PODCAST

This week, I posted Episode 694 of my Virtual Memories Show, feat. the return of Nate Powell, recorded at SPX! With DIANA (Abrams ComicArts), Nate has completed his “accidental triptych” of Ozark horror & the punk scene and we talk about the creative leap he took with this book, the ways that DIANA fulfills (but doesn’t complete) the stories of COME AGAIN and FALL THROUGH, why this book is set during the transitional period of the early ’90s, and the challenge of writing characters in their early 20s while he’s approaching his 50s (and what it meant for Frank Miller to write about 50-something Bruce Wayne when he was in his 20s). We get into his re-imagining of the punk music/art scene in Arkansas, the ways horror-genre gave him a framework on which to build story, his use of duotone and spot colors to get a midcentury color palette for the book, how he’s making his art messier as an unconscious reaction to generative AI, and his lead character’s self-identity and the importance of being your own canon. We also discuss how Bob Ross got him started on art, and what he got from rewatching Bob’s show during lockdown, the joy of his annual pilgrimage to Small Press Expo and embrace of the comics community, his formative experiences at School of Visual Arts, the total lack of crossover between the readers of his John Lewis biography and his personal work, the right age to expose kids to the golden age of the X-Men, why his ultimate goal is to channel Alex Toth, and more. Give it a listen! And go read DIANA!

Recent podcast episodes: Karl Christian Krumpholz • Alison Fensterstock & Michael Tisserand • Emil Wilson • Jonathan Ames • Dash Shaw • Phillip Lopate • Ida Kao

Or how about every single episode, alphabetically?

Every book (non-comics) that I’ve finished since 1989.

BIRDY!

On a mini-hike the last morning before I left for Milan:

HITTING THE LINKS

Here are a couple of links for you:

• RIP Eva Marie Saint . . . RIP DITKA . . . RIP Matt Howarth . . . RIP Margaret Hamilton . . . RIP Peppino Mazzullo . . . RIP Freddie Jackson . . . RIP Ken Sleight . . . RIP Brother Apple . . . RIP Sudden Sam McDowell . . . RIP Robert Kelker-Kelly . . . RIP Nana Patekar . . . RIP Devon Dikeou . . .

• Also, Dennis Hastert, Jim Bakker and Jeffrey Archer died.

• Congrats to Anne Carson on winning this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature! I started reading her this year, which probably had nothing to do with her win, but I really dig her work.

• Maybe Birdy is an outlier in this study about how sharing a bed with your dog is better for your sleep, or maybe huskies and malamutes are just more polite than our crazy doggo.

• Good NYT interview with Chris Rock, who calls out the interviewer on multiple occasions.

• Over in NYRoB-land, Nicole Rudick wrote about Rosemary Mayer and Ree Morton, and Marina Warner wrote about Ithell Colquhoun.

• Charles Bivona wonders what’s in a name.

COMMONPLACE

Among other stuff, I added this to my online commonplace book:

How do you understand someone in flight from understanding?

—Peter Schjeldahl, on Ree Morton

ASSUMPTIONS

I planned to write this week’s post while on the flight home from Milan, but there’s a 4.5-hour delay, so as long as I’m stuck in my room at the Sheraton Malpensa, I may as well get to it, right?

I had plenty of good meetings at the big trade show at the Rho Fiera, but it was tiring. Lots of companies to catch up with, pitch on joining my association, or dun about not paying their membership dues. Seeing pals at different companies and trying to remember where they were before, and whether I saw a LinkedIn post about the new gig. Also, approximately 10,000 people saw my LinkedIn post from Sunday evening about being in a middle seat for the redeye flight to MXP.

There are a lot of other stresses and strains that go on during these events, like not getting around to eating anything but the occasional booth giveaway chocolate, getting stuck in a mad crush to the Metro at the end of the day, having to inhale cigarette smoke and bad cologne when you step outdoors, along with the jet-lag and attendant lack of sleep. But I successfully blew off all dinner invites, and was able to get back to my hotel and just stare at a wall for a bit.

After the show finished on Thursday, I headed out to Milan Centrale so I could get a train to Parma. I had plans to meet up Wallis Wilde-Menozzi on Friday, to record a podcast about her new translation of poems & prose by Antonella Anedda (ep. coming next week!), Emerging from the Winter Sea, and see a little of Parma.

That kept me going during the exhaustion of the week, tbh: the thought that I was going to see a friend after all the business, talk about art and poetry, and see a place I’ve never seen.

But I was pretty burned out during Thursday’s 100-min. InterCity train ride. I tried to take in the landscape and not just look at screens, but it was a challenge. At one point, I woe-is-me-ishly wrote in my fancypants new notebook — one of these in one of these —, “I suspect I’ll never be here again.”

I considered taking a cab from the train station to my hotel, the Wallis-suggested Palazzo Dalla Rosa Prati, but elected to walk the 15-min. route, rolling my carryon behind me, and soon I reached the Complesso Monumentale Della Pilotta, and my mind was blown.

The massive scale of the stone palaces (palazzi?) just overwhelmed me, and I thought, “Holy crap, Amy & I have to come back here,” as I realized an overnight wouldn’t be enough. I walked on to the hotel, and discovered it’s in the Piazza Duomo, beside an 800+-year-old baptistery. I had a pretty good view outside my room.

I meandered on my own in the evening, amidst the city’s preparations for its Verdi festival, and Wallis came by the next morning to record and then show me the Piazza.

We had a fantastic conversation about Anedda, translation, artist-identity the ritual of the Componidori, the multivalence of Italian and the just-the-facts-ma’am of English, and then we headed out, and she told me about the history of Parma, the allegorical carvings of Benedetto Antelami,

Correggio’s magnificent cupola painting of the Assumption of the Virgin,

the archeological digs into Roman history,

the scandal of Giovanna’s room and more modern-day scandals, and more. Sitting side-by-side below the cupola, we told each other hard stories about parents’ deaths, and over lunch continued to talk about things that don’t make it into podcasts.

I took plenty of pictures, not necessarily to share with you all, but to help me recreate this wonderful day years from now.

After lunch: more trains, an airport hotel, the view of a 12th century tower giving way to that of a parking lot. All I want is to get home, but I’m in a holding pattern.

INSTAX

I took some Instax pix in Parma after my podcast with Wallis:

SOUND BODY, FRACTURED MIND

No exercise since Sunday, no meditation, lots of walking in dress shoes around exhibit halls and 10-min. walks between the metro stop and the show hotel. I was looking pretty good last weekend before I left on this trip; we’ll see if I can get back to working out when I’m home.

POSTCARD

I mail out a postcard every day, so let me know if you want to be in the rotation for that. Didn’t write/mail any while in Italy, so I have a week’s worth to make up once I’m home. But I did come across a pretty awesome post office in Parma on Friday:

EXPENSES

If you want to help out with Virtual Memories Show expenses — this email runs $29/month, podcast-hosting is $25/month, and the remote recording account is $20/month — or otherwise Contribute To The Cause, you can make a one-time contribution of any size via Stripe, or a recurring one via Patreon. Or maybe save your money for when I launch the Kickstarter for my Instax book.

NEXT TIME

Thanks for reading this far. See you next time, I hope.

Her heart, her heart’s like crazy paving / Upside down and back to front / She says oh, it’s so hard to love / When love was your great disappointment,