Fast Reading
New podcast with Patrick McDonnell, reading the asymptote, a little art & less
Intro
[As mentioned on Sunday, I’ve decided to do 2 posts a week instead of one: Sunday gets the Link-O-Rama, Current Reading, and Sound Body/Fractured Mind stuff, while Wednesday gets the new episode and any art that I make. I’ll try to write intros for both. I hope you don’t mind; you can unsubscribe anydarntime. —Gil]
I read 6 things while I fasted during Yom Kippur. In sequence:
When Breath Becomes Air - Paul Kalanithi
‘One Road’ - Donald Hall
In Gratitude - Jenny Diski
‘When You’re Excused, You’re Excused’ - Bruce Jay Friedman
Patience - Daniel Clowes
The new paperback chapter of Faith, Hope, & Carnage - Nick Cave & Séan O’Hagan
The Hall & Friedman have become an annual tradition, and the Clowes was a re-read, as we’re supposed to record a podcast this weekend. I didn’t want to read anything podcast-related during that period, but all day long I felt too attached to my resentments, too fixated on my anxieties, and being unable to extricate myself from my obligations, gave up & decided to read for the future.
Last year’s fast became an exploration, like I was mapping the interior of the self. This time, I found myself barred from that territory, frustrated by/reveling in the physicality of affliction. (The affliction comes from the caffeine withdrawal headache; going without food & water isn’t a real problem.) Which I know isn’t the atonement-spirit of Yom Kippur, but I already feel so implicated by every molecule of this world that there’s no sense of evading guilt.
I think my problems this year may have stemmed from my two main reads: memoirs of the dying. Since getting my own suspended sentence in 2021, I’ve been reading books-by-the-dying on Yom Kippur: Christopher Hitchens, Harold Brodkey, Oliver Sacks, Anatole Broyard, Gillian Rose, Cory Taylor. I’ve got a collection of Updike’s dying poetry, but haven’t been able to get into it.
This time was Paul Kalanithi & Jenny Diski, and I felt . . . not let down, but taken to the limit of what these narratives can be. The closer the writers get to the asymptote, their books dissipate or end abruptly, with afterwords by their editors, spouses, children, completing the incomplete life. (Not a knock: Both their books are amazing.)
I think that’s why I dug Anatole Broyard’s Intoxicated By My Illness last year; the last part was fragments and notes as his illness progressed, without narrative or shape, capturing his disintegration, with hints of what was to come, if only.
I could prattle on, but the point is that I’ve taken those narratives to their endpoint.
And right before my own endpoint, ~20 minutes before breaking fast, I picked up the paperback of Faith, Hope & Carnage. I read the hardcover this spring and loved it, so I read the new final chapter of conversation between Nick Cave & Séan O’Hagan, and finally Felt Something Happening. As they talked about making music, touring, and Cave’s spiritual/religious transformation both over the years and through the process of the conversations that comprise the book, I found myself growing charged up and ready to re-enter the world that I never really extricated myself from.
More anxieties have cropped up in the day since then, crazy complications to the clockwork I try to impose on the world. But I find myself shot out of a cannon, reinvigorated. I know these changes and transformations can happen any time, not just occasions like a fast-holiday vision quest. I even talk about that in this week’s episode with Patrick McDonnell, but it felt good to get that charge just at the end of 24+ hours muddling around in my various afflictions.
In thanks, I bought a ticket to Nick Cave’s solo show in NYC the weekend after my conference.
And now, on with The Virtual Memories Show!
Podcastery
This week, I posted Episode 556 of The Virtual Memories Show, feat. legendary cartoonist & artist Patrick McDonnell, who answers the question, “What’s it like to put out books with Jack Kirby and the Dalai Lama in the same year?” We get into the secret origin of his amazing new book, THE SUPER HERO’S JOURNEY (Abrams ComicArts), the joy of getting to play with the comic-book characters of his youth and remix 1960s panels & pages with his own art & story, how he made a spiritual book disguised as a Marvel comic, and why the best art is when your mind is not involved. We also talk about the making of his collaboration with the Dalai Lama, HEART TO HEART: A Conversation on Love and Hope for Our Precious Planet (Harper One), how Patrick combined minimal (but gorgeous) art with the Dalai Lama’s words to tell a story of ecological survival, getting to meet the Dalai Lama in Dharmshala (& finding some bliss), and the struggle of drawing a cartoon version of His Holiness and his small nose. Plus we discuss the approaching 30th anniversary of his MUTTS comic-strip and how Patrick keeps finding inspiration & fun in making it, how making books and paintings allows him to flex and play with his art, the ways making a comic strip parallels making haiku, the experience of showing his paintings at a big exhibition at OSU in 2021, and how purposefulness suffuses Patrick’s art & life. Give it a listen! And go read The Super Hero’s Journey and Heart To Heart
Last week, I posted Episode 555 of The Virtual Memories Show, feat. cartoonist, writer, & TV producer Keith Knight, as we celebrate his long-awaited graphic memoir, I WAS A TEENAGE MICHAEL JACKSON IMPERSONATOR. We get into his 18-month stint as an MJ impersonator in the mid-’80s, how he found himself by being someone else, what he learned about audiences and the business of entertainment, the role music has played in his life, his favorite MJ song, and why Off The Wall is better than Thriller. We also talk about Keith’s experience writing and producing two seasons of WOKE on Hulu (sadly cancelled), how he got involved in every aspect of making that show, what he learned about storytelling in the writers’ room, and what he wants to bring to his next TV project. Plus we discuss why comics are the ultimate DIY art form, the differing modes of audience-artist interaction from comics to TV to slideshow lectures to MJ performances, why Stevie Wonder may have the best three-album run of anyone in music history, and a LOT more. Give it a listen! And go read I Was A Teenage Michael Jackson Impersonator and watch WOKE
Other recent episodes: Brett Martin • Peter Rostovsky • Bill Griffith • Jerome Charyn • Ron Rosenbaum • Karl Stevens
Art
The only art I made that I liked enough to scan & share was this brush-pen sketch of cinematographer Sven Nykvist, for his DOTD (2006). It came out looking like Brian Cox drawn by Beto Hernandez, but I'll take it. I started with the eyes, which were deep- shadowed beneath his eyes, an irony for someone whose job was understanding light. From there to eyebrows, the hint of a nose, stubble/mouth, ears to dictate the scale of his head, hair, brow-lines, forehead, shadows. Like you care. What it is is a face. 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.
Put the right letters together, and make a better day,
—Gil Roth
Virtual Memories
Bluesky • Instagram • Flickr • YouTube • Linktr.ee