Amazon announced last week that it will be closing its UK-based subsidiary Book Depository at the end of the month. The online book retailer launched in 2004 and was acquired by the ravenous “everything store” in 2011. I am not certain where I first heard about them but I am certain that I have sourced a third of my library from their exceptional inventory over the majority of their 19 years in business.

Their absence will be a loss to readers everywhere. I’d like to express my gratitude to their entire team for countless happy returns from the mailbox. When a recent order arrived soaked, for example, they not only replaced it but sent me a signed copy.

Let’s all take heart from the fact that scattering is the inevitable universal consequence of all forms of aggregation.

We would have a much healthier relationship with art if all critics were as thoughtful as Jerry Saltz. I just finished his book, How to Be an Artist (2020), and it’s precisely the sort of thing that one hopes guidance councillors keep handy for curious students who wander into their offices looking for something deeper than STEM courses—or just something to nudge that creative spark or make them feel less alone in the universe.

Saltz reminds us that paying deference to pretension is not a price of admission to make art or even just enjoy it. You’re free to start anytime and you can always try again, learn more, look at something differently.

My favourite rule is 24: There Are No Wasted Days—“Your artist’s mind is always working, even when you think it’s idling.” Indeed, it is. I practice something in the spirit of this that I call “everything is research”—where even objectively bad art, or things that are not my preference, or that fail to entertain me, have something to offer.

That is, you can learn something from everything—even things you don’t like or find comfortable. We seem to have lost this plot in our quest to transform the entire culture into a faithful recreation of our childhoods.