Gather Your Githerments!

Why your low-key obsessions and trivialities actually matter

Why not fill a journal with your weird little interests?

So here’s the idea: I think that each of us carries around an odd assortment of little ideas, minor interests, running jokes, low-key obsessions, trivialities, and areas of sub-expertise. Maybe you can’t immediately summon a list of these things to mind, but trust me, they’re in there.

And when you aggregate them together, they become your THING. No one else’s things are quite like yours.

These odds and ends make great material for a sketchbook or notebook or art project or journal, which is where I’m going with this, but…

First, I needed a word for this collection of things. I’ve been puzzling over this for a while now. Today I found the word.

The word is: githerment.

It comes from this fantastic old British dictionary, published in 1862 (and I encourage you to dig through it and find your own bit of Yorkshire dialect to adapt to your own purposes. )

What are your githerments, and why do they matter?

Your githerments are the things you find funny, the things you always wonder about, the things you are always happy to find someone to talk about. Your githerments are not only the things you’re interested in, but the things other people find interesting about you. Does everyone text you pictures of weird Barbies? I’m guessing that weird Barbies are one of your githerments.

I think a lot about this New York Times piece about the benefits of having a “bit” that we do with people. Texting weird Barbie pictures to a friend is an example of a bit. Here’s what he says about how a bit can be useful:

This may seem glib, but consider that if you shrink your personality down to just one thing, people may have a much easier time connecting with you. A bit becomes a quick bonding agent that allows an acquaintance to take an interest in creating a meaningful relationship with you later on, deeper, beyond the veil of the bit. It says something about who you are, or who you aren’t, and forces you to become a study of something weird, funny, slightly apart from yourself.

In that sense, a githerment is a kind of bit that you can do with yourself and others. Let’s say you always stop and look for the weirdest book in a Little Free Library. Whether you take a picture of it for yourself, text it to a friend, whatever—maybe judging the contents of Little Free Libraries is one of your githerments.

But it can be more than that! Your githerments can form the basis of your artistic practice or your creative life. Are you a songwriter? A ceramicist? An author? A painter? A secret journal-keeper? Your githerments belong in the mix!

I think about this whenever I look at Maira Kalman’s work. She often says that she has made it her job to get up every day and read the obituaries, go for a walk, and find things that interest her so she can paint and write about them. Her githerments include but are not limited to: cake, chairs, flowers, old suitcases, shoes, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and certain people: Proust, Kafka, Chekhov, Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas.

Cake is everywhere in Maira Kalman’s work!

You don’t have to guess at Maira Kalman’s githerments. She writes books about them, including My Favorite Things, and a gorgeous illustrated edition of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (which I highly recommend to everyone—it’s much funnier and more interesting than I thought it would be). And she illustrated a book about cake. And so on.

Edward Gorey’s githerments included a very particular combination of Edwardian, Victorian, and Jazz Age styles, the ballet, cats, murder mysteries, typography, wallpaper, doorknobs, and a whole grab bag of other peculiarities that he fully indulged in his art and writing. His entire life’s work is basically a study of his githerments.

Are you getting excited about your githerments?

Because I am! I’ve been trying to keep more of an everyday sketchbook/notebook lately (“everyday” in the sense of “ordinary”, not “every single day”) and as I think about how I’m going to fill a page on an ordinary Tuesday, I realize that githerments make for good journal material—and might actually amount to something someday.

But first, you have to actually notice them! Here’s how I do this:

• What am I texting people about? Or—what inside jokes do I have with people? For instance, I have a “weird lost pet posters on telephone poles” thing with a friend.

• What am I taking pictures of? I will always take a picture of the random free stuff people leave out on the sidewalk.

• What am I re-posting or liking on social media? Emotional support llamas and trained chickens, of course.

• What am I telling other people about? I read that cherry tree blossoms go through five distinct stages and then I had to make up my own stages, and this is the kind of thing I have to go around telling people about until I get it out of my system.

• What am I highlighting in books or reading aloud to whoever is within earshot? I’m reading this new biography of Gertrude Stein and I have endless appetite for her insane publishing stories, and I’m also making a list of every little town in Europe she and Alice lived in, because I might need to go to all of them.

Etc. etc.

Don’t let your githerments slip away!

Childe Hassam’s time in Portland is one of my githerments. I wrote about it here.

Actually catching my githerments takes a bit of effort. At first, I was shocked to realize how much I just let slip away into the daily sludge. I’d think about something interesting or amusing for a second, then I’d stop thinking about it, and then it would sink into the morass. Gone. Over. Submerged.

Once I decided to start writing and drawing about them, I was able to sporadically catch these little ideas and get them down. I still missed a lot of them, but at least I was aware that I was missing some of them. I realized that it was more fun to catch them than to let them drift off into the Land of Ignored and Neglected Thoughts.

I’m getting better at catching them now. It’s become a bit of a hobby, to try to wrangle my githerments. In the words of Allen Ginsberg, “Notice what you notice/catch yourself thinking.”

Githerments are intrinsically satisfying to collect, and to flip through and admire at your leisure, but you never know—they could lead to something. Maira Kalman likes to paint cake, and here comes a book on cake. What we love about her is her unique take on the world. And that unique take comes about because she has been diligent about gathering up her githerments.

It definitely takes a bit of effort to write them down and/or draw a picture of them. I either have to:

• write them down immediately in one of the pocket notebooks I carry around

• snap a picture and hope I check my camera roll later

• email myself a reminder

• put it in my Notes app on my phone

Or some such thing, so it’ll still be around when I’m in front of my sketchbook/journal/notebook again.

Think of writing down or drawing your githerments as a way to have a second brain

I could say a lot more about this, but probably if I just say, “you need a second brain, and it should be your journal” many of you are already going OH YES THAT’S SO TRUE so I’ll just leave it here for now. To be continued.

Do you need a second brain to keep track of all the slugs you relocated off the trail for their own safety, and/or the cool thing Louise Nevelson said? I do.

I could talk about this for hours

…and I probably will. I’m making a little change in what I’m sending out to supporters of this newsletter. After over 100 tutorials on HOW to draw and paint, I want to focus more on WHAT we draw and paint and write, and WHY.

So—plenty more art-making to come, but also:

• All forms of writing and journaling

• Gathering our githerments

• Using all of this as the basis for a creative project or a self-appointed artist residency

• Or just generally keeping an ordinary, everyday sort of sketchbook as a second brain/idea factory/record of what on earth we’re doing with our days

• Replacing doomscrolling with (hear me out!) scrolling through YOUR OWN JOURNALS. It’s way more interesting than you might think.

Also, I’m going to start sending out these supporter-only dispatches on MONDAYS. So get in on it now, and I’ll see you on Monday!

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