Secret Library
This one's got my SIX-HUNDREDTH episode (!!!), feat. Joe Coleman, + my secret library, a postcard-Instax, & more
The Virtual Memories Show News
A 2x/week email about a podcast about books & life
Podcastery
This week I posted Episode 600 (!!!) of The Virtual Memories Show, and my guest was the great artist Joe Coleman as we celebrated his phenomenal new career-spanning retrospective book, A DOORWAY TO JOE: The Art of Joe Coleman (Fantagraphics). We talked about art, mortality, mythography, history, the corruption of the flesh, the nature of evil, his Odditorium & the power of relics, Dr. Mombooze-o‘s send-off for his dead parents, playing Whac-A-Mole with T-cell lymphoma, getting arrested for being an Infernal Machine, taxi-driving in NYC’s Travis Bickle era, the inspiration of the Hubble telescope, the pagan Celtic roots in Irish Catholicism, what it’s like to work on one square-inch of a painting for 8 hours at a time, our respective appearances on the Uncle Floyd Show, playing in the Steel Tips with Patrick McDonnell & Karen O’Connell, and how he found his love and muse in Whitney Ward. Give it a listen! And go get A DOORWAY TO JOE: The Art of Joe Coleman
Last week I posted Episode 599, and it was all about legacies — familial, literary, cultural & institutional — as Mirana Comstock joined to talk about editing The Algonquin Round Table: 25 Years with the Legends Who Lunch, by her grandfather, the late literary lion Konrad Bercovici. We got into how Mirana discovered this manuscript, what it was like to help bring the Algonquin scene & Konrad’s writing to life for a new generation of readers, and her experience of growing up in a multigenerational household of compulsive artists & writers. We talked about why her grandfather’s immense literary stature diminished, the scandal of Chaplin stealing Konrad’s script for The Great Dictator, how the Algonquin habitués were the influencers of their time (only with something to say), her idea for transforming her family’s writing into a meta-stage production, and a lot more. Give it a listen! And go read The Algonquin Round Table: 25 Years with the Legends Who Lunch
Recent episodes: Anita Kunz • Shalom Auslander • Maurice Vellekoop • Laura Beers • Robert Pranzatelli • Bob Fingerman • Swan Huntley
Secret Library
Can you keep a secret? I started Yet Another Project, a mini-website. It’s nothing fancy; what matters is what’s there.
See, a little while ago, Richard Kadrey began posting on Bluesky what I assume is a relatively obscure identity-theft scam that plays off of people’s vanity; you know, like those “post [your favorite movie] [your mother’s maiden name] [your hometown] [your Social Security #]” that people just go nuts for. (All of those “post a selfie from when you were [x years old]” things are a trick for facial ID companies, btw.)
In this case, it was “The challenge: choose 20 books that greatly influenced you. One book per day, for 20 days. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.”
Around then, I noticed that Wayne White was posting images of book covers as Instagram Stories, with no commentary, and figured that was maybe his way of participating in that challenge.
And then one morning I looked around my library and thought I’d tweak that challenge in a couple of ways. Rather than “greatly influenced,” I would go with “books that arrived in my life when I needed them”. I took ~50 books down and shot pictures of their covers, but decided I didn’t want to just make it another little social media stream that no one ever sees.
Instead, I started posting one each night on a website that I knew no one would ever see.
I did follow Wayne’s lead and posted them as vanishing IG Stories, and I also made them a thread on Threads, which is Yet Another Goddamned Social Media Platform that I recently added. (All I post on Threads is this book thread and the “new podcast/newsletter” items.)
It was fun to look over my shelves and to look myself in the eye and admit that [book I read a bunch of times in my 20s] deserved to be there, even if I never thought about it anymore. I mean, it may have no influence on me, but there’s a reason I kept it on my shelves, right?
Anyway, that’s me letting you in on a secret. I could’ve posted these as a series on Tumblr or something, but I figure all those platforms will break down, go under, randomly erase users’ posts, etc., and so I thought it’d be nice to have my own little repository for those books that showed up when I needed them. Hence the site.
Why don’t you tell me about yours?
Instaxery
I shot an Instax during Monday afternoon’s podcast. My guest was visiting and brought some postcard-bookmarks for my book-project.
I need to write some of the prose pieces for the book, but at the moment, to quote Nick Cave, I’m transforming I’m vibrating I’m glowing I’m flying (look at me now!). I still want to call the office building down the street & see if they’ll rent me a small office this fall to use as an evening writing studio. I envision a space where I can lay out all these Instax prints and divine some series of messages or transmissions or memories or poems or we’ll see what it turns into but I promise I will make this book and I will ask you to buy it.
Artistry
I didn’t draw much, just a couple sketches that didn’t go anywhere. But Caleb Crain just posted some bird photos, so maybe I’ll try to draw some of those this week. You should go to the Flickr album of most of the art I’ve made & find something you like.
Postcardery
Let me know if you want to be on my postcard-a-day list. (Financial supporters of the podcast get a hand-drawn/painted postcard as a thank-you.)
Until Next Time
Thanks for reading this far! I’ll be back on Sunday with links, books, & workouts, and on Wednesday with a new episode, and maybe some art & more Instax.
Modesty, propriety can lead to notoriety,