The Fray
The Virtual Memories Show News
A 2x/week email about a podcast about books & life
Podcastery
This week, I posted Episode 570 of The Virtual Memories Show, feat. artist Chris Silverman! For his #notesArt project, Chris has been making gorgeous, weird, haunting artwork daily for more than 2 years, using only his iPhone’s Notes app and his fingertips. We get into how #notesArt began, how it’s evolved, what his drawing process is like, what it’s been like to build an audience for his art, and how viewers bring their own meanings to his #notesArt. We talk about the challenges of keeping up a regular art practice (daily!), how upgrading to iOS 17 jump-started his new creative phase, whether Undo is his friend or enemy, his fascination with traffic lights, empty buildings, and masks, and the subconscious burbling that gives birth to the images he draws. We also share our thoughts on mortality, authenticity and identity, what it means to share your art with the world, the pressure that comes when someone is watching, and more! Give it a listen, and go check out #notesArt!
Last week, I posted Episode 569 of The Virtual Memories Show, and for the 50th & final episode of 2023, my guest was . . . nobody! Instead, I closed out the year with the story I've wanted to tell for while, of a week of transformations in October 2022: This one’s got a Yom Kippur fast gone trippy and a bathroom-door-induced concussion, a lightning-bolt realization that I never really mourned losing my closest friend, a secret mission at a comics festival in Ohio, the Book of Life & the books of the dying, a pharma conference, Tom The Emotional Support Dancing Bug, crying eyes and deaf ears and a mess of signs & portents, plus a dwarf, a salamander, David Koechner and a lot more. This one's important to me, so please give it a listen.
Recent episodes: The Guest List • Jarrett Earnest • Christian Wiman • Danny Fingeroth • Matt Bors • Phillip Lopate
Maybe They'll Come Alive
Last night, on a Kindle-whim, I started reading The Lover by Marguerite Duras. It had come up in the reading for a podcast-guest a few years ago, but I couldn’t recall which episode that was for. I enjoyed the first 10+ pages of the book more than I expected before I drifted off.
This morning, I joined one of my friends for a (cold) walk through his town. We passed the old train station that’s become a used book/record shop, and in the window they had the Sonic Youth album Goo, with its black & white art of a couple in sunglasses and the text, “I STOLE MY SISTER’S BOYFRIEND. IT WAS ALL WHIRLWIND, HEAT, AND FLASH. WITHIN A WEEK WE KILLED MY PARENTS AND HIT THE ROAD.”
The name of the artist was on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t recall it (Something Pennebaker?), nor which recent pod-guest had worked with him. It was frustrating. I wasn't so tired as to be memory-impaired, and was sure that if I let it go, it would come to me.
In my postcard-of-the-day (email me if you want to be on my recipient/victim list), I wrote to [X] about forgetting the reference to The Lover, and how I wish I could slow down. But I decided to invert the usual formula of “I’m forgetful because I’m so frantic” and explored the notion that I’m frantic because of the forgetting. Perhaps the more that slips away, the more frenzied I get, if only to replace the memories that I can never recapture.
Maybe that’s because I came across Woody Allen’s movie Another Woman while scrolling through Amazon Prime last night. It's one of my faves, and ends with Gena Rowlands’ character musing on whether a memory is something you have, or something you lost.
After the walk, I was cleaning the filter of my Chemex this morning when the artist came to me: Raymond Pettibon. I still didn’t remember the guest who’d worked with him, but over breakfast I scrolled through my recent episodes and realized it was Josh Bayer.
Walking downstairs to my library I noticed my Vivian Gornick books and realized she had to be the author who cited Duras & The Lover. A quick search in Unfinished Business turned that up.
And in that way we restitch the fraying world.
Art
Didn't give myself much time to draw, but on New Year's Day (evening) I made a quick ink-sketch of the artist David Salle, which didn't come out great, but I figure I may as well share. I was going to try to stick with at least 1 drawing a day, but got stymied yesterday when I couldn't find a Lynda Barry pic I could draw her from (for her birthday), and when I tried doing a brush-pen tree drawing before bed, the pen's ink cartridge ran out. You should go to the Flickr album of most of the art I’ve made & find something you like.
Until Next Time
Thanks for reading this far! I’ll be back on Sunday with links, books, & workout craziness, and Wednesday with a new episode, maybe some art, & who knows maybe a little profundity or something.
While me I never change / I try to keep things just the same / A Rock for the Forgotten,