Witness

New podcast about finding Michael Denneny, losing Ed Koren, finding Ikiru, + links, art & more

Intro

I’d like to write about something else this week, but I can’t. The guest I was going to record with on Saturday, Michael Denneny, was dead in his apartment. He didn’t answer my confirmation e-mail the day before, and when I arrived a neighbor had to let me into the building because he didn’t respond to the doorbell, text, e-mail, or phone. When I got up to his apartment, I saw four days’ worth of newspapers outside his door.

The picture above is the view from the stairs. I sat on those steps a few minutes, not knowing what to do, afraid to cause a commotion at his building, afraid he was dead inside the apartment, afraid I’d somehow gotten a date wrong and he was traveling, afraid afraid.

Soon, a neighbor walked down the stairs; I told her what was going on and we settled on calling in a wellness check. When the police arrived, they found his body in bed.

This week’s episode, recorded the next day, is a ~50-min. monologue about what happened, why Michael’s death is such a great loss, and how I reacted to it. Please listen to it, because it may be the most important thing I’ve ever made. I cry and rage a few times, so be prepared.

His friends and colleagues have reached out to me after listening to the episode, thankful that I did what I did: make the call, stay to find out, help the police find contacts, record so soon after the event. In the moment, I had no idea what I should do, but they told me what I did was right, and they were glad someone was there who could share their loss with something more meaningful than a police report.

I’ve been so gratified to hear from them, with all their wonderful stories about Michael and the importance he had in their lives and careers. I’m still jagged & frayed from Saturday, and all those notes from his friends make me even more sad I never got to meet Michael and have a conversation, but I’m glad that I could be in the wrong place at the right time.

And now, on with The Virtual Memories Show.

Podcastery

This week, I posted Episode 535 of The Virtual Memories Show. It was going to feature a conversation with gay author and editor Michael Denneny, but he was found dead when I arrived at his apartment to record our session on Saturday, so this episode consists of a monologue of my experience that day, my appreciation of his amazing and important new collection, ON CHRISTOPHER STREET: Life, Sex and Death After Stonewall (University of Chicago Press), my thoughts on legacy, identity, mortality, the AIDS crisis, what it means to bear witness, and more. Give it a listen, please. And go read ON CHRISTOPHER STREET.

Last week, I posted Episode 534 of The Virtual Memories Show, feat. an Artist’s Spotlight with Noah Van Sciver, live from MoCCA Fest 2023! We talk about his career in comics, his return to autobio with his new Maple Terrace comic (Uncivilized Books), what his graphic biography of Joseph Smith taught him, when he realized/accepted he was Alt and not Mainstream, and the great wisdom his father gave him about comics. We also get into looking at 40 and how it compares to the comic he did about turning 30, why ex-Mormons appreciate his Joseph Smith bio, the challenges of getting work done as a father, the influence of Kerouac and the Beats on his writing and art, and plenty more. Give it a listen, and go check out Maple Terrace & listen to our 2022 conversation.

Other recent episodes: Stevan Weine • Priscilla Gilman • Timothy Goodman • Christopher Bollen

Links & Such

• RIP Ed Koren (+ Vermont Public, NYT, Inkspill, & a wonderful remembrance by Steven Heller) . . . RIP Rachel Pollack . . .

• Ed had a terminal lung cancer diagnosis, which became public last October. We talked a few times since then, and I thought about going up to see him, but put it off because it’d be 5+ hours each way, he might’ve conked out with exhaustion 10 minutes after I got there, a few of our cartoonist pals were already seeing him regularly (as were friends and family), and of course because I’m a terrible human being (I’ll be the judge of that). But Ed is someone who recognized a fellow schmoozer when we recorded, and it was an honor to spend a little time with him and to stay in touch in the following years. When I took that photo after our podcast, I asked him to put his hand up like that because throughout the conversation I was transfixed by the ink under his fingernails, and wanted to capture that in the guest-photo. If there’s an afterlife, Ed, I hope to renew our schmooze there.

• Speaking of dying of cancer, I finally watched Ikiru (1952, dir. Kurosawa) a week or so ago and was greatly moved by it. Here’s Roger Ebert’s review, which has some structural spoilers.

  

• Man, I loved the first 2 seasons of South Side (just gonna pretend season 3 didn’t happen).

• WARTHOG 4 EVA

• Christian Lorentzen writes about the decline of small literary magazines, focusing on the death of Bookforum. It’s funny that he notes positively that Bookforum “even had a column dedicated to bestsellers, a category studiously ignored by most book critics,” then ends his column by shitting all over the “TV Book Club” of Jenna Bush Hager.

• I ordered the new Charles Portis collection — all 5 novels, + other stuff! — from Library of America the moment I got the e-mail announcement about it. Here’s a great piece about Portis from Casey Cep.

• As with many other smart literary types, my intro to Portis came from this 1998 article in Esquire by Ron Rosenbaum (who’ll be back on the show this summer after way too long, what with him having a NEW BOOK COMING OUT).

Current reading

V. - by Thomas Pynchon

Gone To The Wolves - John Wray

Color Capital Of The World - John Kropf

Art

I made a couple of quick sketches of Michael Denneny’s body in the bed, which is not so easy to recreate from memory, esp. when that memory is trauma-based. Last Wednesday, I drew a little sketch in Union Station in Washington, D.C. while I had a cold-brew coffee before my lobbying meetings. On the train ride home, I made a little drawing of a guy sans any reference, which is weird for me to do. Now the trees are blooming and I want to try to capture some of them in transition. You should go to the Flickr album of most of the art I’ve made & find something you like.

Sound Body, Fractured Mind

I got in all 5 days of my weights & yoga cycle, Friday-Tuesday. Thankfully, I did my yoga routine Saturday before heading into NYC for that podcast w/Michael; I doubt I’d have had the brain to do it after I got home that day. The pain in my pinkie-toes is finally be subsiding, which is good, because I’ve got a client visit today in Allentown, PA, after which I have a secret mission to engage in, which may involve a little walking.

Until Next Week

Thanks for reading this far! I’ll be back next with a new podcast, great links, some art, & maybe a little profundity or something.

I believe in coyotes and time as an abstract,

—Gil Roth
Virtual Memories
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