Since 2008, Providence-born writer, podcaster and public radio alum Nate DiMeo has been producing short, narrative essays through his podcast, “The Memory Palace,” featuring real-life stories pulled from lesser known corners of American history. His new book, “The Memory Palace: True Short Stories of the Past,” features nearly 50 stories, some from the podcast, some new, and accompanied for the first time by illustrations and archival photos. Now based in Los Angeles, he’s coming back to Providence on Saturday for a reading at RiffRaff bookstore. DiMeo spoke with morning host Luis Hernandez for this week’s episode of Artscape.
TRANSCRIPT:
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Luis Hernandez: Nate, it’s such a pleasure. Thanks so much.
Nate DiMeo: I couldn’t be happier to be here.
Hernandez: I’m wondering, at what point in your life did you realize that you love finding and telling stories – and that you could make a living doing it?
DiMeo: Well, I think those are two different questions. I think the living comes much later. But the finding and the telling, you know, really started quite early in Providence … I learned to love stories and I learned to tell stories around the kitchen table in my grandparents house. You know, these were, you know, old beloved family stories sort of told again and again. And I started to notice, besides that this was a group of good storytellers, these were funny people, these were people who had a flare for them for the dramatic – you know, besides that, besides that this was just a ripping yarn, I also noticed that this was kind of the way that everyone was organizing the memories of that family. That it was through these stories that I knew anything about what their lives were like. That the past was this imaginary space that was conjured up within these stories, and that if I really wanted to get to know, like, my grandmother and get to know who she may have been in an earlier time – yes, like, her life was reflected in these stories, the ones that were told again and again of, you know, when she fell in love with my grandfather or the funny thing that happened to her one time to dinner party. But who she really was on some level was the person within those stories, between the poles of those stories, between like the plot points of her life – you know, all of those in between days. That was where life was sort of lived. And there was something about both hearing these stories and falling in love with these stories, and falling in love with the act of storytelling and the way that it could bring people together – that initial, you know, sort of falling in love, that sort of sets me on the path. But at some point it became a sort of more, kind of, rigorous and interesting activity to interrogate the past that way.
Hernandez: You know, listening to you say that, you know, hearing the stories from your family from that perspective, knowing that you’ve worked in public radio, and I went back to an old New Yorker article about you. I’ve been trying to pinpoint, like, how would I describe your storytelling. I’d rather just ask you: how do you describe the way you like to tell stories?
DiMeo: Well, I think that you have bumped up against a problem that I’ve had my whole career at doing “The Memory Palace,” which is that on the one hand, saying what I do and sort of explaining what I do, which is I tell short historical stories, usually, you know, from American history. I write these narrative essays, and it’s just one voice and then I put them to music – that to me is, always sounds boring. Like, I don’t know if I would listen to that show, as I pitch it. And so what is that next level? What really makes a “Memory Palace” story tick? I think that these are these stories that are engaged, you know, less with facts and figures, even though, even though the stories are factual, and even though I have, you know, rigorously researched them to make sure that they are true. But they are engaged in the wonder of the past. You know, they are engaged with, you know, trying to sort of answer to that, you know, for myself and then hopefully for the listeners, that most elusive, but most basic of questions: what is it like to be someone else? You know, I’m trying to, you know, put people actively in the shoes of people that lived in the past. Or I’m asking you to wear your own shoes, wear your own 2024, you know, Nikes or Hokas, and walk around in the past and look around a little bit and recognize just how different it is or how similar it is. … It’s a show that begins with a proposition that the only way for us to engage with the past is itself a leap of imagination. You know, if you are riding a RIPTA bus and you are going down to Jamestown from Providence for the beach, to go to the beach, and you are reading some book about the Eisenhower presidency – if you know, God love you, if that’s what you want to do – and you’re reading that Eisenhower book, and somehow you are transported. You are partially on that bus, you know, on 95, and you are also partially in the European theater with General Eisenhower. That act is, that act of imagination is no different than if you were reading Tolkien and you were also in Middle Earth. Like, the way that the past is conjured by our imaginations, that is the only place that exists. And so I sort of started, when thinking about “The Memory Palace” and trying to engage people in these historical stories, I was just like, wait, if this kind of functions the same way that literature functions or poetry functions, that it creates this kind of imaginary space in this way that it transports you, like, why don’t we do that more with the past? The past is inherently fictional. No matter how real it is, to engage with it as an act of imagination. So why don’t I just ask the listener to engage more in this imaginative act with me?
Hernandez: I wanted to get a sense of – you know, you spent your early years in Providence. Then you moved, you went off to college, you eventually came back. I wondered what, you know, what was one of your first or favorite memories when you were growing up here? But you know, what brought you back? And what was it like the second time around?
DiMeo: You know, returning – going out to school in California for a few years and then kind of, you know, crashing back and going to Rhode Island College, where my parents taught special ed so I could essentially go for free, $267 per semester in fees – there was something about returning, and starting to play music, and started to hang out with the Brown and RISD kids and the townies, you know, who were making music and making art in Providence, it kind of dropped me back into this city. And I started to really become pointedly aware at the ways that my family’s history and my own history kind of lived within its spaces. … And that palimpsest of time, the way that time, you know, the way that a city kind of, you know, builds up over itself. And that, you know, a IN bank becomes a Fleet bank becomes a Citibank. And what did that Citibank, what was that Citibank once? That Citibank was the apartment where your, where your dad lived … That fascinated me, and that filled me with a real sense of wonder and really locked me into this thing that I think about all the time now, which is this constant sense of time’s passage. Not only am I getting older, my hair is getting grayer or whatever, or my child is getting older, but that the things that I get to do, the ways that I get to live my life are determined by our historical moment. It’s determined by what bank is on that corner, on some level. You know, it is determined by the technology we use. It is determined by the jobs that are available in a community at any given time, you know, that kind of dictates, you know, whether you continue to live in that town. … That came like a rush, and like a really wonderful rush that is really – I mean, it certainly paid dividends professionally – but it’s kind of fascinated me since. And it really came in the act of returning to Providence, and finding my way again in the city, and finding me changed, and finding it changed that little bit. I’m sure I would not be doing what I do now without that time spent in Providence.
Hernandez: At some point you became a fan of public radio, which back then was not The Public’s Radio, it was WRNI. But when did you start listening to public radio, and that kind of started to open you up to new ways of telling stories?
DiMeo: I can tell you exactly when I really fell in love with public radio. And there are like, you know, there are days and there are “This American Life” stories or whatever. But the day that I remember very specifically … was driving around trying to find, trying to find parking, an apartment I lived in on Sheldon Street, right off Wickenden. And I was circling Wickenden and Sheldon, and Wickenden and Sheldon, just trying to find parking on this, you know, one of those days in March that were like probably two days before it was a beautiful spring day. And then you realize, no, spring is not here. It is still winter. And it’s spitting rain and is just miserable, and my girlfriend is upstairs, like, waiting for me. We gotta get somewhere and I cannot park. And during that, you know, that very relatable, I’m sure, frustration of that sort of situation, this story came on “All Things Considered” on this, you know, on the public radio station that we hadn’t had before, and suddenly there’s a public radio station on 1290. And it was a story about these two brothers who lived in Chicago in a housing project. And it was a story that was ultimately about the failures of the foster system and the struggles of these two particular brothers and how one of them fell out of a window of this project and died. And it stopped me in my tracks. It was beautiful and it was thoughtful and it was perfectly crafted. But what I noticed that day was that it acted like a song, that – I had fallen in love with music, and still to this day there’s really nothing I love more than music – and there’s nothing more powerful to me, in a particular way that I enjoy that power, than the perfect song coming on the radio at just the right time, or or you walk into a restaurant and suddenly like, “oh, it’s this one.” And it has taken you back and it has done that trick of memory. And here was a story doing that. You know, here was a story moving me so deeply and bringing me to tears, actually, you know – and not the frustrated tears of trying to park in Wickington, but real tears, real connection – and the idea that a story could slip into my day and change it. That’s what I wanted to do.
Hernandez: When you were putting the book together, were you looking for different types of stories from what you’re doing at the podcast, or how did you approach this project compared to the podcast?
DiMeo: You know, some of it was just cool because the truth matters on, on the podcast. I can’t, there are no pictures. And so to be able to use pictures and specifically start to write stories that hinged upon seeing pictures, and so there’s a number of stories within the book that are about photography or about the history of photography, or, that simply would not work if you could not look at this photograph. … I thought a lot about being a kid, and maybe staying home from school because I was sick one day, and being bored and going back to the bookshelf – and it’s the returning to the bookshelf that is the key to me – and picking up again, you know, one of these old paperback collections of “Ripley’s Believe It or Not!” stories that my dad had probably gotten at some dime store, you know, or “Where the Sidewalk Ends,” that poetry collection, or even like a “Peanuts” strip, you know, a collection of “Peanuts” strips. These short pieces that, every time you looked at them, they would start to feel like kind of magical books, because you knew that you can pick it up like six months later, and suddenly one of those stories would connect in a different way. Maybe you were a little older. Maybe you hadn’t paid attention last time. And I wanted to create a book that would do that, but for adults. Like these collections of these short stories, you know, of different types. You know, some are sad and some are funny, you know, and some are ripping yarns and some are more meditative. And you can pick it up off the shelf over and over again. And this time, maybe one would connect with you in a different way … a book that would kind of function like a cabinet of wonders where, you know, you could, you could open it up in the middle and be taken away instantly … and hopefully kind of, you know, ultimately like be one of those things that has this kind of a treasured place that kind of hums with the strange magic that some of the books I love the most do on my shelf.
Hernandez: What’s next for you? You got the podcast. How do you, how long do you see yourself doing that? There’s the book. What’s next? Maybe like, what, television? Documentaries? What do you want to do?
DiMeo: I mean, you know, the truth is, sure, you know, any of it and all of it, but at some point with the podcast I realized that I had stumbled upon a format and I had stumbled upon like a type of artwork that I might be able to do forever. That it’s the simple thing, you know, it is just me writing an essay about the past, writing an essay about history and putting it to music. … And I have found that in this small format, despite how sort of regular it kind of is, it is a vessel big enough for me to talk about essentially whatever I want, because the truth of matter is like … I’m using the past as raw material for me to figure out what’s going on in the present. … I remember when the singer John Prine died, I was like, you know what, that’s the life right there. You have just spent your life, like writing songs and processing your life as it comes. And at this point, that might be what I’m doing. Like, if you catch up with me when I’m 70, there might be some version of “The Memory Palace” in some media or something. It’s probably just me, you know, using the past as a way to figure out what I’m going to do that day.
Nate DiMeo will be at RiffRaff book store in Providence on Saturday, Dec. 7 at 6 p.m., for a reading and conversation with Rhode Island writer Matthew Derby. You can find more information here.
