This month went well. With the help of my therapist, I decided to be more positive and it’s really made a difference. I see things are turning around out there as I flip back and forth from MSNBC and Wolf Blitzer’s Situation Room. Yep, everything is going really well in the world.
My family has stopped going to church and has instead started playing pickleball. I tried to explain to them that they are always been behind the curve. Pickleball has been replaced by, and originated from, the new hottest thing, physical therapy. I don’t know anyone not getting PT. I’m waiting for brick-and-mortal bookstores to include physical therapy to their ever-expanding menus of what they are expected to be.
Anyone subscribe to Walking magazine? That’s what you find now in the PT waiting room. There are no magazines doing well, but maybe that’s because instead of seeing LIFE and MAD magazine in the waiting room, there’s Restless Leg Syndrome Digest and ED Weekly. Back when I used to go to The New Yorker lunches (they no longer exist and have been replaced by an open mic in Williamsburg), cartoonist Sid Harris said the secret was this book he recommended on creativity. I purchased the book and it was all about walking and clearing your head. I tried walking and it sometimes works. Showers have the same effect. And less work. When I have writer’s block, I can take up to eight showers in a day. Well, your choice. Certainly, walking is back in vogue. I see people doing more than ever.
For the month of May, if you purchase my new book, Footnotes from the Most Fascinating Museums, I will give you a lifetime (mine) free paid subscription to this newsletter, The Bob. That’s at least a $50 value every year Substack stays afloat. Just email that you got a copy (honor system).
People are always asking me either; where do I get my ideas, how to overcome writer’s block and if I would introduce them to my agent. I can recommend something that multi-tasks three things. Walking through museums (yep, we’re back to walking). Whether or not you will run into my agent at the museum is another thing and I was sworn not to say what her favorite museums are.
My favorite museums? I could give a different answer every day of the week, depending on my mood. I live near the tranquil Cloisters, a group of medieval castles brought over and put together in upper Manhattan, and is now home of the medieval art collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But there is nothing like bringing a kid for their first time to the American Museum of Natural History. I am planning to revisit The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (known as Mass MOCA) as soon as my schedule allows. I was blown away by their collections. And LOVED the structure housing all of Anselm Kiefer’s work. He is right now my favorite artist, especially after seeing the inspiring 3-D documentary, Anselm (see trailer here). This is my favorite piece of artwork of his…and my favorite from the thousands I saw in the past two years traveling.
Anselm Kiefer's Velimir Chlebnikov, a series of 30 paintings devoted to the Russian philosopher who posited that war is inevitable. Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.
I say it would be my dream job to just create fine art (and I was a fine abstract artist briefly in the early 1990’s), but I would again miss the immediacy, the shallow gratification and validation I have an appetite for that I now get from a magazine piece or popular Facebook post. Anselm is not tweeting (or twerking). I can see how isolating being this devoted to art would be. Especially when the theme to most of his work is horror (despite how beautiful his end results are). And what is not obvious is the amount of red tape involved in creating such expensive, colossal pieces of art. I know personally an artist working at this scale and he has nonstop meetings to raise money. It’s not all just drawing submarines (and you have to think in terms of this scale to make the impact that Kiefer’s work invokes.). If you would like to learn more about this particular museum’s efforts to showcase Kiefer, check out this 4-minute piece on NPR discussing the aforementioned masterpiece.
So getting back to museums. It’s impossible to pick one as they are all always changing. Museums are more organic than people realize, constantly changing and not sitting still. My favorite museums are those I walk away from with a feeling of rejuvenation. WAIT! How can I not have mentioned yet the Peabody Essex Museum as my favorite? The PEM was just fantastic and I try to visit every chance I get. Let me share one of my favorite spots in that museum.
By the way, I didn’t always love museums…I kicked and screamed while being dragged through the Washington D.C. museums as a little kid but somewhere along the line since then I got wise to how great they are (I go into hating mueums as a kid only exposed to sports ad nauseam in the Introduction of my new book).
And here I find myself, having completed about 200 illustrations on just museums. Many were cut for various reasons. The main being there was too many. There are sooooo many wonderful museums and I felt bad I couldn’t include them all. Massachusetts alone has over 800 museums but I tried to spread the wealth, geographically. Importance to the community and the art world at large, was a factor, of course in choosing which made it in the book. The same was true of the stories. I showed the broad spectrum of people’s experiences from interacting with musuems but only the best made the cut.
I saw more artwork in one year than most see in a lifetime. I was so inspired by the work (and the stories I heard), that it made it easier to complete so many drawings, something that seemed like an impossible task when I agreed to this book. I’d just come home very anxious to document what I saw. I felt I was being heavily influenced and I wanted to see that impact in my painting but somehow everything always looked like it was done by my hands. I was trying to get my style as loose as possible, get very Henri Matisse (or at least get close to the great American illustrators like Robert Weaver and Robert Cunningham), but my work looks like my work, for better or worse. One can maybe see a bit of Edward Hooper influence in the execution of my light and shadows.
So, if you’re going to go walking anyway…pick a museum.
Managing your time. Tammy, my wife, were fighting over this. We never fight. But it was about learning to say “No,” something she is very good at––this fight was in the bedroom.
She’s right. I cannot say “No.” And I can’t handle the influx of emails I receive. I cannot afford an assistant but if I could, I suppose I would put them on email detail. Back before there were emails, there was a thing called lunch. This could be at White Castle or a diner or even at someone’s house. I was invited to a lot of lunches because I didn’t know how to say “No.” I remember someone I was dating (and she may disagree with that), a very beautiful (you know who you are) children’s book writer who asked me for money. My memory was lunch was when you asked people for money. She used the loan to fly to Paris and took her assistant (instead of me). Assistants’ chores varied before email.
I’ve heard stories of people getting back money they’ve lent friends but it seems like a fairy tale.
Well, that’s how I remembered it. Granted, every time I walk into a pharmacy I stare at the Prevagen® sales display on the counter and begin listening to the imaginary cartoon angel and devil on my shoulders telling me whether it’s fake or real. Then I walk away and try to remember why I went into the pharmacy to begin with.
Drumroll….this issue The Felix goes to Barry Blitt. His website is HERE and his work can be pruchased at the Condé Nast Collection and at Curated Cartoons.
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“Footnotes from the Most Fascinating Museums…the result is a touching rumination on public art’s potential to provoke personal epiphany.” — Publishers Weekly, 4/22/2024
Out, at the end of the month, is a revised, reissue of a book that was very helpful to my development as a humor writer, And Here’s the Kicker: Conversations with 21 Top Humor Writers by Mike Sacks.
Jessica Delfino’s newsletter, Museletter is a constant flow of sage advice for aspiring stand-ups. Subscribe here.
Cookbook writers: Very informative interview between agent Sally Ekus (left) and Jane Friedman (The Hot Sheet, right) on the world of writing and publishing cookbooks (I myself am working on a cat cookbook. Don’t ask.).
Cartoons from the West Side Rag.
Appreciate your love of museums, but here is where I go for a quick and easy writing prompt - the grocery store, looking at weird new products, marketing strategies - I never fail to find an interesting nugget. And on the way home I listen to the ads of sports radio - WTF - no scalpel vasectomy?? They've got to pierce the skin somehow to grab that vas. I'm invisioning that they use a crochet hook instead of a scalpel!
‘Publishing Pain Chart’ is great. Next to ‘no reviews’ I think there should be a face for ‘no book.’ Never mind why I say this.