Capitol Idea
New podcast w/Dawn Raffel, my return to DC, lots of links, a little art, & more
Intro
No time for a real update this week; sorry. Yesterday I took the train to Washington, DC. This is my first trip since Feb. 28, 2020. I’m here for a pharma-workshop & some schmoozing, and I’m staying at the Dupont Circle Hotel, where I occasionally stayed in The Before Time. It gets me easy access to Second Story Books and Kramerbooks. I hit both last night after the workshop dinner, and picked up a poetry collection by Amy Clampitt and Mrs. Bridge, by Evan Connell.
I’ll be back in early February for lobbying visits, and again in March to give a Congressional briefing with my association. (Apparently, my congressman matters.) I missed being here, even if Union Station has turned into a ghost town, there are tents set up on traffic islands, and people are zooming by on scooters & e-bikes.
I mismanaged my caffeine intake over the course of the day, so I was up all night & decidedly uncreative this morning. I’ll get accustomed to all this again; it’s just like riding an e-bike, or so I’ve heard.
And now, on with The Virtual Memories Show!
Podcastery
This week, I posted Episode 523 of The Virtual Memories Show, featuring Dawn Raffel, who rejoins the show to celebrate her wonderful new book, Boundless As The Sky (Sagging Meniscus Press), a gorgeous series of stories & a novella. We talk about how Dawn’s previous nonfiction book, The Strange Case of Dr. Couney, led into this new book, how she became obsessed with the Chicago’s Century of Progress World’s Fair (and how she wishes she could have asked her parents about visiting it in their youth), and why Chicago was always her Emerald City. We also get into the strong influence of Invisible Cities on her book and how she felt about writing a feminine/feminist response to Calvino, the twin writing-joys of unexpected resonances and sentence-building, and how incorporating Yoga Nidra offers new approaches to writing workshops. We also get into her recent trip to Kenya for International Literary Seminars, how she finally got around to reading Moby-Dick, and plenty more. Give it a listen! And go read Boundless As The Sky! (& go check out our 2019 conversation)
Last week, I posted Episode 522 of The Virtual Memories Show, featuring the return of Ross Benjamin to celebrate the publication of his translation of The Diaries of Franz Kafka (Schocken Books). We get into the twisted history of the diaries, Ross’ monumental achievement of bringing them into English, how ambiguity and circularity pervade Kafka’s very language, and whether one can be qualified for this sort of task before actually doing it. We also talk about how this edition restores a fuller, living Kafka, what it was like to translate the private writings of someone who was the personification of ambivalence, and what it’s like to catch Kafka in the act of writing. Plus, we discuss what it’s like to accomplish a dream project like this by the age of 40 and Ross’ sense that he’s served the purpose he was meant for (and What Comes Next), the post-pub tribute from his daughter that brought him to tears, and a lot more. Give it a listen! And go read The Diaries of Franz Kafka! (& go check out our 2016 conversation)
Links & Such
RIP David Crosby . . . RIP Paul La Farge . . . RIP Michael Dougan - bonus remembrance from Eric Reynolds
Lengthy but worthwhile piece by Cory Doctorow on the enshittification of online platforms, and a related piece on digital media by John DeVore.
“When you smile and it tears your face, it’s time for the inhuman race.”
Nice Substack post by Will Leitch on not giving up your spot just because The Young say so.
I did not know that Lisa Edelstein is a painter, nor that she grew up a few towns over from me.
Good to know there’s another treatment option available when/if my leukemia progresses to that point. (I just joined a bimonthly virtual support group for people in my Stage Zero condition, to see what that’s like.)
I love having the tangential-est connections — via meeting/gabbing/maybe-kinda-being-friends with Celia Paul and Darryl Pinckney — to the world of Robert Lowell, Lady Caroline Blackwood and Lucian Freud. Here's a piece by Caroline's daughter Ivana Lowell about her mom's marriage to Freud, his paintings of her, and the utter psychodrama of their relationship.
Lest you think Ivana's surname means she's Robert Lowell's daughter, here's a 2010 article about the convoluted story of her paternity.
Ivana’s sister Evgenia is married to the actor Julian Sands, who’s missing in the San Gabriel mountains. I hope he’s safe, but it’s already day 11 of the search.
This XKCD joke about the time we waste waiting for a TV series to get good reminds me of one of my fave tweets
Current reading
Septology, book V - by Jon Fosse
Why Don’t You Love Me? - by Paul Rainey
I Always Think It’s Forever - by Timothy Goodman
Art
Holy crap: I got over myself and actually drew some stuff this week. An hour or two after my board meeting, when I was reminded for the bazillionth time that my anxiety was pointless because the board is there to help me succeed, not to watch me fail, I sat down at my drawing table and got back to work on head-sketches of authors I read in 2022, and finally finished authors 17-24: John Crowley, Jose Saramago, Celia Paul, Julie Phillips, Kathe Koja, Rachel Cusk, Alvin Eng, and Charlie Porter. I had drawn Charlie & Alvin weeks ago, made a hash of Rachel, and gave up for a while. That afternoon I started drawing the rest of them with a mechanical pencil, on a whim, and felt a lot better about the line I was getting. There were still some disasters/erasures, and Celia’s eyes should really be bigger, but there you go: I drew some people, and I can only pray for forgiveness from the living. Last night I fetched reference images for the next 8. On Sunday evening I drew a nude for the first time, from a photo. You should go to the Flickr album of all the art I’ve made & find something you like.
Sound Body, Fractured Mind
Once again, I managed the whole 5-day circuit of alternating weights & yoga from Friday-Tuesday, but only because my DC trip on Tuesday gave me time in the morning before I left for Newark Penn. I got a portable/adjustable bench last week as a belated birthday present to myself, which allowed me to add more chest exercises in with my weights, so now I’m sore.
I took some of The Guys from the running group on a 3.5-mile walk through my neighborhood on Friday morning, including a trek up to the cell tower and then the trail to the plateau in the woods behind my house. Most of them are used to flat terrain, so the hills were not kind, but they did fine. The view was gorgeous.
Until Next Week
Thanks for reading this far! I’ll be back next with a new podcast, fun links, some art (I promise!), & maybe a little profundity or something.
XXXXX,
—Gil Roth
Virtual Memories
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