Analog Digital

New podcast with Josh Bayer, the return of Mad Mix, & some art

Podcastery

This week, I posted Episode 561 of The Virtual Memories Show, feat. a conversation with cartoonist Josh Bayer. With his new graphic novel/memoir, UNENDED (Uncivilized Books), Josh explores family trauma, memory, art, and more. We get into how he spent five years trying to adapt his late father’s unfinished play into a comic, the ways it did & didn’t help him come to terms with his father’s life and his mother’s death, and why he blurs out his character’s face on the page. We talk about the punk rock inspiration in his writing and art, the systems he uses to pull him out of storytelling morasses and how he learned to teach them to his students, learning to cope with his ADD (and wondering whether I have it too), studying at SVA in his 30s, and why he pursued comics over fine art. We also discuss mental health and treatment and how we deal with our father-issues, Josh’s recent stint working at Carol Tyler‘s Ink Farm, the impact of the Masters of 20th Century Comics exhibition on his career, why it’s tough to be Rollins, the question of whether he’s forgiven his dad, and a lot more. Give it a listen! And go read UNENDED!

Last week, I posted Episode 560 of The Virtual Memories Show, feat. a conversation with biographer Adam Sisman about his new book, The Secret Life of John le Carré (Harper). Adam reveals the secrets he couldn’t publish in 2015’s John le Carré: The Biography, and explores how serial deception & betrayals — through the multiple affairs le Carré (a.k.a. David Cornwell) conducted during both of his marriages — can provide a key to understanding the late, great spy novelist. We get into how Adam became a detective-psychoanalyst-confessor during his work on the biography, how he learned of le Carré’s messy private life, why he decided to wait until after the author and his wife had died before publishing this new book, and why these revelations ought not to diminish le Carré’s literary stature. We talk about le Carré’s monumental achievements chronicling the Cold War and Britain’s decline (& his top 3 le Carré novels), how he felt when le Carré published a memoir after Adam’s biography came out, and the ways in which le Carré’s upbringing — abandoned by his mother, reared by a con man father he struggled to escape from — may have contributed to his devotion to duplicity & seduction. We also discuss the moment Adam realized that biography is a human process, his thoughts on the new Errol Morris documentary with le Carré, what it means to put le Carré behind him, and plenty more. Give it a listen! And go read The Secret Life of John le Carré!

Recent episodes: Lisa Morton • Daniel Clowes • Rachel Shteir • Patrick McDonnell • Keith Knight • Brett Martin

The Return of Mad Mix

I made a mix-CD for the first time in a bazillion years. I used to make those all the time for friends, under the name Mad Mix. Before that, it was mixtapes, because I’m old. I still have a box of audio cassettes in my attic, and somewhere up there is an old college notebook with handwritten playlists, so I wouldn’t repeat myself.

This one had been percolating for years, but I finally found the last 2 songs for it last night, cut another one so that it’d fit on a CD, and away I went. When my pal gets it in the mail, she’ll plotz, then happydance, then maybe cry and laugh when she listens to it.

That’s assuming she has a CD player somewhere in her home or car. I don’t, except for the Superdrive that plugs into my Mac. For some reason, the CD wouldn’t play back in Apple Music, so I had to download another app to test it and make sure I wasn’t sending her a horrible tease of an unplayable CD.

I know, I know: why not just share a playlist on one of the streaming apps? Maybe I’ll do that and share it with the rest of you sometime. For now, even though CDs are a digital medium, I’ll keep it analog, a physical gift to share with a friend.

I guess it’s like my postcard-a-day habit (which I’m still doing; zap me your mailing address if you want to be on the receiving end), or my print-only Haiku for Business Travelers ’zine, or my art being on paper: even/especially while so much of what I do is on a computer and I’m as seduced by e-immediacy as the rest of you, I still treasure the physical artifact, the slowness of mail, the irreversibility of a line on paper.

Anyway, I’ve prattled about that before, but I’m glad that I finally got off my ass and let Mad Mix take care of business. Now I just have to find my old cardboard CD-mailers in the storage space. . . .

Art

Yesterday was the first anniversary of a pretty wonderful day; last Halloween I was in London and visited the artist Celia Paul (2020, 2022) for a few hours (then I went off to record with Marina Warner). We gabbed, I told her a story that I’ll try to share with you in the year-end episode, she showed me her latest art, I took in the amazing light of her studio, and then she said, “We should draw each other,” which was SO not fair. I did my best, but I’d never even tried to draw in person before. She sent me her sketch of me; I’ll never show another soul. I drew Celia from photos a couple of times — Nov. 2021, April 2022, a week before that visit, and in an aborted project in Jan. 2023 — and decided I’d try another last night. Failed again, but that’s art. On the plus side, after that, I added the hull and mast to a postcard of a sailboat I started in Barcelona, where I tried to learn something about negative space. 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.

All wet / Hey, you might need a raincoat / Shakedown / Dreams walking in broad daylight,

—Gil Roth
Virtual Memories
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