Hitting The Links: 2/4/24
A vision of daffodils, the linking & the dead, working around a broken neck, Karl Ove starts getting essayistic, and more
The Virtual Memories Show News
A 2x/week email about a podcast about books & life
Springnifier
On yesterday morning’s walk-around-the-corner with Bendico, I noticed daffodils beginning to push their way out of the cold earth.
Two years ago, I talked about a dream I had of a wave of daffodils and how that lifted me out of my winter doldrums, depression, whatever. A few months later I made a drawing that I loved & would use as the cover of an ish of Haiku for Business Travelers (copies still available! hit me up!).
On this morning’s walk I spied them again, deep green shoots emerging through sleeping grass.
Less than an inch, but a promise.
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And now, let's hit the links!
Links & Such
Recent Virtual Memories Show podcasts: Elizabeth Flock • David Thomson • Sammy Harkham • Ed Subitzky • Chris Silverman • Silence (monologue)
RIP Chita Rivera . . . RIP Martí . . . RIP Adele Springsteen . . . RIP Carl Weathers . . . RIP David Kahn . . . RIP Christopher Priest . . . RIP Wayne Kramer . . .
Also, a fun interview with Dire Straits’ bassist, Jonh Illsley.
Posy Simmonds won the Grand Prix at Angouleme!
One of my listeners/readers forwarded this WP editorial board piece opposing the expansion of medical-assisted suicide in Canada to include psychiatric conditions, not just somatic ones.
Steven Heller (2018, 2019, 2022) presents the Award for Best Award.
Looks like it’s the end of the line for the NYPD’s Crime Roomba.
Amazing/awful story about the Neumann family, their $1 billion art collection, and their interpretation of King Lear.
This long-ass Vox piece about artists having to become self-branding influencers is kinda interesting, as yet another chapter in capitalism’s internet-accelerated annihilation of the human spirit. (I mean, it’s academic in my case, because I’ve never believed I deserve an audience for any of my artistic pursuits, and I have a career in a completely different field than this.)
Reminds me of one of this week’s Emily Dickinson poems (I read 2 pages of her poems every morning, to make myself feel dumb):
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you - Nobody - too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Dont tell! They’d advertise - you know!How dreary - to be - Somebody!
How public - like a Frog -
To tell one’s name - the livelong June -
To an admiring Bog!
Current/Recent Reading
Ain’t It Fun: Peter Laughner & Proto-Punk In The Secret City - Aaron Lange
PLASTIC - Scott Guild
“The situation we have arrived at now whereby the props of art no longer have any significance, all the emphasis is placed on what the art expresses, in other words, not what it is but what it thinks, what ideas it carries, such that the last remnants of objectivity, the final remnants of something outside the human world have been abandoned.”
—Karl Ove Knausgaard (tr. Don Bartlett), My Struggle: Book 1
I’m about halfway through book 1, 200+ pages in, when things start getting essayistic.
Sound Body, Fractured Mind
Even with my screwed-up neck, I did 4 days of my 5-day weights/yoga cycle last week, and am on pace for all 5 days this week. No running for me; even driving exacerbates the neck/shoulder problem, between the head-turning and the posture of holding the wheel. Things had been getting better, but my dental cleaning appt. last Thursday really set me back: the posture of the chair put a lot of strain on my neck (lying below flat). Working out doesn’t seem to cause a problem and yoga’s fine, since my routine doesn’t have many positions where I turn my head to one side. Still, grrrr.
Until Next Time
Thanks for reading this far! I’ll be back on Wednesday with a new episode and some art, and on Sunday with links, books, & workout craziness, & who knows maybe a little profundity or something.
Take a packet of seeds, take yourself out to play
/ I want to see a river of orchids where we had a motorway,