Hitting The Links: 1/12/25
My birthday, my LA, my time-machine, my pizza, my doggo, my book, + a ton of links, some great reading & more
The Virtual Memories Show News
A 2x/week email about a podcast about books & life
I Live My Life Like a French Movie
I like to keep my birthday low-key. It’s not anxiety about age/mortality, but just because I have certain hangups about controlling exactly when I should be the center of everyone’s attention.
Speaking of, yesterday was my birthday. I unplugged (offline until 5:30pm or so), ran 6.1 miles with The Guys at 7:30 a.m. after fresh-fallen snow, got a massage later in the morning at a nearby day spa, had some pizza for lunch (a rare treat for me & my body image issues), talked to my folks & my brother, & just read, wrote, chilled the heck out for the day, while cuddling Birdy (we settled on that for the name of our new dog). In the evening, Amy & I rewatched Singles on Criterion & I got to time-travel back to my college years, which was an awfully nice present.
Last year, I wrote about hiding out in LA for my birthday, not getting in touch with anyone, and making a visit to the Getty Museum to treat myself. I also wrote about how I wound up bumping into someone I’ve known since I was 7 years old in a comic shop in West Hollywood that afternoon, because there’s no escaping the past.
Per The Great Spreadsheet That Knows All, I’ve recorded with more than 30 people in or living in/near LA (that is, I recorded with some of them elsewhere, and some moved to/from there later on). Near as I can tell, none of them are presently in a danger zone from the fires, but I also haven’t been checking in with them, because they don’t need to be thinking of my peace-of-mind right now. (Past guest Arthur Hoyle used to live in the Palisades for decades and wrote about seeing the devastation of what was once his home & community.)
When I went back online yesterday, I saw this NYT piece on the risks to the Getty Museum & its collection. I thought about how many times I’d seen the museum up in the hills during my LA drives, how many times I’d put off visiting, how thankful I was to spend my birthday there last year.
I spent the day after my 2024 birthday recording a show with Sammy Harkham, seeing Celia Paul & her art, getting a tattoo from Graham Chaffee, and taking an Instax each time for my book. I wrote/edited a few pieces for the book yesterday during my offline-time.
Taking my mouth off the internet-firehose freed me up to see connections among my fragments & phrases and the photos I took throughout the year. Now I wonder how many of those places may be gone a year from now. What will fire, flood, or merest mortality take from us?
I know I gripe about all the work-/podcast-travel while also making it look easy, but everything can be gone in an instant, so as I posted a couple nights ago: Take every goddamned opportunity, spread yourself thin, be in of around the world.
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And now, Birdy:
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And now, let’s hit the links!
Links & Such
Recent Virtual Memories Show podcasts: Damion Searls • 2024 Recap • The Guest List • Benjamin Swett • Ken Krimstein • Eddie Campbell • Caitlin McGurk
RIP The Vivienne . . . RIP George Lawson (trust me; you’ll want to read this one) . . . RIP Richard Foreman . . . RIP Sam Moore . . . RIP Charles Person . . . RIP Peter Yarrow . . . RIP Pippa Garner . . . RIP Roger Pratt . . . RIP Richard M. Cohen . . . RIP Brian Matusz . . . RIP Perry the Donkey . . .
Also, Jean-Marie le Pen, James Arthur Ray, and Anita Bryant died.
In The Guest List episode last month, Dmitry Samarov mentioned that he’s been drawing along with a reading of Moby Dick. Now he’s got a book deal out of it, so go pre-order that!
I don’t think it’s weird to fixate on the occasions when 1-2 people survive a plane crash in which everyone else doesn’t make it.
William Deresiewicz wrote about the dearth of arts critics & what it means for the arts.
This fugitive story feels very ‘80s-into-‘90s cyberpunk.
More on that “sad beige mum” vibe, about people who are seemingly incapable of thinking for themselves and base their life choices on Instagram.
(That article did turn me on to this 2018 interview with Martin Amis, so that’s a net-+.)
Here’s a piece about Posy Simmonds ahead of her Angouleme exhibition.
We’re nearing the 5th anniversary of my last haircut. I don’t think I’ll be hitting this guy’s number, though.
A lot of hair; good lighting, though
Current/Recent Reading
Naples 1925: Adorno, Benjamin, and the Summer That Made Critical Theory - Martin Mittelmeier (tr. Shelley Frisch)
The Snow Leopard - Peter Matthiessen [finished Friday morning]
“Remembering the depression of my first descent from Tarakot into the Bheri Canyon, I have convinced myself that sudden loss of altitude is the main clue to my veering moods. A change is taking place, some painful growth, as in a snake during the shedding of its skin — dull, irritable, without appetite, dragging about the stale shreds of a former life, near-blinded by the old dead scale on the new eye. It is difficult to adjust because I do not know who is adjusting; I am no longer that old person and not yet the new.”
The Book of Disquiet - Fernando Pessoa
“These confessions of my feelings are my game of patience. I don’t interpret the cards the way some do to know the future. I don’t scrutinize them because, as in games of patience, the cards have no value in themselves. I unwind myself like a length of multicolored yarn, or make cat’s cradles out of myself, like the ones children weave around stiff fingers and pass from one to the other. Taking care that my thumb doesn’t miss the vital loop, I turn it over to reveal a different pattern. Then I start again.”
The Creative Act: A Way of Being - Rick Rubin
Plus my daily chapter of The Man Without Qualities (tr. Wilkins/Pike)
Sound Body, Fractured Mind
My exercise got a little funky. I did weights/yoga on Wed/Thu, was too lazy for weights on Friday, and on Saturday I did that 6.1-mi. run w/The Guys in the morning, but didn’t get around to yoga later in the day. I’ll try to get in weights today so I’m not slacking too much. Been keeping up with my pre-coffee morning 15-min. routine because I’m me, and also doing 10-15 min. of corpse-pose meditation every afternoon, as I mentioned last time. Some sessions haven’t been fruitful, but others have gotten me out of myself in good ways.
Until Next Time
Thanks for reading this far! Even though it’ll be New Year’s Day, I think I’ll be back on Wednesday with a new episode, & maybe some art, and on Sunday with links, books, & workout craziness, & maybe a little profundity or something.
I was halfway to the Pacific Coast / I had left you in your longing / In your yearning like a ghost,