Hello! Thank you for signing up to, or stumbling on, this no-news-newsletter written by me, Ashley Clark. If you do choose to subscribe—and it’s free—you’ll receive bulletins about whatever’s on my mind: usually some combination of art/film/music/literature/football. If that sounds good, hit the button!
Hello, and welcome back! Today’s letter serves as a very brief notice of a change of rhythm for “Keeping Up”, because the keeping up part of “Keeping Up” is starting to get a little tricky, and even though it’s a free newsletter, and I’m doing it because it’s fun, I still want to maintain some standards.
As such, from today onwards, “Keeping Up”, which I never officially confirmed was a weekly publication—but which became one anyway—will go bi-weekly. I’m frankly astonished that I’ve managed to keep it going at a weekly rate for over a year, and I believe that slowing things down a bit will help me to write slightly more focused pieces—although I’m not promising anything on that front, either. Who knows, it might even end up going tri-weekly! A huge part of this endeavor in the first place was to help me take the pressure off myself when it came to writing, and that’s what I’m doing here.
I hope you’ll continue to keep up with my attempts to keep keeping up. Thanks so much for reading, subscribing, and for all your lovely feedback. It is appreciated.
I don’t want to leave you completely empty-handed this week, though. So here is a short documentary that I love, and which popped into my mind out of the blue earlier this week. It’s Nathan Truesdell’s all-archival Balloonfest (2016), which paints a brisk and grimly amusing portrait of the city of Cleveland’s ill-fated attempt, in September 1986, to set a curious world record: the simultaneous launch of 1.5 million balloons. You can watch Balloonfest here.
See you in a couple weeks!
Thank you for reading. Please consider subscribing to this newsletter if you’ve yet to do so, or, if you have, spreading the word. I appreciate it!