Zine Ideaz!

It’s kind of weird that I never really got into zine-making when I was younger, because I was definitely the target demographic: GenX, artistic, creative, into counter-culture movements, loved going deep on my latest obsession, … the list goes on. But for whatever reason, I never really made many zines beyond just learning to make them.

My theory for why I wasn’t making zines back in the 80s and 90s is that I took a different but similar path: mixtape art. Everything you can do for a zine (a little rectangular booklet made of paper that folds out to reveal vibes and information), you can do for a mixtape insert (a little rectangular booklet made of paper that folds out to reveal vibes and information).

Since music was pretty much my holy grail, I was spending most of my time obsessing over anything that had to do with musical artists, albums, songs, lyrics, MTV and VH1 videos, etc. In my high school art class for a section on drawing and scaling portraits, I drew a huge portrait of Skid Row’s Sebastian Bach, which I hung over my bed because the walls were too full of all my Metallica posters.

I loved making mixtape art, not only because it let me go deep into a particular set of songs I was currently obsessed with, but because it was such a freeform art. I could draw, collage, cut out typefaces, and create a whole vibe. Most often, these were to share with friends, meaning I don’t really have many of these mini-masterpieces. And that was another great thing about mixtape art that reminds me of zines: zines can be made for yourself, but at their core they are for sharing. They are for contributing to the sharing economy where books and art and mixtapes of recorded music are for everyone— not just those who can afford them or have access to them.

Sadly, physical music media is less a part of my life than it used to be and I don’t really need to make mixtape art these days. But I can satisfy the part of myself that loved making cassette and CD covers by making zines instead. And what’s even better is that with zines, I’m not limited to talking about one set of songs, one artist, or even one genre like music.

Lately, I’ve been excited by the idea of making zines to process information or remember main points of something I’m learning. I was recently diagnosed with ADhD and in thinking about unconventional ways to synthesize new information, I realized that zines not only allow me to take and organize notes about what I’m learning, they can help me think about what’s most important to remember and how best to organize it into a simple structure. When I’m finished, my little zine is a lot more fun (and helpful) to look back over than I page full of disorganized notes.

Now I’ve been thinking about other ideas that could be fun to make into zines. If I can turn a podcast episode into a zine, why not a movie or show? Maybe an album as a little zine? Or a zine of a recent trip I took? 

So, here are some ideas to light you up when you want to make a zine— or when you’re super pumped about something you’re learning/listening to/watching/feeling/experiencing, and you want to turn that feeling into something cool and tangible:

ZINE IDEAS 

• A Podcast: The “Clipsnotes”
• A Book: The Zine
• An Album: The Zine
• A Band: The Zine
• A Movie: The Zine
• A Documentary: The Zine
• A Person: The Zine
• Song Lyrics (include a link or QR code to the song or a playlist with different versions of it)
• A Mixtape (include a link or QR to the song)
• A Poem / Poetry 
• An Art Zine
• A Collage Zine
• A Tiny Storybook
• A Zine Photo Album
• A Trip to ______ 
• An Experience You’ve Had
• How to Do a Thing 
• A Thing You Are Obsessed With
• A Vibe Zine
• T.I.L. (Today I Learned) 
• A Topic - Thoughts and Info/Advice/Wisdom
• Radiowaves: A Zine of Listening to the Radio
• A Calendar/Diary Zine (of a week/month/year, etc) 
• A Zine Memoir

In the spirit of mixtapes, why not mix a few of these ideas to make something even more fun!

• A Band + Your Favorite Albums/Songs + Lyrics + A Playlist link
• An Actor/Director + Your Favorite of their Movies + Lines/Dialogue
• An Art + Poetry + Vibe Zine
• A Tiny Storybook Collage Zine
• A Photo Album Zine of a Trip + Calendar/Diary Entries

You get the idea! Mix it up and have fun! And if you end up making something from any of these, feel free to share in the comments— I’d LOVE to read your zine! <3 

Zine: Andy J. Pizza’s Five Things to Help Creatives Become (and Stay) Consistent

Another zine is upon us!

This is another podcast zine edition. Specifically, this one is from Episode 500 (!!!) of the podcast Creative Pep Talk with host Andy J. Pizza. I haven’t listened to all 500 episodes because I only discovered the podcast about a year ago (which I guess would mean I could have listened to at least 365 episodes, but alas, I have not).

I’m not even entirely sure it was exactly a year ago, but as I recall, here’s what led me to find this very energetic, very encouraging podcast for creative people:

Around this time, I was giving a lot of thought to what I was consuming (content, news articles, non-fiction books, endless scrolling, etc) and to how it was impacting my energy— more specifically, what I had energy to create (real talk: not much). I was feeling drained and fatigued and I was thinking about how changing the way we spend our time, move our bodies, hydrate, nourish, etc, can change our energy and even our outlook, thoughts, and what we’re thinking about.

In one of those windows of time that seems to be aligned with something comic, that very week I experienced a synchronicity when a blog came into my awareness called Input/Output. Author, educator, and Input/Output creator Caitlin Kunkel is working off of the premise that we not only need input in order to output, but what we input can drastically impact what we output.

In order to explore that theory, Kunkel created a simple spreadsheet where she could track her inputs and outputs to better see the relationship between them. I found this tool incredibly exciting and immediately set out to make my own (you can find the original template here and Kunkel’s post about the idea and process here). While I haven’t yet made the practice of logging my inputs and outputs a habit, the idea of connections between what I’m inputting and outputting is constantly lighting things up in my mind.

But back to the Creative Pep Talk podcast! During that early period (even before discovering Kunkel’s Substack), I decided to make some intentional changes to what I was consuming. I wanted to fuel my creative energy which had waned to barely a sliver during a period of constant travel, debilitating health issues, and an ongoing barrage of social media scrolling and stressful news exhaustion.

I found I had energy for challenging tasks when I was listening to a good podcast— especially upbeat or positive ones— so I did a quick search for podcasts about creativity and came up with a short list. I can’t even remember the other podcasts I tried out now because from the first time I heard Andy J. Pizza’s super-positive, super-encouraging vibes coming through my headphones, I knew I’d found something special.

I love Creative Pep Talk. It’s just what it claims to be: a Pep Talk. More specifically, it’s a place for questions and conversations that come up when you’re on a creative path, which is ever changing, unpredictable, and filled with traps of self-doubt and societal pressures. Sometimes Andy goes deep into a particular question. Sometimes he talks to other creatives about their process. He always shares openly about what he’s learned on his own journey. And he always ends each episode with a CTA— a “Call to Adventure!” 

I made this zine about Episode 500, which Andy titled: “From ADHD Serial Quitter to Podcaster with 500 Episodes.” In it, he shares the five things he’s learned to be able to go from a creative person who can’t seem to stick with anything for very long to someone who has managed to create something that is much greater (and more enduring) than the sum of its parts.

Here’s my zine with— spoiler alert!— the five nuggets Andy shares to help you go from inconsistent creative to consistently creating with a body of work to show for it.

Incidentally, making zines from podcasts (and potentially other inputs I’m chewing on, like articles, videos, etc) is one of my ways of trying to re-establish a consistent creative practice that is low stakes but fun and impactful. So is reviving this blog. :) 

And if all this talk of creativity has piqued your interest, check out the Creative Pep Talk podcast! Episodes are also on Youtube if videos are more your thing— and/or you can sign up for Andy J. Pizza’s Substack.

Found: A Lost Time Capsule

From the spring of 2003 to the late summer of 2005 I lived in Malmö, Sweden. I moved there to live with my then boyfriend, now husband, Per, who I had met in Australia in late 2000 and promptly fallen head over heels for.

The move to Sweden was supposed to be romantic— and in a lot of ways it was. But it was also a really difficult time for me personally. I never quite fit in there— the friendly, open, loquacious girl from Texas trying to connect with a people who— though nice (and seemingly impressed with my self-taught Swedish speaking skills)— could, as one Swede put it, “take ten years to call someone a friend.” Who has time for that? I thought.

If I’d had a job, I would have at least had a way to meet people, but entry-level jobs were sparse and closely guarded by the personal referral system. And I had no friends to give me a foot in the door. The closest I got for most of my time there was a basically unpaid position I took at a local cafe and record store for credit in my “Swedish for Immigrants” program.

I loved being in the cafe, and the owners said I was one of the hardest workers they’d ever had, but when my course-work was up, I was only offered the option to keep working for peanuts— the practicum rate of about five bucks a day. “Det är en fis,” the owner admitted gruffly as he signed my papers of completion with a cigarette hanging out of the side of his mouth: It’s a fart. Still, that was his best offer, apparently.

I left with my dignity, having refused to work for “a fart” voluntarily for any longer than I absolutely had to. Once again, I was jobless.

. . .

I spent a lot of time alone in those two and a half years— Per was working as a mail carrier and later went back to school to finish his degree.

Being the early days of the Internet, but pre-social media (MySpace was just coming on the scene), I spent a lot of time seeking out new hobbies. I bought my first yoga mat and a small book of poses to go with it. I learned about Tarot cards online and eventually bought myself a deck.

I was drawing (doodling, really), writing poetry and lyrics, and learning the most basic HTML to create a simple website for myself. During that time, I also discovered some simple music and video editing tools to play around with.

One winter day early in 2005, when the idea to leave Sweden (to return to the United States myself while Per finished school) was just starting crystallize in my mind, we took a walk to a nearby cemetery— the closest thing to a park in our immediate neighborhood. Per filmed me as we walked around on the snowy paths and sat under the low sunbeams in the afternoon light.

I later set this footage to an instrumental track of a song I’d written to create a moody, deeply reverby, video that somehow managed to capture the vibe of that time better than anything else I’d created before.

. . .

Since moving back to the states just a few months after that walk in the cemetery, most of our old digital files have been saved to external hard drives and packed away in storage. We occasionally get them out, searching for some old relic. I’ve often thought about the video, but no matter how many file folders inside of file folders I search, the video has always eluded me.

After two decades, it became almost mythical in my mind. I could hear the music, see the snowy ground and the sunbeams, and feel the melancholy, warm tones. But I’d started to wonder if it was lost to time, if maybe it no longer existed.

Then, just yesterday, as Per and I sat side by side, digging through old hard drive files to better arrange (and delete) things, he suddenly found it. It is so old at this point that we had to download a special video player to play it, which we immediately did. And then… there it was.

We watched together, remembering that walk in the cemetery on that snowy day, remembering that time in our lives, remembering how I’d turned to my creativity to deal with the loneliness and depression I felt in Sweden. The video is only two minutes long, but it represents so much more than that two minutes. It may be one of the last things I made before I decided it was time to start planning my exit from Sweden and subsequent return home.

So, without further ado, I present the long lost —and now FOUND— video, a virtual time capsule from early 2005 and a very formative and important moment in my life captured in film and music.

"Spacegear Instrumental" by Treetrunkwise Music, 2005.

Music written and recorded by Rachael Sage.

Video recorded by Per Nilsson and edited by Rachael Sage.

All Rights Reserved.

. . . 

Footnote:

After almost two years in Sweden, I finally landed a part-time job at a kitschy dollar store called “Tiger” (a Danish word that referenced “a ten”— an sum of money that was around a dollar). I’d gotten my foot in the door there thanks to Per, who had been moonlighting as their fish tank caretaker for several months (yes, really). For months, I took the train to the next town over, to stand behind the cash register and ring people up for small household items and trinkets. That first real paycheck felt earned and I was happy to buy myself something nice— a super-long, chunky-knit green scarf and the matching fleece-lined mittens. Practical clothes for the Swedish winter (something I still had relatively little of) and a perfect souvenir that I could keep even if I moved away. I’m wearing both of these in the video. And although I gave the scarf away a long time ago, twenty years later I still have the mittens, and they are one of my most treasured possessions.

Post Script:

I did return to the U.S. in the summer of 2005. But instead of moving back home to Austin, I made my way to a new place far from Texas— I moved to Seattle, Washington, where I ended up living for more than 15 years, most of that time with Per, once he was able to come and join me in the States. It was one of the best decisions I ever made and I credit Seattle for bringing me back to life after I’d all but frozen over from my time in Sweden.

Zine: The Man Who Predicted the Downfall of Thinking

I love listening to podcasts while doing tedious household tasks, like cleaning the kitchen, doing the dishes, or organizing the junk drawer (just kidding, I don’t do that).

One of my favorites of the last couple of years is Julia Louis Dreyfus’ Wiser Than Me, a podcast where the actress (and former Seinfeld star) gets into deep conversations about life, love, work, and creativity with women in their elder years. If you haven’t listened to it, I highly, Highly! recommend it. It’s an easy listen, where conversation flows naturally and there’s plenty of laughing, crying, and exclaiming Wow! and Yes!And my personal favorite part is that there are plenty of F-bombs dropped by JLD, whose acceptance speech for the Webby she won for the show was a brief and potent “Listen. To. Old. Women. Mother. Fuckers.” Definitely my favorite award acceptance speech of all time.

Some podcasts, however, require deeper listening. I’m a big fan of conversations that explore politics, social and cultural issues, and technology with deep and critical thinking. When I listen to these, I often find myself having to stop what I’m doing to really take in what’s being said. And even then, if I want to really learn something, I often have to pause and replay an insightful section multiple times until it really sticks in my brain.

One such conversation I listened to recently was on the podcast Your Undivided Attention, a tech critical podcast hosted by Tristan Harris. In episode 105, “The Man Who Predicted the Downfall of Thinking,” Harris invites Sean Illing (host of The Gray Area podcast) and Professor Lance Strate to discuss the work of media theorist Neil Postman and how to apply his philosophy (much of which centered around TV at the time) to our current technological landscape, particularly the tenuous moment between social media and artificial intelligence (AI).

The conversation is dense and exciting. My brain (recently diagnosed with ADHD) was following insight after insight with great interest, but as for me, I kept wanting to slow everything down, to really learn what was being shared in each segment of the episode. I didn’t want to forget a single thing!

The following day, still chewing on all that I’d heard, I grabbed some pens and paper and headed to a nearby coffee shop with my headphones. I’d decided that I wanted to listen to the episode again (repetition/remembering), but that this time, I would turn the most salient parts of episode into something I could refer back to as many times as I wanted to: I was going to make a zine.

Making a zine about a podcast episode is so brilliantly simple, I can’t believe I’d never thought of it before. Admittedly, it’s been a long time since I made a zine, but I’ve always been someone who likes doing something with my hands while I’m listening and learning— dishes, laundry folding, knitting, doodling, taking copious notes. But turning my doodles and notes into a zine about what I was learning had never occurred to me.

Needless to say, I felt really excited as I sat in the sunny courtyard of the cafe and scrubbed through the episode to listen to the parts I wanted to try to capture in zine form. When I finished, I used a key card envelope from the hotel we were staying at to create a little book cover for my zine, so it looks like a real and tiny book.

Flipping through the zine-book, I felt such delight and satisfaction with what I’d made and what I’d discovered— a creative way to process learned information into a keepsake reference tool.

Back at the hotel, I requested two more key card envelopes and told them it was for an art project I was working on. My plan was to make a three-volume set of tiny zine-books that cover the most fundamental and thought-provoking insights of Episode 105 and what it teaches about Postman’s work, but I made the second zine, didn’t like it as much, and my ADHD kicked in and sent me on my way to the next project.

Anyway, here’s a little gif of the zine I made (also pictured, just because it’s tiny and adorable, the guidebook for the pocket-sized Archetypes oracle deck by Kim Krans of The Wild Unknown).

And if critical thinking podcasts about tech, society, and human culture interest you, check out Your Undivided Attention (brought to you by the Center for Humane Technology, who also created the tech critical documentary The Social Dilemma). And if you’re curious about the episode that inspired this zine, you can check it out here.

Back to the Drawing Board

For the last couple of weeks I've been trying to push my creativity by drawing something every day, no matter how simple, plain, or just plain bad. It's been a great creativity exercise, and I had forgotten how much I really enjoy it!

Through this exercise, I've also realized that the artist's sketchbook is a fascinating and often overlooked treasure! Individually, the pieces may not speak to the ability or style of the artist, but once you begin looking at the collection as a whole, not only does the artist's style begin to come through, but often you can really begin to see their process- when they allow themselves to play, get messy, go with the flow, and go out on a limb. Seeing the process of an artist or designer becomes important when you're trying to choose the right person to bring a project to life. Looking at an artist's sketchbook is getting a glimpse into their mind, and with that connection and understanding you may be able to tell if they'll be able to take your project somewhere you'd like to see it go. A polished portfolio can't show you all of that. Epiphany!

Here are some recent drawings from my sketchbook, all drawn with pigment ink (no eraser). I'm looking forward to experimenting with color on some of these. I'm also hoping to end up with some good screen print ideas and lots more!