Bourbon and A Cigarette
We've got a new episode about notebooks & consciousness, an epiphany up on a rocky ledge, a classic Instax, and more
The Virtual Memories Show News
A 2x/week email about a podcast about books & life
Podcastery
This week, I posted Episode 612 of The Virtual Memories Show, with Roland Allen author of THE NOTEBOOK: A History of Thinking on Paper (Biblioasis), which explores how the proliferation of paper & binding changed culture, business, and maybe the nature of human consciousness. We talk about how keeping a diary got him obsessed-ish with notebooks, how he found a narrative and protagonists as he delved into the history of notebooks, and what it means to see the notebook as a piece of technology or hardware. We get into their influence on art and the Renaissance (and the theory that sketchbooks allowed artists to move toward realism), how diaries created a new, private persona distinct from the public self, how he discovered a new reading for a line of Hamlet, and how digital options never manage to replace the paper notebook. We also discuss how Moleskine came to dominate the notebook market and how Bruce Chatwin’s The Songlines jumpstarted their craze, how Roland learned to switch off the “this isn’t interesting” filter in his own diaries, how writing this book made him a better notebooker, the way Dutch album amicorum (friendship books) served as a social media precursor, how our notebooks can outlive us (and his posthumous plans for his diaries), and a lot more. Give it a listen, and go read THE NOTEBOOK!
Last week, I posted Episode 611, feat. artist/activist Eric Drooker and his wonderful new graphic novel, NAKED CITY (Dark Horse Books), the conclusion to the New York trilogy begun in Flood! and Blood Song. We talk about how Naked City started with the image of a beleaguered squeegee-man and wound up a love letter to New York and especially Tompkins Square Park, the challenges of using word/thought balloons and captions after making wordless comics for so long, and the importance of staying handmade in the digital era. We get into his upbringing in Stuy Town and the Lower East Side/Loisaida, why we were recording in an apartment above the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space, why he semi sorta escaped from the city, what it’s like being a quality-of-life criminal, and the time he made his start with stencil-graffiti only to get over-tagged by Basquiat. We also discuss his political awakening, the Tompkins Square Park riot and police militarization, his ambivalence about street art going into the gallery, the surveillance panopticon, the importance of on-the-ground activism, and more. Give it a listen, and go get NAKED CITY!
Recent episodes: Simon Critchley • Doug Brod • Sven Birkerts • Christopher Brown • Dmitry Samarov • Stephen B. Shepard • Benjamin Dreyer
Bourbon and A Cigarette
On Monday afternoon, I went for a walk. I’d been cooped up at my desk all day, trying to get enough work done that I could minimize the number of people and institutions I disappoint while I’m away on my current 2-day business trip to Lexington, KY.
I meandered through my neighborhood and then onto the new trail that I mentioned in Sunday’s email, the one with the skull-lichen. I was a little in my head, not in a dramatic way; I was just thinking about some of this weekend’s life-changing self-realizations, and maybe exploring it all too deeply.
I finished the new trail, then picked up the old one to get to the plateau/cliff overlooking the hills and reservoir. I had vague notions about some sort of epiphany that would occur up there. In my youth, I spent time on that ridge of rock, trees and moss, playing at my lonely teenaged melodramas.
I walked the rocky trail, among the evergreens, over leaves and moss, embracing the solitude, until I got close to the plateau, where I saw a figure through the trees.
As I got closer, I heard some noise, too, thought there might be several people, in which case I’d look around, take a picture or two for my brother, and leave. When I got to the clearing, I discovered it was a single man, white, mustached, maybe in his 20s. He had brought up a folding nylon chair, a can of something in its armrest, and a portable speaker hooked up to his phone, playing a contemporary male country song.
We nodded at each other. I took some pictures of the horizon and tried to see the smoke from the fire in Pompton Lakes a few miles away (it was under control by then, not like the Greenwood Lake fire that was smoking us out yesterday as it exploded in size).
I crouched, then sat on the rocks, taking in the stillness, watching the sun creep below the hills, listening to the song and trying to imprint some of the lyrics in my memory.
The young man wasn’t in my line of sight and for a moment I wondered if he’d step behind me with a rock and kill me just for the experience. But that was fleeting, and time was measured by a song about caffeine and nicotine, and sharing a queen-sized bed.
I grew so still that I felt like I was merging with the rock, becoming part of the glacial-moraine crapfest that defines my landscape.
I felt serene, at rest. I started to understand and accept that I was in someone else’s soundtrack, and maybe that epiphany did occur, but it wasn’t mine.
A song later, a chipmunk started to dart across the rocks a few feet ahead of me. Its motion caught my eye, but my stone body didn’t shift. It seemed to realize Two Legs were here, froze for long moments, then raced back to a crevice beneath a boulder.
Soon after that I got up, stretched, wished my compatriot a good day, and walked home.
On the road, I took out my phone to look up the lyrics and find out who we’d been listening to. Gavin Adcock?, I thought, Sounds like Gloria Badcock.
Maurice Vellekoop would have laughed.
Instaxery
No podcasts or drop-ins this past week, so no new Instax pix. I didn’t go celebrate/mourn at the Original Sisters exhibition by Anita Kunz at the Norman Rockwell Museum on Saturday, which would’ve been an opportunity to shoot, but I do have a live podcast session on Thursday at Labyrinth Books with Ken Krimstein (hope to see you there!), and I plan to attend the opening reception for Patrick McDonnell’s gallery opening at the Arts Council of Princeton for The Super Hero’s Journey exhibition. Here’s an Instax I shot at Patrick’s last spring (digital, not a scan of the Instax print):
Artistry
Still making my daily sketch-journal, even on days when I go nowhere and see nothing. Yesterday was me a mammoth skeleton at CVG airport; I wonder what today will bring. The bad news is that I didn’t draw anything else this week. I even brought a sketchpad, blank postcards, Micron and brush-pen with me on this trip, but can’t make the effort this morning to bring you some art. You should go to the Flickr album of most of the art I’ve made & find something you like.
Postcardery
Let me know if you want to be on my postcard-a-day list. (Financial supporters of the podcast get a hand-drawn or painted postcard as a thank-you, like that one above.)
Until Next Time
Thanks for reading this far! I promise I’ll be back on Sunday with links, books, & workout-craziness, and on Wednesday with a new episode, and maybe some art, maybe an Instax.
I've had a couple times I lied and said I was fine,