PODCAST

This week, I posted Episode 696 of The Virtual Memories Show! Karl Stevens rejoins the show to celebrate his new book, PEPPER (Toon Books), which brings us the latest adventures of existentialist housecat, Penny, and her eponymous sister. We talk about the fun of making a sequel to 2021’s PENNY, the challenge of getting all the cats’ markings right, how he found the right balance in the voices & outlooks of his main cat-characters, how giving Pepper mystical powers allowed him to get away from drawing his apartment over and over, and how cat comics PULL. We get into his realist drawing style and the underexamined potential of realistic art in comics, his upcoming gallery show of oil paintings, how he might fuse his interest in comics and oils by exploring narrative genre paintings, his collaborations with other writers (and the cartoonists he’d love to write for), and how listening to music on vinyl gives him an excuse to get up from the drawing table and stretch every 20 minutes. We also discuss Something Fell, the page-by-page podcast he co-hosts about Dave Sim’s Cerebus comics, his recent focus on Pre-Raphaelite painters, his progress with finishing the last book of Knausgaard’s My Struggle, his thoughts on making one more big autobio book, life after having to say goodbye to Penny and whether he’s drawn her since, and a lot more. Give it a listen! And go read PEPPER and PENNY!

And go listen to our 2019, 2021, and 2023 conversations!

Recent podcast episodes: Wallis Wilde-Menozzi • Nate Powell • Karl Christian Krumpholz • Alison Fensterstock & Michael Tisserand • Emil Wilson • Jonathan Ames • Dash Shaw

Or how about every single episode, alphabetically?

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

ONLY IN NEW YORK

I got home from my crazy trip (see below) to find my copy of REAL LIFE COMIX: ONLY IN NEW YORK waiting for me! Which means I’m now officially a published cartoonist, because I've got a 2-page story — “HI LIFE AND DEATH” — in this book!

I’m one of 60+ comics contributors with true stories of NYC; there are a lot bigger names than me in this one, like past guests Jonathan Ames, Roz Chast, Bob Fingerman, Drew Friedman, Karen Green, Jennifer Hayden, Ben Katchor, Keith Knight, Peter Kuper, Whitney Matheson, Moby, Josh Neufeld, Peter Rostovsky, R. Sikoryak, Karl Stevens, Carol Tyler, and Noah Van Sciver, along with a ton of not-yet guests, plus a great story from Jack Kirby. Go order it from the publisher or your fave comic shop!

The editors, Dean Haspiel and Doug Latino, have organized some signings for the book, and I’ll be at the one on Wednesday, November 4, from 6-8pm at Forbidden Planet in NYC! It’s right up the street from the Strand, so if you’re interested in buying the book or you already have a copy, come to the signing and I’ll put my seismographic signature on it, as will a bunch of the other contributors! (I got Peter Kuper and Ben Katchor to sign theirs during Friday’s multi-podcast day in NYC.) Here’s a FB/IG reel about the event. Hope to see you there! Maybe we’ll go celebrate after!

(At the Strand, probably, where I will wind up buying myself more books.)

BIRDY!

She’s one sleepy potato

HITTING THE LINKS

Here are a couple of links for you:

• RIP Patrick Stewart (man, this one hurts) . . . RIP Walter Koenig . . . RIP Eric Bauza . . . RIP Susan Saint James . . . RIP Ursula von Rydingsvard (also ArtForum) . . . RIP Tetsuya Chiba . . . RIP Barbara Barrie . . . RIP Gregory Crane . . . RIP Barry Clemens . . . RIP Peter Medak . . . RIP Dolores Huerta . . .

• In his Criterion Closet video, Jeremy Allen White has a funny Miller’s Crossing story, so he can do no wrong as far as I’m concerned.

• Excerpt from Dustin Hoffman’s memoir, about his time on The Graduate.

• Harvard has a little bit of St. John’s College, too.

• Fun profile of a guy who used to be a skip tracer and now helps people who want to vanish.

• The internet is broken and should die? Sure.

• Maybe we oughtta disconnect so as to not detach.

• And we can always hug it out.

COMMONPLACE

From my online commonplace book:

He experienced, and not for the first time this week, this winter, the sensation that he was simply creating the story backward from this moment, reasons and all. But isn’t that what memory is always doing? Making bricks without straw, mortaring them in place one by one into a so-called past, a labyrinth actually, in which to hide a monster, or a monstrosity?

—John Crowley, Love & Sleep

VERY RUSHMORE, PART 2

[Part 1 left off at the end of my pharma trade association’s annual conference in Maryland, when I made A Decision about how to get home.]

Burned out by 6 weeks of travel, presentations, lobbying meetings, conference marketing/hosting/micromanaging, recording and posting podcasts, and everything else that goes to making up/tearing down my life, and facing nearly 2 hours of traffic delays on a 4-hour drive home, I chose to drive to my birthplace and take the long way home, as Supertramp put it.

Not my biological birthplace, mind you. I live about 20 minutes from the hospital in NJ where I was born. It’s the same place where, 50 years later, I received my leukemia diagnosis (I’m aware of the ironies). No, I mean the birthplace of what we may as well call my soul: St. John’s College, in Annapolis, MD.

I attended the Graduate Institute (GI) at St. John’s in the early 1990s. I’ve written before about the school’s “Great Books” curriculum, how the undergrads have a much more intensive program than the GIs, and how my four semesters there — plus a summer studying Attic Greek — were more important to me than my undergraduate year at the soon-to-be-shuttered Hampshire College.

I drove ~45 min. from the Bethesda North Marriott to the St. John’s campus, parked somewhat illegally near the new dorms, and started walking. It was a beautiful, sunny day, a little cool, and I wore my new Vuori running jacket over a black T-shirt. I took some pix on campus, and posted a 2-min. monologue video near McDowell Hall, where I attended seminars and swing dances, and tried talking about where I was and why.

But of course I didn’t know why. I’d been so utterly fragmented/frantic, in such a tactical/operational state, that I simply felt like I was lurching from mini-crisis to mini-crisis and had no higher purpose. In that framework, this place felt like a sanctuary. The moment I started walking the campus that afternoon, I was overwhelmed with — not memories exactly, but some greater, deep-seated resonance. As sad as I am about Hampshire shutting down, this place is where I was born, where I became, or started becoming, and maybe even belonging. Hence this impromptu homecoming, to the place where we all care about the books.

As students passed by, or sat outside reading, or talked to each other, I wanted to run up and rant at them, “This is the most important place in the world! Treasure every moment you have here! Build a memory palace of this place and all it means!”

Instead, I asked some students where the bookstore had moved and they directed me. I told them I’d finished the GI in ’95, and they both burst into smiles, presumably at the notion of an ancient alumnus finding his way back to the school.

In the bookstore, the First Book By A Past Guest that I saw (a challenge I give myself in any bookstore/library) was Adam Moss’ The Work of Art. I bought Cavafy’s collected poems, recognized a tutor from my time there in the connected coffee shop (but forgot his name; we never studied together, so I didn’t introduce myself), and then walked into town, occasionally singing a verse of Blind Faith’s Can’t Find My Way Home.

Per my journal

In town: coffee & brownie at Old Fox Books, take pix of the doorway of the Smoke Shop, long gone, text [a girlfriend from those days / friend ever since] a pic of the doorway of Harry Browne’s, where I once picked up a piece of key lime pie for her while she was laid up with the ‘flu, around State Circle to Cornhill St. & a pic of the front door to #50, leading to Haydn’s and Leslie’s apartments, then past the crystal shop where the comic shop used to be, through the market, and up Main St. to Back Creek Books (1st ed. of Clive James’ poetry, 1958-85), & Capitol Comics (where I found a book of J. Webster Sharp, of all things!), back to State Circle to get over to my old house on Prince George.

On that second walk along the circle, maneuvering among Naval Academy class of 1991 reunion attendees, I felt an urge to sit down on the step of a building and cry. I didn’t do it, and didn’t know where that feeling was coming from: was it relief at the end of my work-sprint, sadness at how far I am from who I thought I’d be during my time at St. John’s, nervous exhaustion, shame at how it ended with Leslie, the sheer weight of the 30+ years since I left here, my father, my mother, all the words I haven’t written and all the ones I have, the time I wasted, the skirts I chased, the if only?

I kept walking — I always keep walking — and got to my old house.

On the way, I passed the setback beside where the Sterlings used to live, and heard someone playing piano inside, a beautiful melody. I took a little video of that, and a guy walking down the street with his dog smiled and stuck around to listen, too.

Then I went back to campus to start the drive home. I walked through Mellon Hall for as good a reason as I had for anything else that afternoon, then visited the art gallery. It’s tiny, just two rooms, but it’s art, so you never know. Something could help reassemble me.

A tall male student with a kippah was talking to some older folks about the art, and a young dark-haired female student — okay fine sort of an Art School Girl of Doom — who was seated in a corner offered me help. I mentioned the adjoining videodrome and its “Abramovic/Benglis thing”. She told me she’d just tidied up the seat cushions and I should go in and check it out.

The videodrome is a funky space, maybe 15’x15’ square, bookshelves, test-pattern colors on one wall, a bookshelf on another, black chairs with red cushions, two projectors with videos on adjacent walls, and a sort of speaker hood above so if you sit beneath one you can hear that video’s audio track.

There were banners on campus about the video exhibition, Surveilled or Seen: Sinew of Trust in the Video of Marina Abramović and Lynda Benglis: “The Question: What is the difference between being looked at versus being witnessed?”

I watched the Benglis video, Monitor, first: it was an out-of-focus mouth & an eye inset above it, moving to a dance beat. I sat as long as I could, then switched over to another seat, below the Abramovic speaker, for that video, Rest Energy.

I saw a man and woman take up a blow and (blunted) arrow. Both wore white button-downs and black skirt or pants. She held the bow, facing her, with a gloved left hand, and he drew the string & held the arrow at her chest, with a gloved right hand. Each leaned back, creating tension in their breaths and the bow, and the only soundtrack was their breathing & occasional grunts of stress. Then they slowly reduced the tension and lowered the bow and arrow, & the clip restarted.

I took it all in, just breathing, feeling my own unreleased tension. I returned to the main room. The male student was still talking to patrons, so I thanked the still-seated woman and said that I left the cushions tidy.

Then I said, “There’s something I need to tell you.”

I told her that I was a GI who graduated in 1995, and that she needs to recognize that these will probably be the best years of her life. Not to put pressure on or to imply life will suck after, but that she should recognize how important this place is while she’s here, “Because the world will take a lot of things away from you, and you need to embrace this place, what it means, and what you start to become while you’re here.”

To her credit, she wasn’t freaked out by this old man and his ranting, and assured me she’s very aware of how special St. John’s is, that she’s trying to take it all in, and that she’ll swing dance to Sinatra with anyone.

She rattled off a list of clubs, societies and groups she’s part of, and I said, “Very Rushmore,” to her blank stare.

She told me she loved St. John’s and that her goal is to teach there and never leave. I laughed because we all felt that at some point, but I wished her luck.

I sat in the chair adjacent to her, and we talked for a while, along with the young man, who wanted to know how my time there prepared me for my professional life. I told him my usual stuff about flexibility and curiosity, how they were present before I got to Annapolis, but became central to my life in the years I was there, and how St. John’s is where I learned how to learn.

I also told them about the podcast, passed along the name & URL, and talked about how making the show taught me to listen. They at least feigned interest.

I named a few St. John’s tutors I’d recorded shows with, but they didn’t know a single one, which made me sad, because of how important those people were to me, and what’s lost with their retirements. A few days later, my brother pointed out that it’s actually great, because it means there are new generations of tutors who care just as much about the program and the books as the ones who helped us along.

She told me about her pending conversion to Catholicism but we went on another tangent and I didn’t wind us back to it. She had a cross on a thin silver chain atop her — obvs — black turtleneck. I hoped not to come off as creepy, and to be fair, I think I came off as more haunted than lecherous. The rime of the ancient GI.

And then she mentioned that she and her colleague were both freshmen.

I laughed and used my “Ever since turning 40, I can’t tell the age of anyone younger than me” bit, but a voice in my head did the math and screamed, “YOU ARE THREE TIMES OLDER THAN THEM.”

Of course I felt old the entire time I’d been on campus, but now I knew I was a ghost, a time traveler, a revenant, an old man. That if anyone told me this stuff in 1994, I’d have laughed it off. That won’t happen to me. . . .

I thought about all they’ve learned and seen in their 18 years, how mature they both seemed, compared to me at that age, but also how much more time I’ve had, how survival has given me (maybe a little) wisdom they just can’t have yet, how all my stories and bits and set pieces are the result of a life that I’ve lived.

And I knew it’s not just St. John’s I miss, but St. John’s when I was 23 years old.

It was time for me to head home. She told me to visit campus more often, for the annual croquet match against the Naval Academy, maybe, and suggested the other masters programs at the Santa Fe campus, then thanked me for the conversation.

I wished her well, shook the guy’s hand, wished him a good shabbos, and began the drive home.

[I’m sorry I failed you with this. There was so much more, but with a week’s gap, everything that seemed so vivid has faded. It’s become less imperative because, as I said, the world takes so much from us.]

SOUND BODY, FRACTURED MIND

Getting back to exercising after that week of travel. Pic below is from a morning workout, hence the amount of light behind my left shoulder. I had a cardiologist appt. a little later that day; this is the same doc who looked at me 6 weeks ago and asked, “Do you exercise?”

This appt. didn’t go much better. I was stuck cooling my heels in the exam room (post-vitals) for 30 min., then angrily got up to leave, what with my having A Job and all. The front desk staff wouldn’t let me go, and hunted down the doc so he could give me the 2-minute followup from my previous visit and subsequent bloodwork and echocardiogram: no sign of the issue they were concerned about (atrial enlargement), and I should start taking a statin. But not the one my PCP prescribed, because, he said, “It would be useless.” I asked him why an M.D. who knows my medical history would prescribe a useless statin, he said, “I don’t know; you’ll have to ask him.”

Anyway, he didn’t ask about my exercise habits this time, so that’s a plus.

POSTCARD

I mail out a postcard every day, so let me know if you want to be in the rotation for that.

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.

Come down off your throne and leave your body alone / Somebody must change / You are the reason I’ve been waiting so long / Somebody holds the key,