Emily D. Threlkeld

I’m kind of a magnet because I’m nonthreatening. I’m not terribly large, and I look like I’ll give you money. It also wouldn’t be that hard to beat me up, and I wouldn’t retaliate. I’m a good listener. I ask people questions. I think that’s all it takes. I’ve always appreciated people who are passionate about something, whether they really love something or they absolutely hate it. When they’re extreme like that, I always find them entertaining. I don’t want them as my friends, but they are entertaining. Perhaps they can tell that I want what they’ve got. If someone is rude to me, I tend to think, “Oh, thank you so much. You’ve given me money, really, because I can turn around and write about it.” It’s beautiful. I often wonder for people who don’t write, what do they do with it?

Everybody says that they have better things to do, but teenagers are the only ones who really do have better things to do. When I meet a teenager, I think, They could be getting high in a car. And instead they came to hear a middle-aged man read about going to China. I’m just so honored.

[Derek] is played by the guy who played the naval captain Keira Knightley didn’t want to marry in Pirates of the Caribbean and at this point I scream out loud because there is nothing I love more in a sex way than a stern Englishman who is impossible to reach emotionally.

Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters — sometimes very hastily — but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, ‘Dear Jim: I loved your card.’ Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, ‘Jim loved your card so much he ate it.’ That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.

WYZIC Like it here but I miss your company

YAACS Have not heard from you for what seems ages

YACIV Telegram mutilated

YAAHY Longing to hear from you again darling

YAURN Snow is drifting through the station

YAUJF The sea is beginning to freeze

YISUZ No sun now should re-appear in 8 days

I don’t carry my camera so much these days: I don’t have the same relationship with it. I’ve never considered photography one of the higher art forms. Everyone takes photos; now even phones can. The whole issue of digital is so depressing to me; my process is gone. There were all kinds of unknown things that could come out in a photograph, things you didn’t know were there until you saw it; now it’s all so flat. But then I never really saw myself as a photographer.

All writing is basically the same: beginning, middle, end. The difference with sketches, and why sketches are actually harder, is that you generally have to establish an entire new world every few minutes with its own rules, get to the joke premise, explore that premise, and then end the thing all within tight time constraints.

I only ask you, friends of the Internet, as a creator and consumer of culture, to not confuse your enthusiasm for a thing—expressed in tweets and tumbls and comments and torrents and downloads and upthumbs and gifs—with actual support for a thing that you want to last.

And if you want that thing to last, that means supporting it in the way that, for better or for worse, it makes its money: watching it as it airs, buying tickets to it when it comes out, buying it when it is available, seeing it when it comes to town.

I’m glad that I kept my name for several reasons. There’s only one other person in my family to pass my last name on, and it’s not someone I’m particularly close with. I don’t feel like I’ve lost my identity, which is one of the main reasons I was so afraid of marriage in the first place. And of course, I’ve spent a lot more time with my last name than a Smith or a Jones. So much extra time spelling it out over the phone to customer service people, discussing its origin with people who asked, pronouncing it over and over so someone can try to learn it and still get it wrong. I never fantasized about marrying so I could change my name. My last name is a badge, a weird point of pride. I love it.

My old music ethnography teacher back in college once told our class a great story involving a group of ethnographers and an African tribal gentleman (Masai, maybe? I forget).

The ethnographers took the tribesman to a symphony. He had never heard Western music before, so they were curious to find out what he thought of it. When they asked him after the concert, the tribesman said that he had enjoyed it very much. When they inquired what his favorite part of the performance was, he said “the very beginning.” They asked if he meant the overture, and he said “no, no, the VERY beginning.” The ethnographers realized that what the tribesman had enjoyed the most was listening to the orchestra tuning their instruments.