PODCAST

This week’s podcast — Episode 677 of my Virtual Memories Show — comes straight outta Mundo Mendo! I visited artist and writer Luis Mendo in Karuizawa, Japan for a wide-ranging conversation about art, creativity, community and more. We talk about how he left design and embraced drawing and illustration, why he created the Mundo Mendo platform so fans/members can support his art and stories (and get an annual print edition of his work), the limits of money and the joy of making art, and how artists can escape “working for Mr. Zuckerberg” and stop chasing likes on Instagram. We get into how internal change has to be accompanied by an external change, the challenge of not having a client, his critique of AI “art”, and the tension between world of numbers & metrics and the world of serendipity. We also discuss the creative residency he & his wife ran, Almost Perfect, his love of old movies, how the creative life can be a chain of projects, what brought him to Japan and what keeps him there (even if he feels like a foreigner wherever he is), his newsletter that highlights other illustrators and artists, why I should be a male model in Japan, and a lot more. (After the conversation, around the 93-min. mark, I share a story about my Japan business trip and some Kafkaesque flop-sweat moments.) Give it a listen! And check out/support MUNDO MENDO!

Recent podcast episodes: Benoit Denizet-Lewis • Clare Carlisle • Josh Alan Friedman • Andrew Durbin • Dean Haspiel & Doug Latino • Rachel Tzvia Back • Sven Birkerts

Every book (non-comics) that I’ve finished since 1989.

WHERE I AM

I’m home. After criscrossing the planet (EWR-NRT, HND-FRA-AMS, LHR-EWR), I got back Sunday afternoon and my body’s very confused about what time it is. I had some great conversations, saw some beautiful art, met some sheep, let my intuition guide me through some places, did some business (duh; that’s why I was traveling), and on and on, but if I start telling you about it, it’ll never end, so.

BIRDY!

She was happy to see me after my 12 days away, or so I like to believe:

HITTING THE LINKS

Here are a couple of links for you

• RIP Rob Base . . . RIP Grizz . . . RIP Saxophone Colossus . . .

• Luis linked to a piece from A Working Library that got me thinking I should add a micropost function to my site, where I can post (& host) quotes, thoughts, etc., rather than putting them up on social media. So I did that. I guess I can make an RSS feed for it or something, or you can just bookmark and look for updates.

• Or I could just write them down on shirt cardboards, but I’d need to buy a lot more shirts.

• The upside of my Alienation In Urawa was that there were no tourists.

• Jerry Saltz . . . um, shares his thoughts about art auctions, as well as a shitty painting by Banksy.

INSTAX

Here are some Instax pix from Amsterdam, London, and points beyond/between:

WATCH-LIST

I watched a couple movies on my laptop during the flight back from Heathrow:

• It’s Such a Beautiful Day - It’s an absurdist, hilarious animated movie about mortality and the mundane stuff that makes up our lives; I watch it during long trips for reasons I’m not sure about

• Kundun - Whenever anyone brings up “studio movies you couldn’t make today,” I always feel like this should be #1 on the list haha. Scorsese’s bio of the 14th Dalai Lama is beautiful and alien, accentuated by the Philip Glass score and Roger Deakins’ lighting/shooting. I was also struck by the Dalai Lama’s last words in the movie, when he’s asked if he’s the true Buddha — “I think that I am a reflection, like the moon on water. When you see me, and I try to be a good man, you see yourself” — because on the flight out I was considering the “moon in water” bit in the Coen Bros.’ Hail, Caesar! and that Alan Watts passage that Underworld used: “The phenomenon moon-in-the-water is likened to human experience. The water is the subject, and the moon the object. When there is no water, there is no moon-in-the-water, and likewise when there is no moon. But when the moon rises the water does not wait to receive its image, and when even the tiniest drop of water is poured out the moon does not wait to cast its reflection. For the moon does not intend to cast its reflection, and the water does not receive its image on purpose. The event is caused as much by the water as by the moon, and as the water manifests the brightness of the moon, the moon manifests the clarity of the water.” Anyway, the short answer is I am no fun to fly with.

POSTCARD

I mail out a postcard every day, so let me know if you want to be on my list. I didn’t send any during the trip, so I’m working through that backlog of 10 mail-days to get my postcard-karma balanced.

EXPENSES

If you want to help out with Virtual Memories Show expenses — this email runs $29/month, podcast-hosting is $25/month, and the remote recording account is $20/month — or otherwise Contribute To The Cause, you can make a one-time contribution of any size via Stripe, or a recurring one via Patreon. Or maybe save your money for when I launch the Kickstarter for my Instax book.

NEXT TIME

Thanks for reading this far. See you next time, I hope.

I like the Whopper / Fuck the Big Mac,