Hitting The Links: 3/10/24
Making art on the subway, musing on mortality, and giving you all the links you can handle, incl. the bilateral gynandromorphic green honeycreeper
The Virtual Memories Show News
A 2x/week email about a podcast about books & life
Art from Underground
I went into the city yesterday for an alumni seminar. It was a good conversation, and over the course of 2 hours it helped me better crystallize Montaigne’s (and my) thoughts about living-while-dying. An old pal from grad school was there, and the seminar was run by Tom May, one of my fave tutors at the school (now emeritus).
On the subway downtown from my secret parking garage, one of the riders in my car was making art. He looked not-quite-homeless but not-quite-there, scrawny in dirty sweatpants and winter coat, spreading out a big sheet of white paper on the seat next to him or his lap, scrawling away with various markers. At one point, he gave a piece to the people sitting across from him.
I noticed him leaning really close to the paper, and blowing into a little cone directly above his marker-point, to spray the color like an airbrush. From a few feet away, his art looked even more primitive than mine, but it was fascinating to watch him work.
He tried handing that piece around to a couple of riders, but there were no takers. I was a little too far to make eye contact (+ I was masked and had my hair down, which probably made me even less accessible), even though I wanted to look at that piece.
I took out my little sketchpad and a black brush-pen and rapidly sketched him in his seat, the baggy sweats, the pseudo-fur collar ringing his hood, the black knit-cap, as usual saving the face for last. When he looked in my direction, I tore the page out, reached over, and handed it to him. He nodded, put it in his Target bag, and handed me that piece he’d been doing the airbrush effect on. I folded it gently and put it my little tote bag.
He held up another piece, a portrait of a woman. Still primitive, but he did the mouth and eyes a million times better than I can, which I will admit pissed me off a little. I waved him off, happy with the piece I had, and gave him a few bucks when the subway pulled into my stop.
On the surface, I got coffee, then went to an art supply store to pick up some watercolor brush pens before going to the seminar. Maybe I’ll make myself a little cone sometime and see how that effect looks.
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And now, let’s hit the links!
Links & Such
Recent Virtual Memories Show podcasts: Brad Gooch • Japan, a monologue • Scott Guild • Aaron Lange • Donald J. Robertson • Elizabeth Flock
RIP Steve Lawrence . . . RIP Ms. Poodle Skirt . . . RIP Mort . . . RIP Lucas Samaras . . . RIP Akira Toriyama . . .
Isabella Rossellini, slinging wisdom.
Lovely piece by Mark Wunderlich about the estate sale of, well, his life.
Ooh! TWO of last year’s guests have biographies that are up for the 2024 Plutarch Award: Howard Fishman (Connie Converse: To Anyone Who Ever Asks) and Willard Spiegelman (Amy Clampitt: Nothing Stays Put)! (The Plutarch is given out by the Biographers International Organization; now when I tell people I’m going to the BIO show, I’ll have to specify it’s the biotech one.)
Beautiful new FIELD NOTES email from Christopher Brown (2018, 2019, 2020, 2023). Go pre-order his Natural History of Empty Lots, out Oct. 15!
I did not realize Iditarod is a blood sport.
Also, no spoilers for the next Knausgaard novel.
Lovely profile of Vinnie Jones & the nature of grief by Hayley Campbell.
Speaking of Hayley & her amazing book, All The Living And The Dead, here’s a piece near the end of Montaigne’s essay, That to philosophize is to learn to die (tr. Donald Frame), that I read for that seminar yesterday:
“I truly think it is those dreadful faces and trappings with which we surround it, that frighten us more than death itself: an entirely new way of living; the cries of mothers, wives, and children; the visits of people dazed and benumbed by grief; the presence of a number of pale and weeping servants; a darkened room; lighted candles; our beside besieged by doctors and preachers; in short, everything horror and fright around us. There we are already shrouded and buried.”
This story of abuse/trafficking/shaving of male models by Abercrombie & Fitch execs (2009-2014) is just horrifying.
Paging Alexandra Lange, the mall of the past of the future! (Repurposing of higher-end malls is going on at 3 different sites over in Bergen County, which are trying to add apartments, “town squares” and mixed-use space in the ginormous parking areas.)
Bilateral gynandromorphic green honeycreeper!
Photo by John Murillo New Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds single! (The album comes out Aug. 30)
Current/Recent Reading
Facing Down the Furies: Suicide, THe Ancient Greeks, and Me - Edith Hall
Aristotle’s Way: How Ancient Wisdom Can Change Your Life - Edith Hall
Reading Shakespeare Reading Me - Leonard Barkan
Victory Parade - Leela Corman
That to philosophize is to learn to die – Montaigne (tr. Donald Frame)
“I toyed with the idea of suicide [at 20], I had ever since I was small and despised myself for that reason, it would never happen, I had too much to avenge, too many people to hate, and too much due to me. . . . How much of the twenty-year-old was left in me now? Not much, I thought, sitting and looking up at the glimmering stars above the town. The feeling of being me was the same. The person I woke up to every morning and fell asleep to every night. But the quivering panic was gone. As was the immense focus on others. And its opposite, the megalomaniac importance I ascribed to myself, had become smaller. Perhaps not much smaller, but smaller nevertheless.”
—Karl Ove Knausgaard (tr. Don Bartlett), My Struggle: Book 2, about to start Book 3
Fractured Body, Fractured Mind
Don’t ask. It’s all a mess.
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, & non-workout craziness, & who knows maybe a little profundity or something.
The numbered seats in empty rows / It all belongs to me, you know,