Eternal Sunshine of the Tweetless Mind
New podcast with Peter Rostovsky, mass delete, a bunch of links, headless Aurelius & more
Intro
When I decided to delete my account on Facebook 6+ years ago, I told a pal that staying on it was like saying, “I don’t agree with the politics of Der Stürmer, but I buy it for the personal ads.” I haven’t looked back, even though I’m sure I’ve missed out on connections and potential pod-guest leads.
This weekend, I decided to mass-delete my Twitter archive: ~31,000 tweets since 2009. The new owner seems intent on turning Twitter into a Nazi bar, and I imagine I’ll delete my account entirely sometime soon, but I figured a good first step would be wiping out my past. (Yeah, yeah, everything we do involves moral compromises; don’t get me started.)
I find I barely go on Twitter these past few months, and when I do, it’s a barrage of ads, angry political tweets/quote-tweet-dunks, ridiculously overwrought attempts at humor, and mean-spirited quips about celebrity deaths. It’s not to say Twitter was always useless; over the years I’ve made lots of connections, discovered future pod-guests, made friends, came across some really good writing (some of which I share in these emails), and had some laughs.
Maybe I’ve changed as much as it has, and as ever, YMMV. I unfollowed a lot of accounts recently, but discovered that there’s not a lot left for me there. Now it’s a quick log-in to see if I have any messages or notifications, a scroll through 4 or 5 tweets before someone has posted something ridiculous, and then I leave.
(I should add that the main reason I post on Twitter — promoting new episodes of the podcast and this email — generates virtually zero response. A recent post led to something like 2,500 views, but exactly 1 link-click to the podcast.)
So when I hit the delete button on TweetDelete and saw the progress bar gradually move up by 50 deleted tweets at a time, I was reminded a little of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, with all these little moments and associations getting zapped out of existence, bit by bit. (I downloaded my archive first, so I can revisit my alleged genius as needed.)
When I was first trying to figure out what Twitter was for all those years ago, I said to a pal at my old office, “It all seems so . . . ephemeral,” and he said, “Everything’s ephemeral.” As I watched 14 years of my public persona fade away, I concluded he was right.
And now, on with The Virtual Memories Show!
Podcastery
This week, I posted Episode 553 of The Virtual Memories Show, feat. Peter Rostovsky as we celebrate his debut graphic novel, Damnation Diaries (Uncivilized Books)! We get into the origins of his gorgeously & grotesquely drawn social satire about Hell (& Hell’s therapist, Fred Greenberg), what he had to learn about comics in the process of making his first one, how comics allowed him to wed his polemical nature to a deeply personal story, and why his version of Hell bears an awful lot of similarities to life in NYC. We also talk about what it was like emigrating from Russia to the Bronx as a 10-year-old kid in 1980, how comics helped him learn English, his strategies for blending in as a teen, and how he found redemption & a love for maximalism in heavy metal. And we discuss his history in the worlds of fine art, art theory, internet utopianism, and International Art English, whether AI is a McLuhan-esque ‘prosthesis’ for art, his mother’s recent death and how he feels about rendering her in Hell in Damnation Diaries, why I think he needs to write about his occasional childhood exile in a garden in the Hermitage, and a lot more. Give it a listen! And go read Damnation Diaries!
Last week, I posted Episode 552 of The Virtual Memories Show, feat. the return of Bill Griffith as we celebrate his fantastic new book, THREE ROCKS: The Story of Ernie Bushmiller, The Man Who Created NANCY (Abrams ComicArts). We get into his lifelong history with NANCY, why Bushmiller and Crumb are the only two cartoonists whose work gives him 100% pleasure (and don’t inspire criticism or jealousy), and how the idea for Three Rocks percolated for a few decades until he read Paul Karasik & Mark Newgarden‘s book HOW TO READ NANCY. And we talk about the death of Bill’s wife, the great underground cartoonist Diane Noomin, the new comic Bill made about (& with) Diane, The Buildings Are Barking (Fantagraphics/FU), what it’s like to work on a new book without the person who read every panel of his for 49 years, how having a daily Zippy strip all these decades immunized him from anniversaries, how the death of Aline Kominsky-Crumb two months after Diane’s brought him and Robert Crumb closer, and a lot more. Give it a listen! And go read THREE ROCKS & The Buildings Are Barking (& go listen to our 2015 and 2019 conversations!)
Other recent episodes: Jerome Charyn • Ron Rosenbaum • Karl Stevens • Howard Fishman • Christopher Brown
Links & Such
RIP Jimmy Buffett . . . RIP Edith Grossman . . . RIP Ray Price . . . RIP Bill Richardson . . . RIP Steve Harwell . . .
Dan Clowes talks about his library & some of the visual/stylistic influences for his new book, MONICA. (I’m hoping to record with him about it, but doubt that’s gonna happen.)
I liked this review by Daphne Merkin of a new book about George Orwell’s first wife, Eileen O’Shaughnessy, and the GREAT WRITER mindset.
Anahid Nersessian wrote about the poet Joyce Mansour.
Part 1 of a big ol’ piece on the artists & cartoonists who made Pee-Wee’s Playhouse (incl. past guests Kaz, Mark Newgarden & Wayne White).
I enjoy David Marchese’s interviews in the NYT; this one with Anderson Cooper’s pretty fascinating.
Tyler Cowen makes the case that Bach was the GOAT, in terms of achievers.
Current reading
Mason & Dixon - Thomas Pynchon
Art
Not much drawing this week, but I did this sketch of the (headless) bronze statue of Marcus Aurelius that recently got seized from the Cleveland Museum of Art. I’m hoping to draw a bust of (maybe) Aurelius’ daughter that got seized this week from Worcester Art Museum. You should go to the Flickr album of most of the art I’ve made & find something you like.
Sound Body, Fractured Mind
Due to various excuses, I only managed to get in 3 days of my weights-yoga cycle, Sunday-Tuesday, but I also “ran” 5.7 miles with some of The Guys on Friday. I’m having some heel/arch problems lately, so that wasn’t great for me, but hey. This coming weekend will also be screwed up, as far as fitness goes, since I’ll be at the Small Press Expo and likely not willing to deal with a hotel fitness center. I’ll bring a yoga mat along (I’m driving) so I can get that workout in at least. Maybe I’ll bring my dumbbells in the car, too, and lug those up to my room, although I could try this bodyweight workout again, despite the fact that it flat-out annihilated me the first time I did it. I’m still down 10-11 lbs. from my working-out-but-compulsively-eating peak a month ago; I feel like a lot of the loss came from muscle mass in my back & shoulders. We’ll see how that builds back up. I’m going to be under crazy (somewhat self-induced) stress for the next month, so I hope to keep my eating under control during that whole mess. Good thing no one ever reads this part of the email. One of my pals decided that I’ve lost too much weight & sent me a box of these to build back up, but after having one, I have even less of an appetite:
Until Next Week
Thanks for reading this far! I’ll be back next week with a new podcast, some great links, maybe some art, & who knows maybe a little profundity or something.
So many people you can check up on, and add to your collection,
—Gil Roth
Virtual Memories
Bluesky • Instagram • Flickr • YouTube • Linktr.ee