Argentinian cartoonist Liniers – Image via his website
I first learned about Argentinian cartoonist Liniers from his book Lo que hay antes de que haya algo (What there is before there’s something), a terrifying children’s story that—in a style reminiscent of Where the Wild Things Are—addresses the inescapable fear born in moments of anticipation. You can experience a reading of the story in Spanish here. And the beauty of pictures books is that you don’t have to know the language to follow along. The drawings of Liniers are wonderfully eerie and detailed.
I tend to align more with Austin Kleon’s perspective on Star Wars, but Liniers appears to be a bigger fan. He uses Star Wars characters regularly in his comic strips.
Here’s a small sampling of some of my favorites:
Reduce, reuse, recycle (via Comics Kingdom)Darth Vader and his friend, Darkness (via Liniers)Darth Vader, doing it again (via Liniers)Going extreme commando (via Reddit)Foiled by allergies (via Comics Kingdom)Luke’s other family members (via Pinterest)
And on this May the 4th, 2025, let’s all remember to be wary of the dark side.
Liniers’s comic strip is called Macanudo and it’s a real treasure that holds the forces of darkness at bay.
Acceptance frees us to fly – I made this animation from a paper bag I got at the
Jade Rivera gallery
in Lima
In last week’s newsletter, I wrote about finishing Oliver Burkeman’s book 4,000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. I loved its central message of accepting our limitations—not the least of which is the limited time we all have in this place—as a way of living more freely and more meaningfully. In particular, I loved the sentiment with which Burkeman ended his book:
And the life you will see incrementally taking shape, in the rearview mirror, will be one that meets the only definitive measure of what it means to have used your weeks well: not how many people you helped, or how much you got done; but that working within the limits of your moment in history, and your finite time and talents, you actually got around to doing—and made life more luminous for the rest of us by doing—whatever magnificent task or weird little thing it was that you came here for.
It has me reflecting on what “magnificent task or weird little thing” I came here for and goes well with Austin Kleon’s “Be the weird you wish to see.”
It also has me wondering about how limitations can counterintuitively liberate us in other areas of life. On this topic, Kleon too, has something to say. In the final chapter of his book Steal Like an Artist—titled “Creativity Is Subtraction”—he writes:
Nothing is more paralyzing than the idea of unlimited possibilities. The idea that you can do anything is absolutely terrifying.
The way to get over creative blocks is to simply put some constraints on yourself. It seems contradictory, but when it comes to creative work, limitations mean freedom.
I’ve recently started following Erik Winkowski’s newsletter Paper Films, which I find to be wildly creative. When I think about using constraints as a way of unleashing creativity in your work, Winkowski’s short films immediately come to mind. For example, a few weeks ago he posted a video showing how he uses a typewriter to draw.
It’s hard to imagine a more constrained way of drawing than doing so on a typewriter.
Kleon also employs the humble typewriter as a limiting tool for his own creative work. He conducts his excellent typewriter interviews via the U.S. Postal Service, a constraint in its own right. In today’s hyperconnected world, the time it takes to type up interview questions, mail them out, wait for a response, and post the results serves as a limiter that brings Kleon’s creative work and collaborations into focus. It’s the good friction.
He also popularized blackout poetry—a form of found poetry in which you remove, or “black out,” words of a newspaper or other text to create your own unique composition.
One of Kleon’s predecessors in this type of work was the visual artist Tom Phillips. In 1966, Phillips decided to take W.H. Mallock’s 1892 novel A Human Document and modify every page through his beautiful paintings and collages with the goal of creating an entirely new work of art—blackout poetry taken to the extreme. Phillips’s commitment to the project would produce his magnum opus: A Humument. Over the course of 50 years, A Humument saw various publications and modifications, the latest version coming out in 2016, just six years before Phillips passed away. Every page of this beautifully unique and impressive book is graciously available for viewing on Thomas Phillips’s website.
Page 93 of Tom Phillips’s A Humument (2nd version 1986)
In the end, Winkowski, Kleon, and Phillips have all used limitations as a way of freeing themselves to pursue and define their life’s work. In doing so, they’ve carved out their own creative niche—their own unique voice, their own version of weird.
I think we need limitations in life. There’s definitely a time for pushing yourself beyond your limits, but when life seems complicated, I always find it helpful to simplify. If I ever feel stressed out, this mantra always helps to ground me: “Keep it simple.” This could just as well be, “Find a limitation.” It’s a way of focusing yourself in on what you can actually do now with the tools you currently have.
Setting such limitations ends up teaching you something important—it might even reveal the wings of your real self opening, or the weird little thing you came here for.
Pine trees in our Wisconsin backyard under the Northern Lights (May, 2024)
Right after the presidential election last November, I wrote about having more empathy for one another. In the post, I suggested “suspending judgement” when it comes to interacting with someone who believes differently than you.
I don’t know about you, but I’m finding a lot of people who think differently than me. I see them online, in my local community, and in different parts of the world—each with their unique experience and perspective. More often than not, the interactions I observe in these spaces are pretty negative and nonconstructive.
This past week, I was thinking about how to navigate different perspectives while also keeping my sanity. For sure, there’s a time when it’s better to disengage from it all—or, as Austin Kleon would describe it, to plant your garden. But then there’s a time to engage with it and to listen. Rick Rubin writes about this in his book The Creative Act: A Way of Being:
We often take shortcuts without knowing it. When listening, we tend to skip forward and generalize the speaker’s overall message. We miss the subtleties of the point, if not the entire premise. In addition to the assumption that we are saving time, this shortcut also avoids the discomfort of challenging our prevailing stories. And our worldview continues to shrink.
So many of today’s problems are the result of people avoiding the good friction that is produced from engaging in discussions that expand our worldview. Rubin’s comments reminded me of an old friend I had in grad school. Whenever I talked with Peter, I could tell that he was listening to me so authentically hard—not in the “active listening” sense, but more of a completely-and-silently-focused sense—that I always felt challenged to really pay attention to what I was saying, in a good way, to make sure it all added up. I had to clearly express myself and I knew if I didn’t, I’d be met with a thoughtful follow-up question because Peter truly wanted to understand my perspective.
Like many, I loved Ted Lasso. One of my favorite scenes from the series is when Ted takes on Rupert in a game of darts to prevent him from tormenting Rebecca in the owner’s box. Before sealing his victory with three extremely difficult shots, Ted calls out Rupert’s air of superiority and invites him to be more curious.
In the clip, Ted quotes Walt Whitman: “Be curious, not judgmental.” While it turns out Whitman didn’t actually say this, the message rings true. Curiosity is valuable. It’s a perspective and orientation toward life that grows your worldview.
In his book Show Your Work, Austin Kleon quotes some thoughts that C.S. Lewis penned for his introduction to Reflections on the Psalms (1958). Here’s Lewis:
I write for the unlearned about things in which I am unlearned myself. It often happens that two schoolboys can solve difficulties in their work for one another better than the master can. When you took the problem to the master, either he was so fluent in the whole subject that he could not understand the difficulty, or he had forgotten what it was like to be puzzled by it. The fellow-pupil can help more than the master because he knows less. The difficulty we want him to explain is one he has recently met. The expert met it so long ago that he has forgotten.
As a teacher, I love this quote. I love that teaching is a reflective practice. You’re always a student of the profession, even as you become a seasoned professional. It’s a dynamic job that you can always build upon. You never arrive, which can be frustrating at times, but in the end I think is what makes it such a worthwhile pursuit. Teachers inspire curiosity and the good ones continue to be curious themselves.
Our experience is valuable but how does it compare to a beginner’s mindset? What limiting beliefs have emerged as a result of our self-confidence in our abilities and our experiences?
As it were, the very next chapter I read in Rubin’s book was entitled “Beginner’s Mindset.” In the chapter, he tells a story about the board game Go, which is said to be around 4,000 year old.
Go is one of the most complex games ever created by humans. There are more possible board configurations in Go than there are atoms in the universe. Back in 2014, the artificial intelligence research company DeepMind started development on an AI system that would be capable of solving complex problems. They called it AlphaGo and intended it to take on the best Go players in the world. But the way they designed AlphaGo to learn the game was unique. DeepMind co-founder and CEO Demis Hassabis described it like this:
Traditional games engines comprise thousands of rules handcrafted by strong human players that try to account for every eventuality in a game. The final version of AlphaGo does not use any rules. Instead it learns the game from scratch by playing against different versions of itself thousands of times, incrementally learning through a process of trial and error, known as reinforcement learning. This means it is free to learn the game for itself, unconstrained by orthodox thinking.
Two years later, AlphaGo had taught itself enough to take on legendary Go player Lee Sedol. More than 200 million people from around the world tuned in for the televised event. During the game, AlphaGo made a series of unconventional moves, which culminated in move 37, a completely unique and creative move that no human professional would ever have made. Professional Go player Fan Hui said the follow of move 37:
Move 37 goes against all conventional teaching and no experienced human player would ever have played it. In fact, we know from AlphaGo’s calculations there was just a one in ten thousand chance of a player selecting that move. It was a moment of inspiration that came from its unique approach to the game. Unlike the way I — and all other human players — approach Go, its decisions are unencumbered by the tradition, theory, and teaching of human play. Instead, it learns the game for itself, giving it the opportunity for fresh thinking and leading to a unique ‘free spirited’ style which in turn has unshackled human players from tradition and allowed us to also think differently about the game.
AlphaGo’s success speaks to the power of a beginner’s mindset that isn’t limited by culture, tradition, or experience. It’s a fascinating story, which you can read more about on this Google Arts & Culture page. There’s also a documentary about it that’s available for free streaming here.
Rubin concludes with this about the AlphaGo story:
There’s a great power in not knowing. When faced with a challenging task, we may tell ourselves it’s too difficult, it’s not worth the effort, it’s not the way things are done, it’s not likely to work, or it’s not likely to work for us. If we approach a task with ignorance, it can remove the barricade of knowledge blocking progress. Curiously, not being aware of a challenge may be just what we need to rise to it.
Jason Kottke references this too, in a post called “Ignorance and the curious idiot.” Bringing it back to Ted Lasso, Kottke writes about how the creative team initially came up with the idea for the show—they wondered, “What if we did a show where the main character was an ignorant guy who was actually curious?” Kottke goes on to link curiosity with paying attention, and paying attention with love.
I like the idea of emptying ourselves so we can learn, of seeking simplicity in the midst of life’s complexities, and of paying attention as a form of love. I like remaining curious, suspending judgment, and having a beginner’s mindset.
In the end, there’s so much we don’t know and that’s okay. Maybe it’s enough not to know. And maybe it’s better to know that much than to think we know more than we actually do. One of my favorite songs from the Canadian band The Sadies is “Why Be So Curious?” I think it’s a good and peaceful place to wrap this up. The lyrics go like this:
Feelin’ me the sun, glow so big and warm upon everyone Be the tallest tree, grow as rain falls down upon everyone Look at the clouds and the stars as they glow Why be so curious when nobody knows… The truth
Hear the birds all sing, the most beautiful things hear what they sing Feel the love you feel, don’t poison the well with worry and fear Look to the simple and be like the snow Why be so curious when nobody knows… The truth
Watch the river flow, as you get right in and feel the love flow Move along the way, float with care and ease off to the seas
Look at your fingers and look at your toes Why be so curious when nobody knows? Nobody knows… The truth
Title page from Chapter 2 of Austin Kleon’s book
Show Your Work
I’ve been following Austin Kleon’s work for a while now. I like how he talks about process over product in his book, Show Your Work.
The products of artists we admire and follow are all around us. The process they go through to reach such heights is often a mystery. One reason I like Kleon’s work is that he doesn’t shy away from sharing his process. In fact, sharing his process is kind of his thing.
Lately I’ve been seeing the idea of process, i.e., how artists go about their work and how they find inspiration, crop up everywhere.
In Jeff Tweedy’s book, World Within a Song, he writes about the influence The Beatles Anthology had on his music. I was 15 when the first of the anthology albums was released in 1995. One of the singles for the album was the demo, “Free as a Bird,” a “new” song by the Beatles recorded in 1977. I remember being mesmerized by the song’s video in which you experience the perspective of a bird flying through Beatles history as John Lennon croons about being free.
The Beatles Anthology featured rarities, outtakes, and live performances spanning the Beatles’ career, all providing an insight into their process. Of the anthology, Tweedy writes:
It’s truly hard to overstate how important it was to be given the validation of knowing that even the Beatles struggled, made wrong turns, changed course, and ultimately surrendered to each unsure moment as an invitation to swim in a starlit sky of possibility. I was given permission to sound bad on my way to sounding great by these records. Bad with gusto and an unabashed joyful wonder. No one looks inside and discovers only diamonds and pearls. If art is at least in part an act of discovery, you might as well learn how to enjoy getting lost, too.
My family has a saying that we use when facing difficult times: The struggle is real. Like Tweedy, it’s validating to me to know that other artists, writers, teachers, etc., struggle through their process. It gives me courage and determination to work through my process, with all its imperfections, toward something more beautiful.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eric Wenninger is an educator and writer. He teaches language and culture and writes about his thoughts and experiences here.
