The Ring of Validation
This one's got my new podcast, a couple amazing emails I got during my Italy trip, the USPS' tacit condemnation of my emotional life, a Tolkien-comparison, some art, more!
The Virtual Memories Show News
A 2x/week email about a podcast about books & life
Podcastery
This week, I posted Episode 608 of The Virtual Memories Show, with author & essayist Sven Birkerts returning to the show to celebrate his fantastic new essay collection, The Miró Worm and the Mysteries of Writing (Arrowsmith Press). We talk about the estrangement of the everyday, the problem of other minds, how serendipity tells us something about who & where we are, authors’ photos and self-mythologizing, moving house (& turning 70) during COVID, and the inspiration of Cortazar’s Around the Day in Eighty Worlds. We get into the threat of AI to writing, reading, and thinking, opening up to ambivalence, why people find it so tough to say the word “soul”, Kierkegaard & Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer & being on The Search, and wondering what Bob Dylan is like in the kitchen in the morning. We also discuss writers’ homes & graves and the myth of inspiration, his new Sketches From Memory essays and how they’ve opened him up as a writer, how we build circles of affinity, how his father’s career as an architect influenced his eye (but not his writing), what he misses about teaching, why people find it so tough to say the word “soul”, and more. Give it a listen, and go get The Miró Worm and the Mysteries of Writing!
(And go listen to our 2017, lockdown, and 2021 conversations!)
Two weeks ago I posted Episode 607 of The Virtual Memories Show, with Christopher Brown returning to celebrate his phenomenal new book, A NATURAL HISTORY OF EMPTY LOTS: Field Notes from Urban Edgelands, Back Alleys and Other Wild Places (Timber Press). We talk about his shift from fiction to a nature-writing/memoir/nonfiction hybrid, the eco-cosmos of East Austin, TX, the years of observation that opened him to the hidden pockets of wildness in urban environments, why solitude in nature is a myth, Long Time vs. the brief presence of Anglos in Texas, how Lockdown turned off global capitalism and showed how society might truly change, and how this book mutated from when we talked about it at Readercon 2023. We get into Bruce Sterling’s unforgettable critique of his writing, how he turned a narrative of colonization into one of decolonization, why he (begrudgingly) brought the personal/memoiristic into the book and how it helped him come to terms with himself, and what a workshop with horror writers taught him about the truth-telling power of non-redemptive storytelling. We also discuss how his readers in different regions respond to his FIELD NOTES newsletter, the nature of mysticism and writing a narrative about transcending the self, hiking a Massachusetts marsh in summer with Jeff VanderMeer, and plenty more. Give it a listen, and go get A NATURAL HISTORY OF EMPTY LOTS!
(And go listen to our 2018, 2019, lockdown, 2020, and 2023 conversations!)
Recent episodes: Dmitry Samarov • Stephen B. Shepard • Benjamin Dreyer • Nicholas Delbanco • Dash Shaw • Jess Ruliffson • Joe Coleman
The Ring of Validation
Monday of last week I was in a Starbucks in Rome — I needed caffeine & it was too early for the local cafés; don’t judge — when I got an out-of-the-blue email from someone who had read my Haiku for Business Travelers ‘zines while at work (hotel restaurant host; cleaning staff found them, thought the host might like them).
They told me about being in a foul mood because of a bummer of a birthday the day before, and then getting lost in my poems / essays / art / photos / pod-excerpts, getting inspired to make their own mag, wanting to check out the podcast, being amazed that someone (ME!) is out there making what I make. “I want to say thank you for sharing your inner world and putting it into print,” they wrote.
I was so touched that when I wrote back that evening I didn’t even ask for the hand-written series numbers on the table of contents pages so I could find out who thought so little of my ‘zines that they left them in a hotel room.
Later in the week, some past guests and listeners made a couple of lovely comments about me & the show, by email and on social media, and I found myself getting dangerously close to believing I’ve done something significant with my life.
I kid, but all that praise did remind me that I’ve stumbled into / assigned myself an important mission. When I thought I was dying three years ago, I had to come to terms with this being my legacy — primarily the podcast, and to a lesser extent my newsletter-writing persona and the ‘zine-writing & art — and in that shell-shocked, existential state, I felt good about that, that I’d made something of value, that would outlast me.
But I drift and forget and fade, and my self-image is fragile enough that reinforcement / encouragement is good. Of course, then my problem is not letting that encouragement nudge me into a sense of self-importance; my vanity is bad enough, but if it creeps into how I value or approach the podcast — “This Is Important Work and therefore I Am Important!” — I’d get even more insufferable. (I am, tbh, no fun to be around in extended doses.)
And then, in Milan, I got an email from a past guest — a cartoonist whose work I’ve adored since I was ~18 — who told me that he & his wife (also a past guest) were watching The Rings Of Power on Amazon, and when Young Gandalf showed up on screen:
She said, “Does he remind you of—”
“—Gil!” I interrupted.
“Yes!”
He enclosed a pic that made me laugh pretty hard after a LONG day at the trade show:
It’s nice to be remembered & valued, even if it’s for hair & cheekbones. (I kid, but only out of insecurity.)
Instaxery
No new podcasts last weekend, so no new Instax photos for you or my GUEST/HOST book project. I plan to record at least one in-person this weekend, and may stop in on a past guest or two, so I hope to have a few to show you next week.
Artistry
As I mentioned last week, I started a little sketch-journal (not high-end paper, and a rollerball pen) that I’ve managed to get something in every day. Not sure if I’ll share those here. I did a couple of brush-pen sketches since I got back, of a statue on a column in Rome, and Harold Bloom from our 2016 podcast (his deathiversary was a few days ago). 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.) Since nobody reads this far, I should tell you something funny. Twice in recent months, I’ve written really soul-baring postcards and mailed them out, only to get them back with a Returned To Sender sticker a few weeks later, despite both of them having correct addresses. When I asked each recipient for their new addresses, they were perplexed, as neither had moved. Seems USPS thinks it best for me to keep my emotions and such bottled up.
Until Next Time
Thanks for reading this far! I’ll be back on Sunday with links, books, & workout-craziness, and on Wednesday with a new episode, and maybe some art, maybe some Instax.
Like the church, like a cop, like a mother / You want me to be truthful / Sometimes you turn it on me like a weapon though / And I need your approval,