Hitting The Links: 6/8/25
We've got a TON of links, incl. the soullessness of biohacking & dark retreats, + a pod-session that brought me back to life, Birdy's sniffari, & more
The Virtual Memories Show News
A 2x/week email about a podcast about books & life
UWS Therapy Session
I wrote kinda long with some of the links below, so maybe you don’t need so much of an intro this time around.
I recorded with a guest in NYC yesterday, and it turned out I really needed that. We had a good talk (coming Tuesday, okay fine it was David Denby about his new book, Eminent Jews), and I felt much . . . lighter after. Not just because I’d have an episode for this week, but because the various strains and stresses of recent weeks and months left me in a state of despair & dread or, as is my wont, a sorta non-entity status, where I kinda shut off my sense of self and just function like an automaton. Yes, a charming and witty automaton, but also dead inside.
Anyway, conversation helped. I’m glad I’ll get to share it with you guys.
Here’s a pic I took on the walk back to my car yesterday
Birdy Of The Week
We took an improvised long walk this morning. Here’s a pic from the beginning, around the corner from the house.
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And now, let’s hit the links!
Links & Such
Recent Virtual Memories Show podcasts: Peter Stothard • Cecile Wajsbrot • Keiler Roberts • Peter Kuper • Vauhini Vara • Craig Thompson • Ari Richter
RIP Edmund White (here’s our 2018 conversation) . . . RIP Jonathan Joss . . . RIP Valerie Mahaffey . . . RIP Paul Durcan . . . RIP Shigeo Nagashima . . . RIP Tiger Man . . . RIP Renée Victor . . . RIP John Brenkus . . . RIP Bill Atkinson . . .
Here are more pieces about Edmund White, who was truly a legend: Michael Carroll, his husband, got interviewed by the Washington Blade; Christopher Bollen wrote a piece for NY Mag; NYT ran remembrances from a bunch of writers (none of past guests: SOB!);
Arthur Hoyle has some thoughts on aging and immortality.
I missed it, but Alexandra Lange won a Pulitzer this year for her series on “how urban design and architecture affect parents and kids.”
Jeet Heer’s got a good piece on Elon Musk & right-wing use of psychedelics. Gotta get Jet on the show sometime.
Speaking of these folks, JFC, I wish they would just get therapy or maybe just put their phones down and take a walk in a park. But, NOOOO, these people need to take everything to the point of absurdity because they can’t face the soullessness of their lives:
Darkness retreats remain niche, but they have become the latest extreme spiritual practice for founders, athletes, influencers, psychonauts, and yogis to attempt traversing and later flex about. Typically, a darkness retreat consists of several days alone in a room in complete darkness and silence. Participants are delivered three meals through a hatch that maintains the darkness in their dwellings, which also each contain a bed, bath, and flushing toilet. They can leave simply by opening the door, and they can also break their silence to chat with the facilitators at two intervals throughout the day when they come to the door to check on them and bring the food. Electronic items like phones or tablets are not allowed inside dark rooms, making it perhaps the ultimate dopamine fast. Imagine a meditation retreat, but alone, in the dark.
I mean, sheesh, I write about meditating in these Sunday newsletters but all it consists of is putting my phone in Do Not Disturb, throwing a yoga mat on the floor, putting on track 1 of Music for Airports, lying down in corpse pose for ~15 minutes, and just breathing. It’s taken me places, it can get a little spacey/weird, and it doesn’t require EXTREEEEEEEEEEME! SPIRITUAL!! PRACTICE!!!, no “I CAN MEDITATE HARDER THAN YOU” bs.
That item came my way through Warren Ellis’ Orbital Operations feed and/or newsletter. So did this one about the Competitive Wellness trend, where people are burning out trying to show how they’re biohacking their way to some demented ideal of perfection.
Sure, I prattle about weights, yoga, and running, and my morning book-journal-postcard routine, and I quit booze in 2012 (I have a glass of red wine every couple of weeks nowadays, but I can take or leave it), and I talk about various other seemingly healthy activities, but none of that stopped my bone marrow from mutating and producing lots of defective lymphocytes. I guess what I’m trying to say through all this is to embrace life in its fullness, not treat it like a video game with cheat codes.
SPEAKING OF, as I briefly mentioned in Wednesday’s newsletter, I had another uneventful oncology check-in for my CLL; come back in 3 months, keep working out. A friend of mine recently got diagnosed with multiple myeloma, and now we’ve got the same oncologist. Now he gets the joke when I do impressions of her Polish accent when I recount our check-ins. Here’s a piece by Jonathan Gluck about living with MM for 20+ years, and how he tried to compartmentalize his cancer-self from his social/professional-self. It didn’t work for him, over time, and I continue to marvel that Paul Rubens managed to keep his cancer ordeal a secret even when he was being interviewed for a documentary that he knew would be The Last Word about his life and career.
Not speaking of which, Here’s a LONG NYT article on Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) program, which has expanded beyond people with terminal medical conditions to include conditions of “suffering.” The piece focuses on a single case — and I have some serious questions about the history of the person it’s about — but really goes into the complexities about this law. Canada plans to expand it to cover mental illness, and, well, it looks like MAID accounts for nearly 5% of all deaths in Canada and it sure seems like that rate would get a lot higher. I don’t have any answers about autonomy vs. sanctity of life, this article raises a lot of the implications.
On the flip side, here’s a Red Hand Files where Nick Cave discusses whether he’s a natalist.
Related, and pace Peter Kuper and Christopher Brown, the insects are dying off.
Speaking of Christopher, this week’s FIELD NOTES newsletter is really beautiful. Give it a read.
RUNAWAY ZEBRA! (“Do these stripes make my ass look fat?”)
Current/Recent Reading
Great Books - David Denby
Eminent Jews: Bernstein, Brooks, Friedan, Mailer - David Denby
Melting Point: Family, Memory, and the Search for a Promised Land - Rachel Cockerell
Alterations - Kate Maruyama
The Man Without Qualities, Vol. 2 - Robert Musil (tr. Wilkins & Pike)
Sound Body, Fractured Mind
So, yeah, I kept up with my weights/yoga cycle so far, although yesterday’s yoga was only 30 minutes instead of the full 45-min. routine. I haven’t gone running because of excuses like work, busyness, and other stuff. My weight’s still a little too high for my liking, but I’ll work on it.
Meditation’s been hit and miss. It still gets me out of myself, sometimes out of time, sometimes where I can read the script written in disappearing ink on the inside of my eyelids.
No, I don’t plan on a Darkness Retreat or some dumb shit like that. But when I’m on the train down to DC Tuesday, instead of working I’ll look out the window and watch the world go by.
Until Next Time
Thanks for reading this far! I’ll be back on Wednesday with a new episode, probably no new Instax, & some art, and on Sunday with links, books, & workout craziness, & maybe a little profundity or something.
People look at me cross-еyed and I know I’ve really lost my mind / Everyone’s a little too kind, a little too blind, a little too — / See, rhyming’s a terrible symptom of true madness,