SPONSORED POST: Q&A with Alice Gregory, Brought to You by Art She Said
by Awl Staff
Alice Gregory came from out west and ended up here in the east a few years ago now. After college at Bard, she now lives in New York City, among all those many people. She’s an advocate of intimate letter-writing in the modern world, and here explains why correspondence in all its forms is good for the soul.
The Awl: Where did you come from?
Alice Gregory: So originally, I’m from Marin County, which is basically just Bobos in Paradise. Broke hippies living in $3-million houses without foundations, soccer moms with slate showers, billionaire inventors.
The Awl: So best. And then there’s Marin City: home of Tupac.
Alice Gregory: He went to my high school.
The Awl: Get out!
Alice Gregory: But only for a semester so he’s not in the yearbook.
The Awl: That is so sad. Did you like high school??
Alice Gregory: I did like high school. It was a good place for low stakes self-mythologizing. Caring enough about what people think of you to try but not enough to not basically just do whatever you want.
The Awl: Oh. That’s a good way to put that experience! And then you came to New York City, where I greatly enjoy your Tumblr — in part because I recently as well had the revelation about club soda and seltzer (AND argued about it with someone) and I’m still upset about the differing-levels-of-sodium issue.
Alice Gregory: Sucks, right? I thought we had something there.
The Awl: What do you like most to do, to make?
Alice Gregory: Well, I find myself writing about art kind of often and that passive construction is totally intentional. I’m surrounded by it all the time. It is odd to be immersed in something that seems to draw people in, in an all-encompassing, self-identifying kind of way — and to not have that reaction is funny. Hobby-wise, I’m really basic: I read, I write, and I walk around listening to podcasts. I have a few people with whom I exchange exquisite emails, that’s also important.
The Awl: Oh, you have an interest in correspondence! The dyingest art form!
Alice Gregory: Oh yeah, the Hawthorne/Melville letters are my foundational text.
The Awl: Get out!
Alice Gregory: That’s the best part of New York (some might argue it’s the worst)-there’s no need for an imaginary audience; you really can be friends with and see on a weekly basis the people you “write for” if you wanna. Not ALL of them, but a lot are here.
The Awl: I think that’s what film and TV people say about LA too. Which sounds nice. I hadn’t thought about this before! But it’s so true that in book publishing and in blog publishing, you’re not talking about a *huge* number of readers. If 2000 people read your blog/book/blog-book, that’s fantastic! And they’re maybe near you. Then you can have them over for brunch too.
Alice Gregory: For me it’s just knowing they’re around. Honestly, I would rather gchat/email them usually than actually hang.
The Awl: So your life stays pretty epistolary.
Alice Gregory: I think maintaining effortful email correspondences is also crucial if you have an office job. To feel as though not only do you have multiple, very human projects going on but that you are vastly improving each others’ daily lives. It’s hard for me to sympathize sometimes with the notion that technology is destroying this kind of literacy we’re talking about-attention span, yes, but I write with the people I most care about much more than I would without email, and the exchanges are not trivial at all.
The Awl: That’s right! And it’s also so easy to incorporate new correspondents into one’s life. For instance, now we’ve randomly met and we might even exchange emails some day!
Alice Gregory: Yes! I hope so.
“The Smartest Thing She Ever Said” is a Tumblr based digital storytelling art project featuring four teams of two-one artist and one story editor-between now and the end of the year. For three weeks each, the teams were asked to interpret the phrase, “The Smartest Thing She’s Ever Said.” The current team features photographer Amanda Merton and writer Alice Gregory with support from project curator Alexis Hyde. ArtSheSaid.com and its artists are entirely supported by Ann Taylor in collaboration with Flavorpill.