Hitting The Links: 9/7/25
This one's got a ton of links, photos of my inner & outer child, BIRDY!'s big day, a REDACTED bar over my consciousness, & more
The Virtual Memories Show News
A 2x/week email about a podcast about books & life
Photo Finish
My mother brought a box of old photos over to my brother & his family’s place on Friday, and my sister-in-law texted me phone-pix of some of them.
Yes, I was a baby once. Thirty-six years after this, that big tree fell and barely missed the side of the house. My grandmother Helena died in 1975. Her husband died before I was born, and his Hebrew name, Yisrael, became my middle name.
Decades later, my brother and I would put out an electro-dance record or make a cop & junkie-informant buddy movie.
Somewhere in between, I’d go for a swim
I’ve made references this past year to some Inner Child work I’ve done, about how a pal got me to recognize the part of myself that, well, got short-changed by his childhood, and yearned for something better.
It’s helped me a lot to integrate that little kid into adult-Gil’s world, let me recognize the source for a lot of my emotions and reactions. Getting to SEE that kid this weekend filled me with joy. Which is my Hebrew name.
Earlier this week, I thought about how this will be my first year Yom Kippur where I stay in the shul during Yizkor, the prayer for the dead. Then I thought how this’ll also be the first year when I won’t have to wonder about whether Dad will remember my birthday, or who will remind him to call me.
Birdy Of The Week
This girl managed to spend 4+ hours on her own in the house, while Amy & I went down to Princeton to pick up my new suit & meander around. It’s the longest she’s been by herself uncrated. I was concerned she might destroy everything in the house or burn the place down somehow, but she did just fine!
We bought her some new toys to reward her, which is just as well since she’s almost completely emptied this chicken-toy of all its stuffing.
*
This email setup runs $29/month, podcast-hosting is $20/month, and the remote recording setup is $20/month, so if you want to help out with these expenses or otherwise Contribute To The Cause, you can support the Virtual Memories Show with a contribution of any size, one-time or recurring.
And now, let’s hit the links!
Links & Such
Recent Virtual Memories Show podcasts: Dmitry Samarov • Ask Me Anything • Dan Goldman • David Levithan/Jens Lekman • Sacha Mardou • Oliver Radclyffe • Eulogy • Rachel Cockerell
RIP Graham Greene . . . RIP Giorgio Armani . . . RIP Davey Johnson . . . RIP Rosalyn Drexler / Mexican Spitfire . . . RIP Barbara Jakobson . . . RIP Sylvain Amic . . . RIP George Raveling . . . RIP Mark Volman . . .
Apparently, lots of today’s TV series feature people with money who don’t have to worry about making a living. I don’t watch much of The Moment’s TV, and as I mentioned in my recent AMA episode, my fave recent series are Reservation Dogs and Southside (the first 2 seasons), both of which are VERY much not about people with money.
Speaking of people with lots of money, HAHAHA they’re all going to die and they’re more scared of that than you are HAHAHA
But please try to remember that bazillionaire tech bros tend to be incredibly lucky, not incredibly smart. (Also, incredibly mendacious.)
Speaking of people unduly influenced by science fiction, I was maybe too young when I read KW Jeter’s Dr. Adder; I don’t know what this guy’s problem is.
This lengthy New Yorker piece on the role of AI in arts & culture appreciation left me sad about the future, as well as the boring arts-habits of the writer, even though it has some fun asides about the late Edmund White.
Speaking of AI, did it come up with the idea for pizza-flavored vodka or is that one on us?
Speaking of this benighted age, the loss of full-time art criticism sucks.
It’s not only art critics, of course. Just about every writer I know has another gig to pay the bills. Most teach, but Shalom Auslander has another idea.
With Marc Maron’s WTF podcast coming to an end soon, the host is considering his pod-legacy in a not-so-good light. That said, WTF also inspired me to start my Virtual Memories Show, so it’s not all bad.
Lavie Tidhar celebrated the first anniversary of his Shelfies email with a shelfie of his own.
Current/Recent Reading
Hot Wax - ML Rio
The Puma Blues - Stephen Murphy and Mike Zulli
The Magic Mountain - Thomas Mann (tr. John E. Woods) (I figured it’d be a good companion to my read of The Man Without Qualities earlier this year)
I Want to Die, I Hate My Life: Three Essays on Tragedy and One on Beckett - Simon Critchley (finished)
+ the mourner’s Kaddish every morning, in Aramaic
Sound Body, Fractured Mind
I let laziness & burnout derail my workout schedule Wed. & Thu., but finally got weights in Friday for the first time in 12 days. Not as sore as I feared in the days after, and did a full 45-min. yoga session yesterday.
Something interesting/weird happened during a meditation session this week. I put on my music track (Music For Airports, track 1), lay back on the double-stacked yoga mats in savasana pose, and tried to let my concerns, anxieties, ego, etc. go, as I was very focused on some dumb shit.
So each time a temporal notion came up, I tried to set it aside, reminding myself that to care about the infinite moment, not the next one or the next, that I was here for right now, only now.
And it succeeded better than I hoped. I found real stillness, with those concerns melting away. I tried repeating that Sanskrit mantra that Peter Matthiessen writes about in The Snow Leopard: Oṃ maṇi padme hūm̐. Jewel in the lotus.
Before I knew it, there was silence. The music track had ended, unabruptly, and in its absence I was present again. I don’t think I’d fallen asleep, though I’ve been so exhausted/burned out that it’s possible. But I felt like there were minutes — timeless minutes — that were a black REDACTED bar, stretching over my consciousness.
I felt blissful and deliberate after that, putting away dishes, walking Birdy. It lasted into the next day, this serenity in the midst of the inferno.
Until Next Time
Thanks for reading this far! I’ll back on Wednesday, with a new episode, plus a throwback Instax and maybe some art. On Sunday I’ll be back with links, books, & workout craziness, & maybe a little profundity or something.
Passion killer, you’re too much / You’re the only one I wanna touch,