Artist Dmitry Samarov returns to the show to bail me out after a stressful couple of weeks and to explore his fantastic new book, MAKING PICTURES IS HOW I TALK TO THE WORLD, a survey of his art from the '80s to today. We talk about the process of selecting pieces for the book, what artistic legacy means to him, finding roots of his work in his childhood, and why the notion of 'progression' doesn't apply to his work. We get into the transformative experience of working at Tangible Books and how it's inspiring his new 'zine project, why he's culling a lot of his library and how he's deciding which books to keep, how his bookshelf paintings started to open him to abstraction, and why literary folks like Magritte but painters don't. We also discuss our monastic devotion to art and Antonio López García's devotion to painting his quince tree, why artistic memoirs tend to be no good but why not-great artists can be good critics, what it means to see his own books in thrift stores, how moving some furniture can change one's perspective, why he's against starting art with An Idea, and a lot more. Follow Dmitry through his newsletter and his podcasts, HU U NO and THAT HORRORCAST • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal and via our e-newsletter
The Virtual Memories Show
Episode 606 - Dmitry Samarov
(upbeat music) - Welcome to The Virtual Memories Show. I'm your host, Gil Roth, and we're here to preserve and promote culture one weekly conversation at a time. You can subscribe to The Virtual Memories Show through iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, Google Play, and a whole bunch of other venues. Just visit our site, chimeraobscura.com/vm or vmspod.com to find more information, along with our RSS feed. And follow the show on Twitter and Instagram @vmspod. Well, I made it through last week, and I have managed to bring you a new episode, which is some kind of achievement. The annual conference I run and organize and produce and host and everything else, was last Thursday and Friday in Maryland, so I made the 250-mile drive down there on Wednesday with one of my friends who I've talked about before. A guy met through work, but has turned out to be one of the closest people in my life and a great reader. And I gotta say, despite the incredible sense of burnout that I've been dealing with, the event was a hit. The day one sessions, day one was like 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. And then a reception and the networking dinner. Those sessions on day one were just home run after home run, and it was tremendous. And my attendees were just praising the crap out of me afterwards for putting it together. And I get where they were coming from, like I got why everything was working and what everybody was getting out of it. And I managed not to focus just on the, my new things that went wrong or that I did wrong. But still I found it a little tough to just, you know, take the compliment. Like anytime somebody would do that, I'm like, yeah, yeah, that's great. I've got more stuff to take care of. But this thing happened the night before that primed me for all this. Even though I was in this haze and this sort of burned out thing from the past couple of months. So you had dinner with a couple of my attendees, including that friend of mine I drove down with. It was just four of us just shooting the breeze, enjoying a meal, trading war stories. One of them was a quality person at a company that made the COVID vaccines. And she told us some tales of what it meant to work in the middle of Operation Warp Speed and get this stuff out. And the incredible sense of pride at, you know, saving the world, but that wasn't it. Well, the thing was, was when we got back to the hotel after and we were walking through and we passed the hotel restaurants, this open plan sort of area. And I noticed that the people from one of my Japanese member companies were there having a late dinner. And I went over to greet them and I've known them for years and they're the people who flew me and my wife out to Japan in 2020 for this incredible visit right before the world ended under lockdown. But this time my hair was all crazy and wild. I was in this shorts and a big pullover and not looking like I usually look at these events and they were happy to see me. And I thank them for coming out here for the conference. And what happened was when I got back to my room, I thought, you know, I know they scheduled a couple of client meetings around this, but they came out here because of me and the conference that I've built. And, you know, Gil, it really doesn't matter how burned out you are, how mid-lifey or wonky or whatever the hell is going on in your head. They came here for this thing. You have to put on the best show you can for them, which maybe ties into the "Salinger" episode last week with the "Fat Lady" listening to the radio show, but it's not that. It's that, like I was talking about with the COVID stuff, that sense of pride, that sense I built something. They care enough about it to travel across the world. I got to put on something really good for them. So that carried me into the next morning, which is fortunate because conspiracy of factors, including my having dinner late, kept me from getting any sleep that night. I was once again physically wrecked, but I headed downstairs at about 8.30 in my suit and slicked back hair, looking much more professional, and I was totally fired up to put on a great conference for everyone. After setting up the AV, the laptop, making sure the Zoom connection and the external camera were set upright and hanging the agenda posters and the sponsorship stuff and setting up the table for people to pick up their badges and all the other crazy stuff that I do. Like I said, I run the whole shebang, but it was fantastic. People had a great time. And the Japanese people came over at the end of day two to bring me the gift they had brought from Japan. They brought Amy some lovely mugs done in this great artisanal mode that's probably a thousand years old. And for me, they brought a whole bunch of the crazy flavors of Kit Kats that they only make in Japan 'cause they knew how much I enjoyed them when I was there in 2020. So anyway, the whole thing was fantastic. People had a great time. I did fine at the lectern, introducing speakers, queuing up slides, interviewing one of the guests, doing a panel. And we had a fun networking dinner and a good turnout on day two 'cause some people leave after the first day, but day two only runs 8 a.m. to noon. So that's kind of a really compressed timeframe. And I let my hair down for that one and I tied up the top of it, not in the top not, but just behind. It looked sort of like a mullet, but it worked okay. Anyway, after that we finished, I loaded the car, changed from suit back into shorts, t-shirt and sneakers while sitting in the driver's seat with nobody in the car and not moving. Picked up my pal at the front desk and we drove back to his place and then the last 90 minutes back home for me. And I'd have felt better, I think. Like I got what we accomplished, but I was still in this anhedonic haze that I couldn't enjoy, enjoy something. So that was a problem, but the flip side of what happened when I saw my friends from Namakos was after I got back home. See, I unloaded the car, unpacked my gear and clothes, put everything away and I just went to wash my face in the bathroom. And when I pressed the towel to my face to dry off with my palms kind of pressing my eyes and my forehead, I just started sobbing and not tears or noise, but you know, those paroxysms, the whole body just just convulsing like that. And that went on for like three or four shakes, spasms, whatever. And then it stopped or I stopped. And I found myself wondering why that happened. I mean, I was so fried at that point after the stress of the show itself, after five and a half hours of driving the bad eating that I had done or not eating enough and everything else. I just couldn't tell. Was it sadness or joy? It how well everything went or relief that it was over despair at the idea that I just consigned myself to another year of this, doing it all over again or something else. And I look back at it now and I, you know, it's all just rewrites and revision. There's no idea what was happening in the moment. All I know is my body and maybe my mind had this sort of automatic reaction. I guess again, the result of all of this activity, all of this franticness in the last few months combined with all the other stuff I've had going on. And now I'm back to abnormal. Then the next day was a day long hiking and driving expedition of the Catskills. I wrote about that in Sunday's newsletter. I think it helped given having physical rigors to go through was a lot better than all of the mental stuff I'd been juggling all this time. But it all brings us to this week's show. See, I had nothing scheduled for this week 'cause of again, all the stuff I had going on. But our past guest Demetri Samerov, who some of you know from his 135 past appearances on "The Virtual Memory Show" volunteered to talk with me about his new book "Making Pictures" is how I talk to the world. I was in the middle of the networking dinner on Thursday night when I got a text saying, "Hey man, if you don't have anybody for this week, you know, I'm around." And so we set it up. Making Pictures is a self-published survey of Demetri's arch. The back cover says from 1986 to 2024. And it's amazing. Demetri brings us a variety of genres and media that he's worked in over the decades. And it's, oh gosh, figure paintings, rooms, cityscapes, pets, bookshelves, his bar and concert sketches, a couple of still lifes, the scenes on the CTA, the Metro in Chicago where he lives, along with his illustration and design work. And it's oils, gouache, watercolor, ballpoint pen, markers, Sumi, ink, charcoal, collage. I'm sure I'm missing other media that he's worked with. But it all brings together this body of work, this incredible amount of art he's made over the course of his life. And he writes accompanying text, but not in any sort of, you know, this is what I was going for way, or, you know, this is the art jargon blah, blah, blah, of the meaning of his art. There's none of that. It's more about his history with those different genres and his own explorations in art, where the work starts sometimes, what he discovers as a series of things progresses or why he's making one thing and not another and how the years have changed his work. That's what's so great about this book, everything's dated and you can see in some cases, I don't want to say progression 'cause we talk about why progression is not his mode of seeing things, but the way he got better and the things he learned to let go in the later work, sometimes doing genres that he hadn't done in 15 or 20 years going back to them and you see things can be looser but better. It's something I talk about with artists as they get older, you know, do they find that they don't need to be as fine as they once were, that they understand the essences of what they're trying to get at, not the perfect analog detail, I guess. But the whole thing's this wonderful commentary, the text that manages not to distract from the art, you can lose yourself in the visual pieces without reading any of the text, but it is good to have those introductions to each section, the way he writes them and lays them out and he's a good writer. We first connected, well, God, we first connected in like 2013 or 2014 for the cabbie book that he had done, an accomplished writer, lifetime artist, and making pictures is how I talk to the world, gets at that whole thing that, well, you've experienced from me in the last bunch of years, that question of whether what we do with our lives meant something, or at least whether it's gonna outlast us, what will we be remembered for? And that's a, Demetri answers that in this book more than any of the others, I think. He really shows us the stages and the forms of an artist over decades, the work that he's just devoted his life to, whether or not there's a great material of reward to it all. So I wish I had any skill in describing his actual art beyond its representational. Also, he has an amazing eye for composition and light. We've got a couple of his pieces here, including memorials for two of my Greyhounds. An old teacher of his said he had a quote unquote, seductive drawing line. So I guess that's something. And the sketches that he includes, not just the painted art and the other pieces, like the charcoal stuff, the sketches, he usually puts those in his newsletter also, and I just plots over those things constantly. And from my scant work at drawing, and I can't imagine being able to see as well as he does and represent things as well with lines on paper. Anyway, you have to see it for yourself. Trust me, the work is worth it. Go get making pictures is how I talk to the world. Again, self-published by Demetri, and I'll have links to where you can get it at the end of the show. Now here is a bio for Demetri. Demetri Samara was born in Moscow, USSR in 1970. He immigrated to the U.S. with his family in 1978. He got in trouble and first grade for doodling on his linen red star pin and hasn't stopped doodling since. After a false start at Parsons School of Design in New York, he graduated with a BFA in painting and printmaking from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1993. Upon graduation, he promptly began driving a cab, first in Boston, then after a time in Chicago, which eventually led to the publication of his illustrated work memoirs, Hack Stories from a Chicago Cab, and Where to a Hack Memoir. Music to my eyes is his first non-cab-y related book, Soviet Stamps is the second. All Hack is a summation of his cab-y related work. Old Style is his first work of fiction. He's exhibited his work in all manner of bars, coffee shops, libraries, and even the odd gallery when he's really hard up. He writes dog portraits and paintsbook reviews in Chicago, Illinois. And now the 2024 Virtual Memories Conversation with Demetri Samerov. (upbeat music) Thank you, man. Thanks for bailing me out. You were my, well, you picked up on my secret bat signal for this. No, no, I saw that. No, no, I heard it. It was deliberately directed toward you. That's the thing. I had the, I should hit up Demetri, but I got so much going on. But if I hint that I don't have somebody set for next week, I'm hoping he picks up on that signal being one of the only people who listens in real time to the show. So, thank you for justifying my, you know, my familiarity and friendship with you and the way I sort of get where you're coming from with some of this stuff, so. Yeah, no, no, I'm happy to pitch in. And I was always grateful when you asked me back since I'm trying to, you know, this is my 75th glance on your show or so. (laughing) I have down us 248, but you're probably right. That's, it's the new math, yeah. So tell me, what prompted the book? Making pictures is how I talk to the world. What led you to make a retrospective? Oh, I think it was just an accumulation of things. I guess I'd always, for a while, wanted some sort of, to make a coffee table book, a survey. And because I'd just been sort of drifting back towards try to reconcile the visual art with the verbal art into one thing. The drift, generally, is back towards the visual. So it seemed like a natural. And then also, I'd been seeing sort of advancements in digital printing and like affordable digital printing over the last few years, like this book wouldn't have been possible at the price point that I was able to swing, you know, even a few years ago. - And it looks great, the reproductions look really good. I know it's still not-- - It looks pretty good. Yeah, yeah, I mean, it wasn't a cheap book to print, but it was a hell of a lot cheaper than it used to be. And I didn't have to send away to China, like most places, the bigger publishers do it. And for longer runs, that's, I understand why, but I wasn't quite prepared to be dealing with people overseas. So Michigan's far enough away. From Illinois to Michigan's about as far as I want to go. - I have guests whose books either got stopped, that the printer refused in China, the habit with Peter Rostovski, because there was something that was ideological. Yeah, and it wasn't a China statement. I think it was something about organizing and protesting against the administration in hell. And Howard Chakin had a book that got printed, got, they had to wait for it to get enough items, had to get loaded into a single shipping container. And then the Suez Canal thing hit, basically it was like a year and a half from the time they printed it to the time it got to California. So yes, congratulations, good on sticking with Michigan. But yeah, what was the moment of saying, "I want this self-survey." And then sort of what went into the curation, figuring out what you wanted to include and what stuff was going to actually work and be representative. - A lot of it was really, really very practical, like what do I have a decent enough digital scan of that may or may not print? And that's the amazing thing is that I have things in there that were shot with an iPad camera. - Wow, yeah. - Which is, an iPad is 96 DPI, you know? It produces well, I guess maybe it's some of your line work also or the color that manages to convey. - Yeah, I mean like the darks are where it suffers the most, like the darks aren't great in it, but overall like it's something I can live with. But yeah, basically that's criteria one is like, "Do I have a reproduction that will actually scan?" You know, and I printed it about at home, you know, on my home printer just to see beforehand and some just unfortunately were not nearly good enough. And I have a lot of work that's not documented or poorly documented. So that's one and then, you know, I have a website that has thousands of images. So I have a kind of a framework or structure for the different motifs, for these different genres of kinds of pictures that I make. So there was already a structure. - Yeah, so the categories in place, yeah. - The categories in place, then it was just a matter of culling and kind of adding and subtracting and how long of a book did I want, how big of a book did I want. But as, I mean, you know, there's a little bit of writing in the book and I start out with, you know, the statement that somebody else should be writing and publishing this thing. And I still think that, but nobody did. So I had to do it. I've only recently started to encounter, then I've written about it in the newsletter, people who are treating what I do as something that should be like documented, like beyond just the archive of what I do. And it's that moment of, I'm not the important one. It's the guess. And then there's that sense of, yeah, I guess there should be someone on the outside saying, "Hey Gil, how did you do X, Y and Z?" And, but again, it's all gonna end up being me publishing something because no one's gonna make that effort to figure out, you know, what the hell was gonna happen. - Well, you never know, you never know. But like with a, you know, newer, medium like podcasting, it's, I mean, I guess it's kind of a new fangled radio or free form radio or something. But like, how do you preserve that or what kind of artifact do you make out of it? With painting, drawing, it's simpler. You know, you make, it's simply, you make a book. - In your case, what did you learn? I mean, I know you mentioned in the book that there's no progression or that looking like Mark Twain to the beginning of "Huck Finn." You know, and when you're looking for a plot, we'll be shot, but you know, I know you don't subscribe to that sense of, you know, there was an arc to your work or something that's definable or effable. But what did you start to see when you were really, again, that culling process? You know, what did you learn in the process of putting yourself together? - Well, there's, yeah, there's change. There's absolutely change. And I don't, I guess progression implies like, you start at the bottom and you end up at the top. - Yeah, that there's some refinement that's all headed to something and that's not you. - And that it is headed up, like better, you know? And that's, it's not that there may be that, but I don't, I don't think it's my place to judge. The artwork that I've allowed shared with people, even like included or not included in this book, I've deemed good enough to maybe be judged by others. And then others people, other people have to judge it. But I think, I just strove to in each of the categories to show some kind of representative sample. I was, I mean, I was not surprised, but reminded that there's kinds of kind of motifs or whatever subjects that I, or ways of working that I just can't, I just don't do anymore, that I used to do more, you know? - Was those conscious departures or did you just sort of drift out of certain things? - No, no, it's, yeah, I've never ever been like an idea or a methodical planner that way. It's always a reaction or an intuitive choice. And then I have to look back afterwards and see, oh, look at that, I'm not doing these pictures of rooms anymore, why is that kind of thing? Like for whatever reason, this current place I've lived in, I'm in my fifth year in my current place. And I just haven't been making pictures of this, of this space nearly as much as some of the other places. I still don't quite understand why, but it is definitely so. For a time, for years, like my main activity was these pictures of rooms, you know, the rooms I lived in. And that's sort of been mostly absent the last few years. But it's a little bit of a mystery. Is it the sort of thing that you're, I don't wanna say afraid, but we'll just say afraid. You know, if you really start plumbing to try to figure that out, it's gonna kill whatever it is that you're actually doing in the present, you know? - Yeah, there's a bit of that. I'm, yeah, I'm wary of getting to the bottom or to find an explanation that you can say in words or write in words would kill whatever the engine is or the impetus. I remember, so, you know, I've never taken a real writing class, but one time I did a workshop with Linda Berry and for a couple of days and a friend of mine was organizing it, so I got to sit in for free, which is really generous of them to allow me to do. But I realized during that, like during doing some of the exercises and what the other of my classmates were finding so inspiring, the kind of questions that she was and prompts that she was running us through were things that would destroy the way I work, would just kill me. Like, I have my methods of working and asking certain kind of questions, just like to rails the process. - Yeah. - You know, and that's weird or it may seem like, not precious, but like, I don't know what the, how to describe it exactly. But, you know, if you've even been doing a thing for decades and you keep making stuff and there's some kind of method to the madness and you have to trust that. - Right. And I mean, did you feel like the vibe in the room was more, I hate to use a term amateur, but, you know, were they more amateur artists who were in a sense looking for permission, you know? - Well, I think what the methodology works best for Linda's and probably a lot of teachers is for people who are either starting out or trying to rekindle an interest in creativity that they feel is lacking or they don't know where to start or how to start. And that, those are things that have just never been a problem for me. - Right. - Like, it's a thing I've been swimming in my whole life. And that's why, and that's why I want to stress that what she's doing and other inspiring teachers do is really, really important and I would never downplay it. It's just not for me. You've already reached that baseline of being able to function and keep making art. So, yeah. - Yeah, it's the other things I'm not good at. The life things I've done is more of an amateur act. - There's practical stuff, there's art world stuff, et cetera, but yeah, I get you. But it's the, like you're trying to show in this book, it's the art that's gonna survive. Did you, I mean, is that legacy sense what drives this? What drives this, what drives the book project in particular, the sense that there should be a gathering if you get hit by a bus tomorrow or subway train? - Definitely, yeah, I've definitely over the last few years started thinking of what will be left behind, for sure. Because there's definitely a lot less sand in the hourglass and left than there was to start with. I mean, I don't know how long I've got left, but it's a finite amount and I've done all this work. And I think some attempt to organize it or encapsulate it felt warranted. - Yeah, I know we said there's no progression or no, that progression isn't a concept you're interested in, but were there moments of, oh, that's when I figured out X, Y, or Z, looking back like that, that's when I start to figure either perspective or whatever the hell it is. In retrospect, do you see those sorts of breaks happen or were things just more incremental and overlapping? - Mostly overlapping and incremental. The bigger surprise is how far back the roots of some of the newer stuff go. Like I discovered sort of collage things that I tried out when I was very young and I had no memory of it. And collage is a thing I really got into like during COVID lockdown, like I went into it hard, which was only like whatever four years ago, right? But I have pieces going back to when I was a teenager that are mixed media. Just as it was a surprise years ago to learn from this third grade autobiography homework assignment that I predicted that I'd be an artist and a writer. The artist was a no brainer. The writer was a complete shock to me. - This is like the-- - I had that kind of-- - I was gonna say it's like the Nicholas Delbanco episode I did a few weeks ago where the fourth grade of writing project on the history of art that he uncovered 45 pages of his writing about this stuff turned out to be, I wrote that well and I was 10, reading it. I'm like sure his parents didn't help, but whatever. It's still the roots were there going way, way back. - No, I mean, luckily or unluckily, I have parents that saved artwork and other kind of ephemera of mine that I was able to look back on over the years. So I have some kind of timeline that I can refer to, have an evidence of once. Yeah, I don't know how else you say, but progression. - Yeah, I use unfolding, that to me is much more, a much better metaphor for what our lives are like. It's a question of whether there's just one single thing at the core that we keep unfolding and eventually reveal, but at least there's more of a sense of an outward expansion as opposed to a linear progression. - It's what, I don't know what kind of, I don't know if it's a Mobius strip or a concentric circles or something, but there's things that go back to, like the last couple of years, I've started doing oil paintings like in my backyard or around my house, but outside. And they're the kind of like city scapes that I used to do when I was in art school. But they're definitely not exactly the same. There's, I feel like there's more facility to them, but they're also faster and less interested in surface detail. They're more abstract than they used to be. And that's definitely a change. - Yeah, I found that part fascinating in the book when you wrote about the bookshelf paintings and how you realized that they were sort of opening you into another mode, a more abstract one and one that integrates, in some cases, the verbal with the visual again, that sense of not knowing that that was happening or that it was why you were doing this, that there wasn't a why, but that this was, the results that you would discover. - No idea. I blunder into these things and some of them work and some of them have to be cast aside. But when I started doing, I started doing the bookshelf paintings in the late 90s, like '97, '98 or so, I think is the first one. I mean, once again, I have evidence, I have earlier paintings and drawings that have bookshelves in them, you know, in stacks of books, but to just concentrate on the arrangement of books on a bookshelf. Well, at first, the idea or whatever the impetus was to do a still life without setting up a still life, which is a thing that I always disliked, was the setting up, which telegraphs meaning in a way that I'm not interested in, like, you know, a traditional still life, say, you know, like a, whatever, a memento mori or, you know, a vanitas or something. You'll have your skull and you have things that stand in for other things. That way of kind of controlling meaning is not how I work. Instead, these are fragments or their objects that are part of my everyday life and they're mutable, they change because a bookshelf to me is an active piece of furniture or like, it's a part of my life that I interact with everyday. So it changes all the time. But the thing that would point to a more abstract way of working, the shallow space and the arrangement of pieces of color in ways that don't occur in my pictures of interiors or portraits or cityscapes or coffee shops, you know, I had no idea. It was a thing that I had to confront. And it pointed out the way forward to what I would start doing in the collages over 20 years later, you know? - So I have one of your bookshelf paintings here at home, which I'm happy. - You've got my cultural amnesia and a few other ones there, so. - Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's a chance to sort of, if not quote, but like remark on particular titles, the spines and I always take. - Yeah, and where they're caught in time, 'cause that's the other aspect of what you talk about in the book is that sort of cinematic effect you're trying to get in terms of capturing an expansive time in a single moment. And that doesn't have to be a street scene or watching a band and sketching them. It can be what those books mean in that instant in which they're aligned the way they are. - Yeah, yeah, because this book being next to that book, there's a friction and attention back and forth. And that's certainly interesting to me. Exploring just formally, if not in any deeper way. And so people don't get the wrong idea. I'm not some kind of strict formalist. I'm not Ad Reinhardt believes that art is only but like paintings only about paint, things like that. I was just reading, I have a book of Ad Reinhardt writings, which are kind of hilarious. Because he's, I mean, he was such a like a shit talker. Like these guys, you know, that just had these set ideas. He, at least half of it was fucking with people I'm convinced. But like, you know, he basically says everybody but him is doing the wrong kind of painting. - Of course. - And his painting is one color, you know, with no brush strokes visible. And anybody not doing that is like a regressive moron, basically. And I'm far from that. I don't believe in that kind of purity. But I also am very, very against starting with an idea or injecting meaning into a thing that it has to somehow, it's part and parcel of the meaning, the form and the content have to be wedded together, like in a way that they can't be separated, for me, for a thing to work, you know. - You mentioned, I think in the introduction, how most artists, memoirs are not, we'll just say not worth reading. You talk some shit about a lot of the, at least in terms of how the artist trying to tell you about their artwork is at best useless, at worst colors, your impression of the art itself and wrecks everything. Have you encountered any artist writings that are actually illuminating along those lines? Or again, you know, is your experience of art so tied into the direct interaction of the eye and the work that having any sort of verbal groundwork, even if it's after the fact, is it? - No, no, there's definitely some artists who wrote really well. Sometimes some artists wrote better than they painted. Like, well, like Ad Ryan Hart's colleague, Barnett Newman, who was a pretty mediocre painter, but boy could he talk and write. What a character he was. His book is great. If you ever have a chance, I forget what it's called. I don't know if I kept that one. I can get to it later. I'm going through this thing where I'm getting rid of my whole library. - I was gonna ask about that too. - Yeah, yeah, we can talk about that later, but Barnett Newman could write and a few others. There's a guy named Fairfield Porter. He was a really great, he was an art critic and a painter. And painted, I don't know if you're familiar with his work now. - I'm looking him up right now, which is the one advantage you're doing these remotely, but yeah. - Yeah, I think he might be into it. He was kind of an interesting, he came from a wealthy family. He was kind of a gentleman painter, but he came of age in the time of abstract expressionism, but painting these interiors in like everyday life paintings. - Yeah, the very representative, yeah. - Very inspired by French post-impressionism, like Bernard and Boyard, Matisse, people like that. But he has a book called Art in its Own Terms, which is a collection of his reviews and kind of essays, which was very, very influential to me, sort of continues to be. It's one of the books I'm keeping, actually not throwing away or selling. - Dx sessioning is how we try and make it sound smart. - Oh, kids. (laughing) - But really, getting rid of is it. - I don't run that particular artwork in it. - Yeah, first time I heard somebody say, "I'm Dx sessioning some of my clothing." I'm like, you're giving stuff to a thrift store, right? That's, you're just getting rid of stuff. - I think I, I like, I use the word call in one of the newsletters about it. - I often use, I refer to it as the book call periodically, which I've got several stacks of. I've got to go to the box. There's a bin where they collect books, which is always funny to me, 'cause I don't think they're looking to collect the books that I'm getting rid of, but, you know, that's fine. But tell me about that. - Who keep, wait. Is it your town that keeps the bin or it's a lot? - It's a town or two over. I forget some like veterans thing. And it's just like, yeah, I'm not sure these are the books they want, but they're the books that I don't need in my house anymore, so, you know. - It'll go up, do they run a thrift store or something? - No idea where it all goes. Might go to, you know, some sort of demonic ritual that they pulp everything into and make into some grand sigil. I have no idea. All I know is I'm getting rid of the books, so. - Come to our weekend, Crystal Knac Bonfire, which could be one of those wicker man things. God knows, you know. It would make sense building an entire man full of books and putting me right in the middle and lighting it up would, you know, be pretty opportune. Up on top of a fire tower in the Catskills, which is now my hangout place apparently. - Right, since he got, you run up fire towers every weekend. - There, go figure. It's just nuts. - That's what I hear. - Yeah, it is bananas. But tell me about that, that the drive to start getting rid of books and clearing out your library. - Yeah, that's another thing. That's been building for a while and it's probably part of the retrospective looking back, summing up thing, you know? So I've, I've kept and collected, especially, you know, really nice art books for decades. But for a while now, I've been, I've been aware that they're sitting on my bookshelf and I don't look at them anymore, not very often. So, so then the logical next, next thought is, well, maybe they shouldn't be here anymore. That coupled with the thing, the fact that I've been working in a used bookstore the last couple of years pretty regularly. So I'm around books all the time. And this, this thought that we're this kind of in between place, hoping to find a new home for these things has made me decide that a home where a thing is not being used is not the right home for them anymore. And it's not like, I don't, my home is not a place, like I don't throw dinner parties here. This is a place where I work. And if I'm not using these things, then they shouldn't be here. That's, that's my thinking about it. So I've, I've been on this research and photographing JAG for like, you know, last couple of months seeing what these things are worth. And, you know, the, the higher end items are on eBay. People can find my eBay shop. I have like a hundred books up there. - I'll put a link in the show notes for this. - Yeah. - And the rest go to the bookstore or to people I know. - I've been doing that for a few years now as soon as I finish a book, if it doesn't have a, if I don't think I'm going to be using it for anything or just thinking of the next person that might like it and sending it or giving it to them, like right away, not taking it back home. And this is an extension of that for sure. - Well, how's it changed your space? - It's changed it a lot. It's, it's like one of those like dominoes following things. So as soon as the bookshelf emptied, I decided to try to turn the bookshelf, which has then made me move the, this giant office desk that had in back of it that was in a separate. I, so my, my, my living space is, it's, it's the bottom floor of an 1875 workers cottage, like an A-frame little house. But it was kind of gut rehabbed a few years ago. So it's kind of like, it's kind of like a lot, like a work live loft kind of thing. It's just one open space. But the middle of it is narrower. And that's where I had the, the desk by the bookcase. So I move this desk up, up here next to where I'm sitting. And, and it's opened up the rest of the space somehow. And none of that would have been possible if I hadn't emptied the bookshelf and turned it. It's kind of an amazing thing. And I feel real dumb that it took me this long to figure out. - When we're on the inside, it's, it's, whether it's spatial or, or conceptual, it's real tough to conceive of what something can be, you know, with a couple of weeks. 'Cause it's what we're accustomed to. - And then after the, after the office desk moved here, then the other work surfaces. So I have a variety of, I have a kind of a drafting table that I draw at, then I have another drafting table that I do other things on that's flat. Everything is moved around and now feels much roomier. It's not a big place that I have, but it's, it feels new and it feels kind of full of possibilities the way it wasn't before. And I think you don't realize it, but keeping things the same sometimes makes you kind of stagnant. - Yeah. - In your thing, inside ways that you just don't notice until you kind of push something and it frees things up. - Reconfiguring the, the library and office down here, maybe two years ago was one of those. I knew I needed to do this. Like some part of my brain knew I needed to, you know, there are certain parameters I have to keep in place, including the giant sofa that the dog sleeps on, which precludes me from making some changes. But yeah, that sense of, oh, this opened everything up, gave me space to do X, Y, and Z. I can actually draw slash paint in one corner, you know, in a way that I kind of had to move everything temporarily every time I wanted to do something, but, you know, but as you know, I don't do too much, so. - Yeah, for a couple of years now, I have this table that has all my kind of drawing and other gear next to this, to the drafting table. But it was positioned blocking the bay window. So there was a space beyond there that I couldn't reach, but it was, I used kind of for storage and it was kind of gathering dust and I couldn't reach it. And by turning this, these things to the side, I can now get to this window. And it feels like a fucking revolution. It's the stupidest, most obvious thing. And it took, it's taken me over four years to figure out the right way that these things should go. - Okay, we're dummies in our own lives, so. - Oh, yeah, so stupid. Yeah, I mean, I envy people. I mean, more generally we're talking about intention or like ideas or how things start. I don't, people that have either make to do lists or have an idea and then set about to realize it, I just don't function that way. - Yeah, you know, I had an idea for visual art series that at least had a conceptual start. Where it was gonna go was up for grabs. And it occurred to me after that, you know, it was an excuse not to start it by saying, oh, you've built too much of a mental framework around what it's supposed to be. Therefore, this can't be right, as opposed to actually going ahead, making the art and seeing where it goes. So I envy you with the ability to actually pursue things and not have to, you know, again, second guess yourself about starting anything. - Yeah, thinking doesn't help. - No, it was an interesting concept for me. It was basically making art off of the slides. I have about 3000 slides of photos my father took for work and for travel, either from before I was born or within that first year, basically, before he fucked up my life in certain ways. And I thought, maybe that as a concept is a great starting point for making some art. Look at some of these, these photographs of fish and everything else he was doing, these great aquarium shots and make something out of that. But then it turned into, am I doing something that's, you know, a man rebels against his father, which is really uninteresting as far as artistic motivations go. - What you need to do is wait a while and just do one. - Yeah. - Just do one and see if you wanna do another. - Yeah. - That's how I work. Do one and say, no, well, this sucks. I'm not doing this anymore. You know, or this is great, great, or this is not quite good enough, but I think this is on the track of something. You start, you just start pulling a thread, you know? - And then I end up with a 38 year retrospective of my work, I know. - That's what you do. Well, yeah, I mean, it's different. You know, if it's a thing that you've been swimming in your whole life, like, you know, I don't remember my life without making art. That's what, you know, since, you know, maybe even before age 10, you know? - Yeah. - It's just a thing that I've been engaged with regularly for a time trying to get away from, but like for the longest time, just resolved to just, okay, this is what I'm doing. - Yeah, and this is who you are, yeah. It's of all oddball coincidences. I wrote about this in a newsletter earlier today. The, we did this Catskills fire tower hike yesterday and my friend told me that there's this Russian bar, restaurant, brew house, it's by this fire tower. - Yeah, I read about it. - Yeah, this is, this artist's work there. And he isn't a, he did a little art history in college, but you know, we're in our fifties, I don't remember a lot. But he mentioned, you know, it's this Russian artist. We get there, I'm looking around and somebody named Alexander Kalyetski, which I pronounced Kalyetski, and then the Russian curator in his little gallery pronounced correctly for me. I'm a grader in the mid '70s to the US. And I'm yelping at all these paintings of, what I thought were brand logos and things, and the closer you realize they're actually the cardboard boxes for like Budweiser cases and wine and Reebok sneaker boxes. And apparently, as she told me and as I looked up, that, yeah, you got to America, couldn't afford art material. So we just scavenged cardboard off the sidewalks and kept going. Now he's, they say world famous. Of course, I haven't heard of him, which means I'm the moron here, not that he's not famous. So, - Well, that's, yeah, that's, that's. - You're world famous to her. - Yeah. - But yes, his website has a shot of him sculpting something with, with Jennifer Lopez in the background. So apparently he was famous enough to be included in some art show like that, but you know, but yeah, that sense of just making the art out of whatever was, was at hand. You know, it's, it's both the materials and the, the conceptual material that you're working with. Just, just finding whatever you can and, and continuing to make art is something that kind of, I'm envious of, I make conversation, as you know, so it's a little different than a, a lot different than, than making real art. - Well, it, yeah, I don't know about that. I, I'm, I'm not gonna. - I'm denigrating myself. I could use that David Sally line about, you know, doing this as a way of not having to make, make something, but still making something. So. (laughing) - Yeah, I, I don't know in the, in the Mount Olympus of Art, in my Mount Olympus of Art, the highest art is music. It always will be, you know. But, I, I don't know that kind of, yeah, pitting one, one, one medium against another is useful, either for you or for, I don't know, you know what I mean. - Anything I can do to beat myself up, I'll, I'll take the opportunity. - I know, I, I. - It's your favorite sport. (laughing) - I can't hate myself who will, yeah. - I know. (laughing) - Well, as long as you're getting your jollies, that I'm happy. - But yeah, it's, it's still that sense of, of again, working with whatever you have at hand. It's like when I sat down with Joe Coleman, a few weeks ago, early this summer, and just when I realized, A, that he's only painted, he will only paint on wood, and why he will only paint on wood, and exactly how he paints, and I started to see some of the pieces close up and realized this guy is on another level, in terms of the skill, and what he's actually trying to make, and how he's making it. That's, you know, nobody's going to say, oh, I'm gonna do this Joe Coleman style piece. You know, that's not something that's, that's replicable along those lines, in terms of that, that gestalt of, again, the concepts he's working on, the physical materials, and the absolutely, not a nutty, the absolutely amazing focus he brings to, you know, working on one square inch at a time, but. - Yeah, he is doing this kind of, very probably a different century, kind of monastic thing, where you stitch a thing together bit by bit, you know? - He's like a, you know, silkworm, like, you know, take, getting, you know, excreting silk, you know, like one, whatever. - Strong thread, whatever it is. - Millimeter at a time, or whatever, I don't know what the, the measurement is. - The measurement is, yeah. - Yeah, that's, and like, that's a way that I could never work, and if never worked, this part to part thing. So he'll never, he'll never do it like an, you know, all over. - Yeah, I mean, he'll conceive of a significant central image, like the other one of his wife, the big door frame and all that, but still everything around it has just done piecemeal in a sense, and he'll just step back and decide what he wants to work on the next day. - Well, that's how, I mean, he's not the only, that's, it's a very valid way of working. That's the way Lucian Freud worked. He would finish a piece and then go on to the next piece. That's why they're so weirdly kind of contorted, you know, in the strange proportions of them, because you would just laser focus on like, an arm or something, or a breast, and then finish that and then go on to the next thing. He would never rework things, you know. - To unify, or yeah. - To unify, yeah. - Or harmonize them, yeah, yeah. - Mm-hmm. - And whereas that's definitely like part of my, I work all over all the time, you know. - Yeah, what did you, did the process of looking at this stuff, you know, bringing everything together, kind of point you anywhere in terms of, you know, I really should work on, or I haven't paid enough attention to X. - I think, well, so in the time, in the couple, few months that I was waiting for the printer to get, get these books back to me, I'm kind of stressing about how the image quality would be and stuff. I was doing a lot of kind of custodial shit and like, that's when this, the book culling project and other things started around here, I think, and it's this in between rearrangement. I'm just now starting to get back to making new things. And then also the process, since the book came out, the process of trying to get, drum up some sort of publicity in my own, you know. - Going to festivals and doing the, the pushes, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, the book festivals and the rest and doing podcasts and get the word out. I'm just, in the last couple of weeks, starting to kind of, once again, we're trying to establish a new routine of making things. So it's a little bit too soon to say, I'm sure there will be some sort of impact from this kind of retrospective looking back thing, how things will change. They always change. I did, I did a new, a new kind of quick bookshelf painting. I hadn't done a bookshelf painting in a couple of years because I'd filled the bookshelf with an arrangement of new things that had been kind of off to the side. And now the bookshelf was a whole new organism. So I imagine that'll be a component once again. - Do you ever cheat and kind of rearrange stuff on the shelf a little bit for the sake of how it'll paint? - Not consciously, but there's just no way that it can't be lodged in there, somewhere. - In the initial-- - In the back, placing process, yeah, I get you. - In the background, that one day I'll probably paint the thing, you know, so yeah, there's definitely, there's no way not to stage manage things, but if I can fool myself into thinking, I'm not doing it on purpose only to do that. I mean, you have a finite, on a bookshelf, you have a finite amount of space and you have these things that you're trying to place in them, so those are the restrictions. - Yeah, I just wasn't sure if once you actually settle in to start one, do you think? Let me just move that over here and, yeah. - Oh no, no, once I-- - No, I never move things out, yeah. - No, no, no, no, that's a big thing. - That level of stage management is, yeah, too false, yeah. - Yeah, that's a big party foul. In the cosmology of Demetri, yeah, you don't do that. (laughing) - That's cheating, somehow. I don't know why not doing that is not cheating, but-- - But somehow, we all set up rules for ourselves with this stuff and it's like blind contour drawing, but I'm going to do this, it's gonna be, you know, 15 minutes not looking down and, by the way, Wayne White told me I need to start doing that and it's gonna help my drawing immeasurably. Did you find your drawing? - Yeah, yeah. - Man, I haven't done one in so long. - But did it help when you first engaged in it, do you find her? 'Cause, you know, I haven't made enough time for anything. - Yeah, it's a useful exercise, like anything after a while, you'll end up with shortcuts or tricks, you know? - Oh yeah, but he was just saying just learning to do this is going to make your regular drawing. You're going to be a better artist for this, Gil, and that was wonderful. - Yes, because what it does is, it gets you out of the self-consciousness of your limit, like, since you're not looking at what you're doing. - Yeah. - You're just reacting physically to what you're looking at. Yeah, so it's valuable that way, for sure. I do stuff, like, especially in the collages, I do stuff with stencils and other kind of like design, design tools to screw with, to kind of regularize my line, or formalize it in ways that I wouldn't do it free-hand. - Yeah. - To break patterns that I know I fall into, you know? - With the collage thing, is there ever a, not to get all mystical, but that burrows sense of, you know, cut up revealing something underneath, something you weren't intending, or, you know, do you look at it in those terms after the fact? - After the fact. - Yeah. - Yeah, there's things that are revealed, but also, I mean, it'll be surprising if they weren't, because the elements that I'm using are almost exclusively personal. - Yeah. - I mean, I use things that are from my life, one way or another. So combining them in even an intuitive way can't help but produce. - Yeah. - Different combinations and different meanings that. - Yeah, and I mean, and broadly, that's what I want from any kind of picture I'm doing. I want it to add up to something more than where I started from. That's, it's the opposite of the thing of having an idea and then executing it. - Yeah. - Like the most boring kind of thing to me is like, like Renee Magritte. - Mm-hmm. - So Renee Magritte hated painting. He was an idea guy. He was basically, the writers love Magritte because he's like the most literary painter. - Yeah, I getcha. - But all he was about was having these ideas, and the actual painting is, like, as a painter, he was just like a pretty good illustrator, you know? And you could just tell that it was just just a chore for him, and I'm sort of the opposite of that, you know? - Yeah, are there artists you've reevaluated, either in a good way or there's always the ones we are embarrassed that we once loved, writers, artists, whatever, but are there artists you've come around on that you didn't get in your mature phase? - I think, I mean, there are artists that have become more important to me, or like, I've gotten more interested in, and like, so when I really dove into this collage thing, I started looking once again for kind of advice or pointers from the masters, and the greatest one to me is Kurtz Fitter's. Kurtz Fitter's, I think, is the best collage artist whoever was, and that's one of the very few art books I'm not getting rid of, 'cause I bought it during that time that I started doing collage, and I'd been aware of him before, but once you start on a mode of working, then you look at the masters of that working, you just gain a new appreciation. It's kind of the same as like during lockdown again, like, I reread a couple of favorite books from earlier in my life, which were underworld by D'Lillow and Cormac McCarthy Suttree, but reading those books as somebody attempting to do writing is a completely different ballgame. - Sure, yeah. - Than as just a reader. So yeah, I think, yeah, Schwitter's is a big one for me. - Are those last two McCarthy books worth diving into? - Stella Maris and the passenger. I can't remember, I think- - Stella Maris? - Yeah. - Stella Maris is amazing. The passenger is horrible. - Okay. - That's my take. - Gotcha. - Although people think the passenger is the main book and Stella Maris is a kind of amused bush or like, add-on at the end because they kind of, they interact with each other. But Stella Maris to me was a revelation. And actually, okay, I cheated and I listened to it on audio book. - Yeah, it's valid. - But Stella Maris is just, it's unique in his whole, in all his work, it's just, it's an interview. It's just speech. - Yeah. - And he's sort of famous for people having people that can barely say anything and it's just talking. And he gets rid of all the kind of Cormac McCarthy quirks. You know, it's kind of like Baroque Faulknerisms. You know, like, it's all gone. And it's just two people talking. And I was blown, I couldn't believe it, how good that was. - Figure, you know me with the extracurricular reading I have, I do, it's, I give myself projects as you know. - Yeah, he's gonna be a hard get. - Thank you for the message. - With the Ouija board, even before, you know, his death would be tough. But yeah, so figuring out non-podcast stuff to read, it's the, well, I could dive into these, but you know. - And it's a quick one. I mean, you know, so yeah, it's a short book. Yeah, I was, it was kind of a revelatory. I didn't see that one coming. But yeah, for art, I guess, yeah, Schmitters is a big one. - Yeah, nobody used to just hate who you now get the, "Oh, okay, yeah, now I've come around on this person." Yeah. - Nobody quite lately. I mean, I was late to, like, for you, I remember, like, as a teenager and for a while, like, I didn't get Matisse at all. - Sure. - I thought he was just doing pretty pictures. And sometimes, like, in the middle of art school, it clicked for me and he became really, really important. And he's never not been. - And we had our Matisse experience. It was Matisse, right? We saw the, yeah, the Red Room, we saw-- - Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that little show. Was it MoMA or-- - Yeah, I was gonna say it was MoMA. - I think it was MoMA. - I'm in a days, at this point, from all the crazy shit going on in my life, but I had the reconstructing. Yeah, no, that's where we were, okay. MoMA and food trucks, that's the two things I remember. - Right, we had lunch outside there, like, around the corner. - Yeah, yeah, Matisse is sort of like a one, you know, definitely like one of the guiding lights. Yeah, there hasn't been a big reappraisal. I had a minor reappraisal a few years, a while ago now with the Picasso Sculpture Show, which was maybe at MoMA, it was somewhere in New York. Maybe the Met, and I'm not a, I really kind of dislike Picasso pretty intensely, but I really enjoyed that show. - Yeah. - And that was a shock. - You got reaction to the book. People who, as anyone who doesn't know your work, particularly well, picked it up at a festival or something, have you heard from anybody? - Oh yeah, I mean, the people that pick it up, really, really like it. - Yeah. - They're like, oh, wow, like, there's something, and I mean, I know this, you can point somebody to a website, and, you know, I have a website with literally thousands of pages. - Right. - And you could tell them that, and they nod, and maybe they'll flip through a couple of things, but if you give them a tangible thing, a book full of things, it has an impact that is real. - Yeah. - It's like, oh, wow, and then they look at me and it's like, wow, you did all this? And it's like, yup. - Somehow. - The fraction of what I've done, and it's not, yeah, it's hard not to, you say a thing like that, and you're kind of showing off, or there's arrogance, but it's just a matter, it's a fact, that I made all this stuff, and I'd like people to know about it, and maybe that's hubris or whatever, but when people look at it, yeah, most people are impressed. Which is nice. - I get, to me, it's one of those, it's a really good reproduction of the work, the text accompanies it well without, you know, trying to beat you over the head with anything, and you get a nice variety of the types, both the types of, we'll say genres, and the different media you worked in. That to me, it looks great, and I gotta figure out how to foist it off on people who, you know, you may not know this guy, but if you listen to the show, you know, he's got this collection of art now, so. - Yeah, the big complaint so far is for my friend Mallory, who I co-hosted at her movie podcast with. She complains that it doesn't fit well on her bookshelf, because, you know, it's a horizontal book. - I've got a side bookshelf for all the art, well, not all, but a bunch of the art books, exactly for that reason, it's one of those, it's tall, it's oblong, I can put the art stuff there, and everything else is, you know, trade paper bags and hard covers, so. - Yeah, my joke is that it's an end table book, I couldn't quite afford it. - Yeah, not coffee table, but an end table. - Yeah, an end table book. But then she says her end table's not big enough to hold it, you know, I said that's a defect in her end table. - Yeah, tell her she's gotta start upgrading her life at that point, it's not you, it's her, so. - I know, that's been the only complaint so far, which is hilarious, you know. (laughs) No, no, it's been good, it's been gratifying, I mean, it's funny to do, it's a new challenge as far as publicity or promotion, like when you do say a podcast, it's generally a thing about books, which is a book which is filled with words, and this thing isn't. There are some words in it, but those are just introductions. There's no use in talking about the, I don't think. Not too much use in the writing, it's a picture book, so how do you? - It's an art talk, so we talk about the artist, we talk about the forms he works in, you know, and the way you destroyed your life for the sake of art, I'm just kidding, I love not kidding, but you know. - Well, the thing is, yeah, it's funny you say that, destroyed, I mean, but what would it have been in the alternative? I mean, I can't even picture it. Having some sort of, I mean, I have two younger brothers, both of whom are fairly successful in their fields, much more successful than me financially, that's for sure. And I think they're reasonably happy, but I can't imagine the things they had to do, and against where they're at. - Yeah, the way your, those decisions are, you know, cutting off possibilities, yeah. - Yeah, and yeah, my life is hard to explain to people how, I mean, it's pretty much laser focused on getting myself to be able to do this work, you know. - Yeah. - Everything else is kind of just, it's noise, and it's chores, the rest, it's all about, so I have to spend weeks sometimes rearranging my furniture and throwing away and selling books, but what it all is for is to clear the mental and emotional and physical space so I can make new things, which is all and about. You know, that's all that I care about. - You know, one of the things I wondered, basically when you talk about like the landscape and not painting from the apartment for the longest time, the, I'm thinking of like Monet and that cathedral, Rouen, I think, the painting the same thing again and again. You mentioned that conceptually that you're painting the same aspects of the city, but I was never sure if you meant literally trying to get that same point of view and just looking at it in different lights, different times and different eras. - It is, it is like that. I mean, I just completed earlier this week, I made a painting in my alley of the same view I did like a year or two ago, but it looks fairly different. You can see it's the same view, but the full age is different, the light is different, a lot of things are different, but yeah, I can do that repeatedly. Like the bookshelf is a good example, although it does change, but the apartment, you know, the outside of it, it's the same shelf every time. - The shelf of EC is, yeah, I like that. - Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's a way of checking back in and of seeing what's changed and what's the same. And yeah, if you lead a life of endless repetition, what you start noticing is like these subtle differences and that's what I'm always going, that's what I'm always looking for. - And I know our lives are different, just a work, et cetera, but just the geography, the way the first time we recorded, we were out here where I live in the woods here in New Jersey. And it struck me more since taking up drawing three years ago, the repetitions and the changes, just in the wildlife, the flora, everything else. I see things a lot differently now, since I learned to look. Now as soon as the seasons are changing, what's coming, what's going, what its gestation is like versus its full blossom, you know. Things are very, very different to me since I took that little plunge, picked up a pencil and a sketch pad, I guess. But yeah, it's not quite the same as the city where I think what you are alluding to and the section on writing about the city is the sense of interacting with man and what man makes. Whether it's the cars, buildings, all the infrastructure and everything else around you, where to me, this is just what I inherited, is much more of a natural world where there is a collapsing, formerly retaining wall at a neighbor's house around the corner that I find fascinating because it's been there 50 years and is disintegrating as we look at it each week. But yeah, the sense of what the natural world does around me has been more compelling in my 50s as I've started learning to look. - Yeah, it'll change. It's the polar opposite of the kind of the media environment in which most people live every day where their life is flickering in front of them and inside of their phone screen. This way of living that I've gravitated toward, well, I had my smartphone times and it's over now. And yeah, the pace of it and the attention to the small changes is kind of what I live for. I don't know if you've seen, there's this amazing movie called, it's very slowly called the Quince Tree Light or Light of the Quince Tree. I don't know. It's about, it's basically a documentary about the Spanish painter Antonio Lopez Garcia who I believe is still alive. He's a really strict, realist painter. But the movie, it's from the early '90s is about his attempts to paint the Quince Tree in his backyard through every kind of temperature. - I think you mentioned this. - I'm looking it up now. The dream of light is how they transform the US. - Yeah, dream of light sometimes. It's got like five different, unfortunately translations and it's a little bit hard to find on streaming. If you dig around, you can probably find it maybe on archive.org or somewhere, you know? I don't think it's commercially distributed. But I think you dig that and just this guy's complete kind of also once again overused, but monastic, you know, attention to this one task. - When somebody described my, a reporter described what I do for the podcast in the newsletter is my monastic devotion to things. I had the nervous ha ha laughter and then had the shit, he's right. (laughs) I feel bad that I've kind of denied that. But yeah, there's, yeah. - I think that's a positive. - Yeah, no, he meant it in a good way and I was just, "Oh, ha ha, you're here." No, yeah, no, I really am. This is what I'm doing on a Sunday afternoon after the sheer amount of insanity that I've gone through for the last couple of weeks is making sure we can bring this to an audience. - Yeah, because this is what sustains you and so you gotta make the effort in like anything that's easier or that you can do casually, how much is that really worth? I don't know. - I think we've become so easily. It shouldn't come easily. - That is what we have proven pretty adequately for, well, for me, for over 600 episodes. You, what did we say, 38 or 39 years of? - Yeah, I don't know, I try to count it. Yeah, sometimes for all your entire life. - Early teens, I think it's set in for good. I mean, I'm turning 54 on Saturday, so, you know? So yeah, roughly 40 years. I, yeah, there's nothing else at this point. Like, what am I gonna pivot to something? I get to take up a hobby or something. - To be triggered as corporate, yeah, yeah. - That's right, yeah. I'm gonna go for that brass ring, go for the corner office. (both laughing) No, no, I mean, I have a very satisfying kind of part-time side gig at a bookstore, which has also been transformative and it's become, it's the focus of, I've started to dip my tone into a new kind of quasi-writing thing, which is about the bookstore, which is like, wouldn't be a surprise to anybody, you know? - And it's been a theme in your email, the newsletter that you do, but I wasn't sure if it was evolving into something and I never wanna ask you about, hey, what's your next project, but? - No, well, it's now a current project because I made a little like handmade kind of zine, whatever, typewritten book. And just made 30 copies of a zine. It's up in the store, people can buy it. And it's, I think it's gonna be a new approach. I'm gonna try to, I don't know if I can avoid making books anymore, I keep trying to quit the books. But I love books so much and I love making them. But I have to make it somehow where the art and the writing is one thing and that I'm not waiting even for a place in Michigan for months. It stressed me out and I can't really justify the expense of what that costs to do because of the way I require the printing to be done. I can't go and do print on demand. Those places can't do what I need, you know? Making them on my own printer or hand making them. And cumulatively, I think it'll add up to something whatever that is. Right now, it's a 12-page zine, you know? And it's the start of something, you know? - I'm with you. - And it's about this experience of digging through the piles and piles of endless donated and purchased used books. - Which to me is endlessly fascinating, largely 'cause I have a anecdote about the time. I picked up a copy of a novel that I usually pick up extras of to give out to people and opened it and discovered that it was a copy that I had given to someone that he had sold to the Strand with mean-spirited notes about me in the back as to why I would have liked this book and why he didn't. And that was fun. - That's awesome. - That's great. I was just in the, wow, not only is his handwriting it, nope, there I could see it, there I am. He sees, and the reason Gil would like something like this is he just doesn't get the blah, blah, blah. I'm like, okay, I'm buying this copy right now. - More than one example of a similar kind of thing, I found my own books and thrift stores at this point, you know, my published books, which I like because that means it's gone through the whole digestive system of the culture, gotten shit out the other end. You know, and I love thrift stores. I go thrift stores all the time for various reasons, but also, you know, I discovered a book that I signed to a person, you know, and I found it in a second and store, clearly spine uncracked, never even read. And that led to the end of that friendship. - Yeah, well, again, in my case, I've learned I can't hold anything against people too much, but yeah, I get where you're coming from. - Well, this is an isolated particular case. - Yeah, I figure there's more-- - Special case. - More reason for it, yeah, yeah. - Absolutely, I mean, like in my big, the big cull that I'm pretty much done with now, there's a stack of books here that I can't get rid of that are all inscribed to me, because I can't do that to other people. - No, that same thing. I've got a pile in my storage space under the stairs here that are the, I don't know if they're gonna read this, but they're-- - Two thirds of them, I would love to get rid of, but I can't, not until I'm dead. Somebody else can take them then, but I can't do that. But yeah, this store, we just call it tangible books, it's in my neighborhood, there's over 60,000 books, and it's just a completely alive organism that changes depending on whatever comes through the front door, you know? - Next time I was hoping to get out to Chicago this summer, but again, life work just annihilated me. But, you know, next time I'm out there, A, I'll hit tangible, B, you and I'll sit down for a real conversation, so. - That'll be great. - 'Cause this is good, but this is still staring at screens, so, you know? - It's true, yep, yeah, it helps, you know, when it's somebody you've talked to before, it's easier, when somebody you haven't, sometimes it's a little bit more of a challenge. - Yeah, you end up walking over somebody else because you can't quite figure out your tones and rhythm with each other, but, you know, what have you learned from your own podcasting experience, or experiences, yeah? - It's a real mixed bag. I think I've had some really good experiences. I mean, what helps me is, you know, I've done enough journalism now, and so, if I invite somebody to record a thing with me, I'm pretty familiar with what they do, and reasonably sure that I can, you know, I can prompt them to say things. I mean, my job there is very different than, in this instance, I try my best to stay out of the way and not to make it about me. And I think I'm reasonably successful. I did one, I think the last interview what I did was with this writer, Eugene Martin, who I would, like, that's been my big, sort of reading discovery this year. He's written five books, he's in his mid 60s, but he's published sporadically, mostly with small presses up until the last couple. And he reached out to me because I reviewed one of his books, and that's what kind of led, eventually, to a recording. - Was it a good review? - I'm kidding. - Oh, yeah. (laughing) - How dare you son of a bitch, I'm coming to your-- - Yeah, yeah. - I've had a couple, I've had a few of those. - Yeah, there's some people that are not thrilled with me, but I strive to be a straight shooter. I don't have agendas, I react the way I react, just to the art, not to the person, but yeah, I ended up having a pretty good talk with him. And so I think what I can do, at least as an interviewer, is usually get people that are reticent or not natural talkers to talk. - Yeah. - That, I can say, I'm able to do. But yeah, unlike you, the podcasting, the interview thing, I enjoy it, but it's about the seventh or eighth thing in my life. - You've got your art to make, I've got mine. I'm not gonna rank them or anything. So, but yeah, it's just one of those things where you realize over time that you pick up skills and like I say the moment of, oh, that's when I figured out, blah, blah, blah, it's usually kind of rewarding when you realize that you've kind of leveled up or at least developed something or figured out a new way of approaching things. - No, I mean, I love this medium. This kind of free form long, digressive conversations is, yeah, it's definitely my jam, you know? - Okay. I don't like the ones that are just trying to show or like that's a junket, they're promoting a product, you know? - Yeah, the other person hasn't even encountered red, whatever, yeah. - Right, they're reading out, you can clearly know that some unpaid intern gave them some bullet points, you know? - No, this is part of my ongoing panic every single week. How will I put this together? - Yeah, so yeah, it worked out because you had that book of mine from whatever, you got it a month or two. - I was, it's numbered, I number 50 something here. Let me see, 53, if that helps, with the motivation. - Oh, the number of the book, yeah. Yeah, yeah, so yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I'm not sure exactly what comes next. Something, it'll definitely be connected to this bookstore, some one way or another. You know me, I'm looking forward to it. So if it turns into zines that end up becoming compiled into something bigger or whatever the hell I'm doing with that zine thing or whatever somebody else is doing in terms of making art, you know? I'm glad it's coming out, so. - Thank you. - Cool man, we'll, you know, I'm sure we'll end up talking in the next couple of months and we'll end up sending, you know, snarky emails or texts to each other in the weeks ahead. - Yeah, for sure, and yeah, look forward to a post, I wrote you a postcard this morning. - Oh, good. - So I'll put it in the mail. - I'm three postcards behind on my daily practice because of the conference last week, I didn't send anything this morning, so I've got two sitting on the desk and tomorrow morning I'll go to the next one, yeah. - I imagine you're wearing the hair shirt right now or like gonna walk on a bed. - I've learned not to beat myself up over it 'cause I know I'm gonna catch up with them at some point. It's just that right after this, I'm off to San Diego for two days and then a red eye back here and then more business and then all this other stuff. And it's like, I can't do everything, I can pretend I can do everything and you guys all get fooled and to think I can do everything, but really, it catches up at some point, so. - Yeah, yeah. We know about you and your Turing test. - Yeah, I've been running up the score on that for 53 years, man. (laughing) Anyway, to me. - Well, cool. - But thanks for coming on and thanks for making this book. I've seen your work since your first reach out to me, which is, oh my God, like 10, 12 years ago. Maybe 2014. - Yeah, it's been a little while. Yeah, and so, you know, seeing it together, having only been to your place once, I think, to see some of the art, you know. - Yeah, you went to my previous apartment and it was in Bridgeport, but it was the first apartment. Yeah, I remember it. - Yeah, this is, you know, it's a good portable studio, I guess. - Thanks. - Thanks. - Thanks for coming on and we'll talk in the weeks ahead. - Sounds like a plan. Thanks, Gil. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - And that was Demetri Samerov. Go get his new book, Making Pictures, is how I talk to the world. It's at his site DemetriSamerov.com. That is D-M-I-T-R-Y-S-A-M-A-R-O-V.com. Don't worry, I will have links to that in the show and episode notes for this one. His site is great, it's got a ton of pictures of his art, which, as we talked about, doesn't, well, seeing the stuff on a screen is not the same as seeing it live or even seeing it in the book, but there's also links to his previous books, which I've enjoyed and which we've talked about on the show, like Old Style, Soviet Stamps and Music to My Eyes, and they'll be links to my, his new zine project. And you can find out where his art is showing and what festivals or readings he's gonna be at. And Demetri, for reasons we've gone into in the past, does not have a social media presence, but he does make a couple of podcasts that you should check out, who you know, which is H-U-U-K-N-O-W, and that horror cast with Mallory Smart. You should also definitely sign up for his weekly newsletter, which is at letter.demetriSamerov.com. I really enjoy that. It's a great mix of his writing, art, links about what he's up to or where he's showing, go sign up for that. You get a new one every Monday. It's a, well, it's good. Now, you can support the virtual memories show by telling other people about it. Let 'em know this show comes out every week with interesting conversations with fascinating cultural folks. You can also help out the show by telling me what you like and don't like about it or who you'd like to hear me record with or what movie or TV show or book or piece of music or theater or art exhibition or whatever. You think I should turn listeners on to. And you can do that by sending me an email. Am I sending me a postcard or a letter? My mailing address is at the bottom of the newsletter I send out twice a week or by leaving a message on my Google Voice number, which is 973-869-9659. That goes directly to voicemails. You don't have to worry about getting stuck in an awkward conversation with me. And messages can be up to three minutes long. So you go longer than that, it'll cut you off. Just call back, leave another message. And let me know if it'd be okay to include your message in an upcoming episode of a show. You might have something interesting to share with listeners, but I'd never run something like that without the speaker's permission. So let me know. And if you got money to spare, don't give it to me. Buy stuff from Dimitri. Go support individuals or institutions in need. There are other people who need money more than I do, who need your money more than I do. You can find individuals through like GoFundMe, Patreon, Kickstarter, Crowd Funder, Indiegogo, different crowdfunding platforms like that. You'll find people who need help making rent, medical bills, veterinary bills, car payments, getting an artistic project going. There's people who, just a few dollars from you, might make a real difference in their lives. So try and find those and help them out. Now, when it comes to institutions, I give to my local food bank and World Central Kitchen every month. I make targeted election contributions. There are other things you can do, like Planned Parenthood, Freedom Funds, Poor People's Campaign. There are a lot of things out there that, you know, if you got a few dollars, you might be able to make a difference in this world. So I hope you will. Now, music for this episode is "Fella" by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. She'll visit my archives to check out my episode with Hal from the summer of 2018 and learn more about his art and painting. And you can listen to his music at SoundCloud.com/Mayforth. And that's M-A-Y, the number four, T-H. And that's it for this week's episode of The Virtual Memories Show. Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back next week with another great conversation. You can subscribe to The Virtual Memories Show and download past episodes at the iTunes Store. You can also find all our episodes and get on our email list at either of our websites, vmspod.com or chimeraupsgira.com/vm. You can also follow The Virtual Memories Show on Twitter and Instagram at vmspod at virtualmemoriespodcast.tumbler.com and on YouTube, Spotify and TuneIn.com by searching for virtual memories show. And if you like this podcast, please tell your pals, talk it up on social media and go to iTunes, look up The Virtual Memories Show and leave a rating and maybe a review for us. It all goes to helping us build a bigger audience. You've been listening to The Virtual Memories Show. I'm your host, Gil Roth. Keep reading, keep making art and keep the conversation going. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)