Bird Mail 026
Austin, TX
Pre-Quarantine. March, 2020
Hello my club of birders. We are continuing with this faster cadence as we remain sheltered in our homes. This, in case you have forgotten, is Bird Mail, a—now weekly—collection of internet ephemera. If you cannot remember why you subscribed, and this issue doesn’t pique your interest, that’s okay, you can unsubscribe right here or at the bottom of this email. The club will miss you.
I started writing this issue in the usual way: reading through my collection of links in Instapaper and clacking away at my mechanical keyboard. Normally I end up with ten-ish topics that may or may not relate to each other and more-than-ten-ish links to support them. I piece them together—sometimes around a few bigger themes—and that’s the Bird Mail you typically get at 0500 on a Tuesday. Issue 026 quickly turned into something else entirely. Five hundred meandering words on constraints flew from my fingertips, sparked by connecting stories about video games. That, plus a handful of links that made me smile. With all that out of the way, onward.
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Quarantine is the first time in probably 7 years that I’ve truly missed having a video game console beyond my iPhone. Reader Chelsea—who writes a fantastic newsletter of her own, you really must subscribe—told me about the unbelievable cuteness of Animal Crossing and I wished for a Switch so I could play along. I’ve revisited a few of the more meditative iOS games I love: Alto’s Odyssey, Mini Metro, and my absolute favorite Threes. What iOS games lack in complex animations, they often make up for in intuitive controls or beautiful, simple visuals and great soundtracks.
I’ve been thinking about limitations a lot lately. The things we are allowed to do, or in many cases limited from doing in order to #flattenthecurve. I do not know if it helped me entirely, but reframing those limitations as constraints and working to live within them and do what I can within them has helped some.
Working within constraints led to some of the most important video games of all time. Robin Sloan—who you might remember from previous issues of Bird Mail—is currently making his own video game, the primary constraint being his skill, or lack thereof. You can follow along here. This bit from his “reasons” for making a video game resonated deeply with me (emphasis mine).
Just like books, video games have been formative aesthetic experiences for me, particularly in my youth. For me, media-making has always proceeded like this: I encounter something meaningful; I decide I want to produce my own version of that something; I learn how to do it. So it’s all reverb, really: impulse reflected back from material, transformed but recognizable. The material is me.
That reverb Sloan writes about is the same reason I write Bird Mail for all of you. I believe whole-heartedly in the power of the newsletter: to deliver something more than just marketing drivel to your inbox, to deliver valuable knowledge, joyous information that teaches you about something or someone new, or simply something that makes you laugh. After years of reading newsletters, I wanted to try my hand at my own newsletter. Thus, Bird Mail. The constraints of email are well known at this point, and that’s exactly what I love about it. There is only so much that can be done in this space with words and links and the occasional image, but I want Bird Mail to continue to be a bright spot in your inbox each time you see it.
If you want to participate in some making something within constraints, The Getty Museum put out a call for recreations of famous paintings using household objects and the results are inspiring. Pair that with this excellent Instagram and see what famous art you can make with objects around your home.
What are you doing within the constraints of your quarantine? Have you found a way to frame this time to feel a little less…confining? I’d love to correspond with you about this, and maybe share with the other Birders.
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- This tweet about Drake’s absurd Toronto mega-mansion. Continuing proof that money can’t buy taste.
- Bring your outdoor hobby, indoors, for one last run of the season.
- I spent way too long making silly semi-musical things with Patatap the other night. A few tips: notice how columns of keys are related, and press the SPACE bar to change sonic themes. All the bleep-bloop music really had me inspired so I picked up a pocket operator from Teenage Engineering (co-maker of previous Bird Mail mention play.date and look forward to making some more music in the days to come.
- Bird was cracking up in the middle of the workday and I found her watching my favorite member of the Bon Appétit Cinematic Universe singing a song we all know…but don’t really know.
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That’s all for this week, tune in next time for some art, design, probably some outdoors, and updates on my sourdough consumption. Yes, like the rest of quarantined millennials, Bird and I are making bread.
Be well, friends,
Bruce