Hitting The Links: 4/6/25
We've got lots of links, plus a missing podcast, some Heavy Work on my book, an orthogonal view of the world, some gorgeous BIRDY, and more
The Virtual Memories Show News
A 2x/week email about a podcast about books & life
Glory Days, Mercy Seat, and Heavy Work
As I mentioned in Wednesday’s newsletter, there was a LOT going on in my day job. (Speaking of, here’s a pharma business podcast I guested on; I know most of you have zero idea/understanding of/interest in what I do for a living, but I actually had some fun on this one, so it bears listening.) I had to do plenty of analysis & investigation around Tuesday’s FDA layoffs and Wednesday’s tariffs announcement, so that I could present some sorta picture to my client companies (while also trying to make job-connections for my FDA pals who have found themselves unemployed).
One of the major crisis areas is the potential collapse of FDA’s user fee programs. Here’s a big explainer about the situation and what’s at risk (development & release of new & generic drugs might get derailed). I’ve been gaming out different scenarios around this since November, because the current HHS secretary has talked on the record about his antipathy toward these programs, but the situation has grown immensely more complicated, and it puts public health in jeopardy. While my industry group — the contract manufacturers for the companies that actually own the drugs, vaccines, etc. — is tiny compared to the resources of the major trades — PhRMA, BIO, and AAM — as I put it in that podcast cited above, “We don’t drive the bus, but the bus doesn’t go anywhere without us.”
So between that & trying to figure out the impact of US tariffs — which currently exempt pharma goods, but not the equipment, components, etc. that are used in manufacturing — I wasn’t able to line up a guest for next week’s podcast. I mean, I could’ve ID’d someone, but I wouldn’t have had the time nor focus to do all the reading and prep for that conversation.
That means there won’t be a podcast this week.
I castigated myself for that a bit, as is my wont, but I also went into Saturday thinking, “If I’m not going to make a show, I’d better do something good with my time.”
And so, after procrastinating in many ways, I sat down at my writing desk yesterday and got back to work on my book. I printed out a copy of the spreadsheet I’ve used to organize this project, and also printed a bunch of the pieces & fragments I’d already written, because I find the page more useful than the screen. And I put on Bach’s Cello Suites played by Pierre Fournier for some non-vocal music.
I don’t bring a laptop to this desk, just a reMarkable 2 writing tablet, to keep things (pretty much) analog and not let myself waste time/lose focus goofing online. Mostly it’s just pen and paper and a binder of my 2024 Instax prints to serve as writing prompts.
I also moved the desk around so it no longer faces the wall. Part of my undiagnosed whatever-you-want-to-call-it is a sorta orthogonal view of the world, best described thus: when I listen to a baseball game on the radio, my brain is incapable of visualizing the outfielders anywhere but the farthest corners of the field, by the foul pole or dead center at the wall. When I got this new desk, I had it facing the wall so as to maximize the floor area, but last weekend I thought I’d turn it around and bring it out a little, so I’d be facing out at the library.
(Okay, I got the idea while rewatching 20,000 Days on Earth the weekend before, but I still had to get over myself & do it.)
ANYWAY: I managed to get some pieces written! I took some fragments and expanded them, took a poem that I noodled with last year and figured out its shape, took a new approach to one of the Instax images, and BOOM! there was progress. It felt tremendous, and I hope to get back to it today.
Yesterday morning, I was catching up on some RSS feeds and came across a link to this piece from a recent Warren Ellis post. It’s by someone named Anu and it’s about the difference between making Light and Heavy things, and the internet’s focus on Light:
The modern makers’ machine does not want you to create heavy things. It runs on the internet—powered by social media, fueled by mass appeal, and addicted to speed. It thrives on spikes, scrolls, and screenshots. It resists weight and avoids friction. It does not care for patience, deliberation, or anything but production.
It doesn’t care what you create, only that you keep creating. Make more. Make faster. Make lighter. (Make slop if you have too.) Make something that can be consumed in a breath and discarded just as quickly. Heavy things take time. And here, time is a tax. And so, we oblige—everyone does. We create more than ever, but it weighs nothing.
You can nitpick, but I’m down with the overarching idea of making something more lasting & important than a tweet, skeet, fleet, or IG post that gets some likes. To me, my Virtual Memories Show is a bridge to that: it’s inherently tied to the internet, but it asks for more, longer attention, and I think we can all agree that it doesn’t chase a mass audience.
So it’s “light” because it’s part of the internet treadmill, but “heavy” because it’s meant as a lasting archive or repository of conversation with artists about culture, with the potential of changing its listeners’ approach to art, the world, etc.
In Anu’s schema, my GUEST/HOST book will be “heavy,” something made outside the internet, meant to last, even if some of it is built from fragments. While this newsletter can have some moments of substance, I think I think of it as more ephemeral or “light.”
(Bonus points if this put you in mind of Peter Schjeldahl’s collection of art criticism, HOT, COLD, HEAVY, LIGHT, which circuitously led to my book project.)
It’s time to get downstairs to the table and get back to work. The tariffs and user fees will be waiting for me on Monday.
Birdy Of The Week
She has LOOKS
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And now, let’s hit the links!
Links & Such
Recent Virtual Memories Show podcasts: Peter Trachtenberg • David Shields • Meeting Across The River • Elon Green • Vanda Krefft • Seth Lorinczi • Martin Mittelmeier • Jonathan Ames
RIP Val Kilmer . . . RIP Richard Chamberlain . . . RIP Joe DePugh . . . RIP Robert McGinnis . . . RIP Richard Bernstein . . .
Joe DePugh was the guy Bruce Springsteen wrote a verse of Glory Days about, the high school baseball pitcher. As the NYT obit explains, the encounter at a roadside bar where “all he kept talking about was Glory Days” took place WHEN THEY WERE TWENTY-FOUR YEARS OLD. Which is a little like the pain I feel when I listen to Pete Townshend’s great midlife crisis song, Slit Skirts, which begins, “I was just thirty-four years old, and I was still wandering in a haze.” Anyway, I’m 54 and I try not to harp on about my youth because my present is pretty amazing.
Crowdfundery: Butter is a new comics anthology that’ll feature work from past guests Karl Stevens and Katie Skelly, as well longtime listener MD Blue. Less than 2 weeks left on this one, so contribute to the cause!
I was going to go to the Antiquarian Book Fair yesterday but failed because I’m the guy who sucks, plus I got depression, so I didn’t bump into Patti Smith.
I’m hoping to record with Sally Mann this fall and pitched her publisher a few days ago (I’ll even make the drive to Lexington, VA!). Coincidentally, Margaret Renkl wrote a piece this week about Mann’s At Twelve.
Ooh! Marina Warner and Anna Della Subin talked about Invisible Cities on their LRB podcast!
Warren Ellis also wrote a good piece on Roland Allen’s The Notebook.
Caleb Crain will put you to sleep.
Daniel Mendelsohn (2020a & 2020b) wrote about the appeal of — and the challenges of translating ‘skullfucker’ in — Catullus.
Spring springs in Christopher Brown’s East Austin.
Many years ago, Amy & I resolved not to eat in sit-down chain casual restaurants (that is, fast food was allowable, but no Olive Garden, PF Chang’s, etc.), and it turns out everyone else caught on and the industry collapsed. Sorry!
Looks like I was able to not write a novel longer than National Novel Writing Month was able to stay online.
Current/Recent Reading
Never Again Will I Visit Auschwitz - Ari Richter
Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age - Vauhini Vara
Hold Still: A Memoir With Photographs - Sally Mann
As ephemeral as our footprints were in the sand along the river, so also were those moments of childhood caught in the photographs. And so will be our family itself, our marriage, the children who enriched it, and the love that has carried us through so much. All this will be gone. What we hope will remain are these pictures telling our brief story, but what will last, beyond all of it, is the place.
The Man Without Qualities - Robert Musil (tr. Wilkins/Pike)
Unfortunately, the world has lost not only God but the Devil as well. As it projects its unwanted evil onto the scapegoat, so it projects its desired good onto ad hoc ideal figures, which it reveres for doing what find inconvenient to do for itself. We let others perform the hard tricks as we watch from our seats: that is sport. Ww let others talk themselves into the most one-sided exaggerations: that’s idealism. We shake off evil and make those who are spattered by it our scapegoats.
Sound Body, Fractured Mind
On Wednesday, I did weights for the first time in almost 3 weeks. Yoga a day later, same sorta break. Friday, my body was so sore I took the day off from exercise, but I was back at it with yoga yesterday and I hope to get to weights today. Between the work travel, this persistent cold, allergies, and various unexplained aches & pains, I just haven’t been able to get my physicality on. It’s a vicious cycle, where the longer I go without, the worse I feel about myself, so jump-starting it this week helped, no matter how sore it left me.
Yesterday was the first day I missed a meditation session since I started my daily practice, but I didn’t mind, because the writing was nourished by all that time I’ve been spending in the undermind.
Plus, I got to learn a new meditative pose with Birdy:
Until Next Time
Thanks for reading this far! I’ll be back on Wednesday with NO NEW EPISODE, an Instax throwback, & maybe some art, and on Sunday with links, books, & workout craziness (I hope), & maybe a little profundity or something.
Think I’m going down to the well tonight / And I’m gonna drink ‘til I get my fill / And I hope when I get old, I don’t sit around thinking about it / But I probably will,