Hitting The Links: 3/24/24
Idle hands do the 'zine-devil's work, a ton of links, Knausgaard's beating heart, & more
The Virtual Memories Show News
A 2x/week email about a podcast about books & life
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I had an exhausting but productive week in NYC: tons of meetings, even more unscheduled conversations, got stood up by one big client, accidentally stood up a consultant, no new member commitments, but lots of “we’re going to join your association this year,” and a TON of gossip and intel gathering that’ll help me seem smarter than I am. (This was a major topic of conversation.)
But yeah, exhausting. I got home Thursday evening a burned-out wreck, and spent Friday at half-power, taking care of the easiest emails, writing back to others that I’ll respond next week. I don’t think anyone begrudged me the down-time, esp. since I did still manage to get out the weekly business-newsletter on Friday morning, only an hour later than usual.
Late Friday afternoon, I decided to prep the mailers for three people to whom I’d promised to send the first two issues of my Haiku for Business Travelers ‘zine. That’s when I realized that I only have two copies left of the current printing of the first issue. And THAT’S when I realized it was time to get started on issue #3!
I put in a new order for another 150 copies of #1 (3rd printing!) and of #2, to be safe, but there’s no economies from ganging a new issue with that. Still, it HAS been 10 months since I made the second ish, so this would be a good way to get myself onto an annual schedule.
Which meant looking at my spreadsheet, notes, art, and poems to figure out what would go into a new 32-page issue of my “words & pictures”. I spent yesterday working through a bunch of ideas and unfinished pieces, and it’s my hope that I’ll get the pages in place soon. I had a funny moment of looking over my notes and fragments for an essay and thinking, “huh: this could be a comic,” which will gratify my cartoonist-pals who have been waiting for me to make that leap. I did the same for another essay/remembrance, breaking it down into just a few lines that can be caption-boxes afloat in a single image, if I can manage to paint that picture.
I also went through the past 10 months of these newsletters to see if there were pieces I meant to adapt/expand for the ‘zine, and came across a line from last June that read, “I was going to tell you a story this week about a guy I kindasorta left for dead many years ago, and how I found out on Sunday he’s still alive.”
Thing is, I HAD NO IDEA WHAT THIS WAS REFERRING TO, and had to go into my journals from around that time to figure it out. (It’ll make for a good 2-pager in the ‘zine, or so I think.)
So that’s what I do with my recovery-time; plan out new multifaceted creative projects.
Here’s the tentative cover, although there’s another drawing I would love to use, if I can figure out how to make it special:
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And now, let’s hit the links!
Links & Such
Recent Virtual Memories Show podcasts: Edith Hall • David Small • Brad Gooch • Japan, a monologue • Scott Guild • Aaron Lange • Donald J. Robertson
RIP M. Emmett Walsh . . . RIP Martin Greenfield . . . RIP Julie Robinson Belafonte . . . RIP Vernor Vinge . . . RIP Peter Angelos . . . RIP Baby Babar . . . RIP Andrew Crispo (the Eigil Vesti murder was kind of a big thing in my early teens (the mid-‘80s) on the Howard Stern Show) . . .
Only a few days left to contribute to Dean Haspiel’s new Kickstarter! Go do that, and listen to our bonus conversation from last weekend.
Jerry Saltz wrote about the good and bad at the Whitney Biennial.
Bow down before Shrimp Jesus.
20 years since Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind came out? I forgot all about that! (Haha, no, actually, because it came out a few months after a lightning-strike relationship-breakup, which was just before I met my One True Love, so It Had Relevance.)
This takedown of Judith Butler makes me glad that when I did that episode with her & Andreas Kilcher, I stuck to questions about their Kafka book.
Ali Trotta mourns/grieves for her dog-son, Cash.
Near the end of my conversation with David Small this month, we talked about the book Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma, and the whole good art/bad artist thing. Which is the semi-context of this article about John Galliano’s comeback.
Neat interview with Pete Townshend, on the revival of Tommy. FTR, I liked White City, but I still listen to Empty Glass and especially All The Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes more often than is healthy.
This week’s podcast with Edith Hall has a REALLY long intro (16 minutes), in which I Get Into Some Heavy Stuff. So you may wanna skip the intro and listen to our great conversation, is all I’m saying.
Speaking of choosing life, I finally ran out of the Calepino graph notebooks I’ve been using for my daily journal, and had to bust out the emergency one I bought in Tokyo in 2020. It’s a new era! (The page is slightly larger and the paper’s a little slicker, and you obsessives know what changes like that can wreak.)
CHOOSE LIFE
Current/Recent Reading
Aristotle’s Way: How Ancient Wisdom Can Change Your Life - Edith Hall
Chicago Midway - Colin Lidston
A bunch of recent-era King-Cat Comics & Stories - John Porcellino (to remind myself how much freedom I have when I work on the next issue of HfBT)
“The membrane at the bottom was pulsating. Blood streamed over it, and it sent the blood back, then seemed to rise, until the blood washed across again and once more it had to send it back and once more it had to rise.
“Suddenly I realized this was a heart I was watching.
“How incredibly sad.
“Not because the heart was beating and couldn’t escape, it wasn’t that. The point was that the heart should not be seen, it should be allowed to beat in secret, hidden from our sight, it was obvious, you understood that when you saw it, a little animal without eyes, it should pound and throb inside your chest unseen.”
—Karl Ove Knausgaard (tr. Don Bartlett), My Struggle: Book 3
Fractured Body, Fractured Mind
I didn’t even do my morning routine during my hotel stay (Tue-Thu) this week, partly due to rush, partly due to concern that I might tweak something and be in even worse shape while hustling from meeting to meeting all day long in NYC. All the walking offset that a bit, but I was glad to get back to the morning stuff on Friday. Yesterday, I finally did my 45-min. yoga workout for the first time in weeks, seemingly to no ill effect. I’m surprised at how much flexibility I retain even with these downtimes (and I suspect that taking a few days off from all exercise except walking was actually beneficial). I hope to do my weights workout today, with lighter dumbbells than I was using when I had to stop ~2 months ago. If I get through that without any issues, I’ll start building up from there. I’ve managed to (just) stay under 180 lbs. during This Whole Thing, but feel like a total blob. For 2 years now, I take a (tastefully cropped) post-workout pic every Sunday (I tag it with my weight from that morning), and while my decline isn’t TOO bad yet, I’d sure like to get back to ripped-in-his-50s Gil soon.
During the week in NYC, I took my annual pic by the sign of this now-defunct store:
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.
There was a fool in a dressing robe / Riding out the twilight hour,