Hitting The Links: 11/24/24
Thoughts on laziness, open-ended projects & getting some perspective to recharge, + plenty of links, some coffee-beefcake, and a followup on losing Benny.
The Virtual Memories Show News
A 2x/week email about a podcast about books & life
The Big Picture
You may think I’m very productive, but I consider myself pretty lazy. Sure, I [do you REALLY want me to list everything?], alongside a significant day-job/career, but to some extent the personal-side stuff is automatic. That is, I know what I have to do to get the podcast, newsletters, etc. done, and their recurring nature constructs a rhythm to my day/week/month.
But when it comes to bigger ideas or longer-term projects, I often stall out. Which is why when I tackled Anthony Powell’s 12-novel cycle, A Dance To The Music Of Time, I gave myself the rule that I would only read one book of it per month. Otherwise, I knew, I would plow through 5-6-7 of them, then stop because of [extraneous bs], and never restart. It worked like a charm.
This year, I’ve been working on a book project, as I’ve mentioned ad nauseam: I’m taking Instax photos during every 2024 in-person podcast-session, as well as during get-togethers with past guests, with the goal of making a book of those images and some sort of writing, inspired by 2023’s last guest, Jarrett Earnest, and his book of Polaroids, Valid Until Sunset (but with fewer dicks). The photos aren’t of the guests, but of something in the environment: something on a shelf, the light from a window, a crack in the paint.
I’ve kept up with the photos all year, but the last month-plus has seen me lose focus on the project as a whole; that is, not just the photos, but the accompanying text, the design/layout, the production, etc. It all seemed like a futile effort, like I’d never be able to bring this all together and make the book I visualized, like even if I did, I would just wind up with boxes and boxes of unsold books, reminding me of my small press publishing days, ~25 years ago. The whole idea was drifting away from me, and I found various ways to undermine it.
But I did something yesterday that brought it — and me — back to life. I cleaned off the dining room table and laid out all the Instax prints.
Seeing them all there, recalling each instance and my travels this past year, I became revitalized. I knew that I had something here, something no one else could have done, and something I can make real.
Part of the problem was that I’d been keeping the prints stacked up in a box, moving the camera’s digital files to a folder for safekeeping, noting everything in Yet Another Goddamned Spreadsheet. That made it all somehow minimal, inconsequential. But the nature of this project is to see with fresh eyes, and laying my cards on the table did just that.
And so I hit up some of my past guests in northern NJ, dropped in on 3 of them yesterday to shoot more pix (the last 3 in the bottom row; the whole setup is chronological, l-r), and zapped a few upstate/Hudson guests to see about dropping in when I’m up there for a podcast in a few weeks.
I have a secret final number of shots in mind, and a few special people I still want to visit/shoot with, and I still have all the writing, design, production stuff ahead, but I’m awfully happy to regain that impulse from nearly a year ago, and get GUEST/HOST rolling again.
So, yes, it turns out it is the rest of you who are lazy, and not me (haha). But really, if you are stalled out on a project, or can’t find your way to continue with it, I strongly suggest you do what I just did: pull back and get some (literal) perspective.
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Thanks to everyone who wrote after Wednesday’s newsletter. The days since Benny’s death have been tough; when I picked up his ashes from the vet yesterday (after those 3 Instax sessions: it was a long day), I sat in the car, clutched the wooden box to my chest, and sobbed for a while.
On the plus side, our neighbors had a party to attend on Thursday, so their dog-boy Teddy stayed with us that evening-into-overnight. He was the recipient of far more ear-skritchies and belly-rubs than he could possibly have been expecting.
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And now, let’s hit the links!
Links & Such
Recent Virtual Memories Show podcasts: Frances Jetter • Roland Allen • Eric Drooker • Simon Critchley • Doug Brod • Sven Birkerts • Christopher Brown
RIP Alice Brock . . . RIP Bob Love (really touching story) . . . RIP Arthur Frommer . . . RIP Sandra Gilbert . . . RIP Vladimir Shklyarov . . . RIP Paul Teal . . .
Here’s a lovely tribute to the late Eric Auerbach by Anthony Lane.
Paul Karasik made a wonderful fumetti about Ed Koren, guest starring James Sturm and Glynnis Fawkes.
Here’s a 2009 piece on the landmarks & locations of my fave flick, Miller’s Crossing.
ALWAYS pay attention to the THC content of your gummies, folks, and never take one with “diamond sauce.”
You know I’m a sucker for stories about government investment in high-speed rail, so here’s one about China’s over-investment in high-speed rail.
Last week’s guest, Roland Allen, has a neat piece on microhistories.
Via his weekly newsletter, Warren Ellis has been on amazing run lately with explorations of how comics work. Today’s is really good.
Shalom Auslander would like to be kept apprised of any and all future petitions. (As you may/may not know, my informal no-fly list for the podcast is the people who signed the anti-Charlie Hebdo petition ahead of that PEN America gala in 2015.)
If you’re making the migration to the Bluesky platform, you can find me at vmspod.
Current/Recent Reading
The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
Tell Me Something, Tell Me Anything, Even If It’s a Lie: A Memoir In Essays - Steve Wasserman
Sound Body, Fractured Mind
I got weights-yoga-weights in Wed.-Fri., but missed yesterday’s yoga while I was out shooting those Instax pix + [emotional devastation after the vet]. I’ll try to get a dumbbell workout in today so I don’t feel like too much of a slacker. My weight’s under control, so that’s good.
When I’m not traveling, I usually post a b/w shirtless photo of me grinding the morning coffee to my Instagram Stories. My gay male followers seem to enjoy those; don’t know about anyone else.
Until Next Time
Thanks for reading this far! I’ll be back on Wednesday with a new episode, maybe some art, a bunch of Instax pix, and on Sunday with links, books, & workout craziness, & maybe a little profundity or something.
Swimming ’round and ’round like the deadly hand / Of a radium clock at the bottom of the pool,