative fiction, although some are not and some are very much in the blurry fiction-spec fiction zone. i think probably that was made clear above. but after i wrote this list i realized how much speculative fiction is on it. so if that’s not your bag, well. see ya.
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab - this is the one that catalyzed this little segment. I am a sucker for an interesting gimmick (which is why i put up with so much mediocre sci fi) and this had a compelling one explored in an emotionally compelling way.
Life after Life by Kate Atkinson - you probably have seen this cover. The Invisible Life i have to think drew some fairly direct inspiration from Life after Life - they are similar conceits (nicer word than gimmick) but drawn out and explored very differently, and this one does it better, i think.
Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky - i found this one, or someone recommended it, because i am forever searching for big, sweeping space operas that capture some of the essence of an Iain M Banks book, or at least a Peter Hamilton. this did not really do that, but again, very interesting conceit! and pretty well plotted etc. and therefore: remarkable. the sequel is not remarkable.
The Painter by Peter Heller - oh wow brian put a peter heller book on this list damn. that’s soooo crazy i’m soooo surprised. this isn’t speculative fiction at all but peter heller i think i can safely say is currently my favorite author. and this book contains a lot of themes that resonate deeply with my own life: painting, the West, solitude, women, and to a lesser degree, murder and redemption. his prose is incredible.
They Will Drown in Their Mothers’ Tears by Johannes Anyuru - i can’t remember where i found this, some list somewhere, but this is a great example of a verrrry light touch of “speculative” being used to explore big societal currents and futures. it’s pretty dark but it sticks in your head.
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke - i tried, probably two decades ago almost, to read Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrel and gave up. this one is much shorter and more accessible. it’s a wondrously inventive setup with a memorable main character and lots of dark water flowing through it silently.
Sleight by Kirsten Kaschock - i read this in early 2014 (apparently) and could not tell you almost anything about the plot but the unsettling dreamlike sense of unreality this little book created has definitely stuck with me.
The Etched City by K.J. Bishop - this one is way back from 2012 but the feeling has also stuck with me. gauzy and strange and bright, like a fever dream - i don’t remember details but i do remember the vibes. i gotta pick this one up again actually.
Come with Me by Helen Schulman and The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch - i am grouping these together because i read them pretty much one after another, and i’m almost certain elements of the two have bled together in my mind. they’re both semi-straightforward murder mysteries (i think) but with big speculative-fiction twists. The Gone World in particular i remember ratcheting up tension and unease almost to the point of horror. i don’t think either of them had anything particularly profound to say but they did stand out.
Fallen Dragon by Peter Hamilton - OK this is a pretty old one, and if you read a lot of science fiction you’re probably rolling your eyes at this. but if you read a lot of science fiction chances are you’re familiar with Peter Hamilton but haven’t read this one! it’s one of his earlier books and, unusually for him, it’s a standalone novel. you get a lot of his speculative inventiveness with a lot more cynicism about the impacts of technology than appears in some of his more “mature” work (everyone knows Pandora’s Star probably, which in some respects can be read as a misguided love letter to monopoly power). it’s not really all that deep but the tighter focus on characters and one-book length i think really does him a lot of favors, and you still get that trademark Hamilton wide cast of characters. he’s the best at space opera, i think, and this is an overlooked example of it.
The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson - you’ve heard of this one too, probably. if you haven’t, you should read it without reading anything else about it. but it uses kind of a speculative lens (maybe “fantasy” i guess, but it doesn’t really feel like swords and dragons and magic type of stuff) to explore issues of colonization and assimiliation. i’m adding it because there are a few more recent sci-fi books that also purport to deal with these themes and they are, i think, mostly incredibly overrated. A Memory Called Empire is number one on that list and i think you could put The Goblin Emperor, which everyone also loved, on that list as well.
ok that’s all. for context, those 11 titles were pulled from 240+ other books from the past 6-8 years on my “Read” shelf on Goodreads. a lot stuff i read on there and found very non-remarkable! but maybe you will enjoy some of the above.
well, that’s all for this week! send me a vegan recipe if you want. send me travel tips for chicago/minneapolis if you want. forgot to talk about that in the main body but i might be visiting out there soonish. otherwise have a good week. see ya next tuesday. bye.