Open Audiobook
By: Kyle Turner
Tags: Audio, Love, Relationships Love Dating, Writing, Personal Essay

“To praise a work of literature by calling it sincere is now, at best, a way of saying that although it need be given no aesthetic or intellectual admiration…”

Open Audiobook

On intimacy, aurality, and audio messages.

After a sub-par interview with an actress of high esteem, and after a very good date with someone with low self esteem, I realized that I needed to treat my interviews like dates because I was so good at treating my dates like interviews. I don’t mean “date” like in a creepy way, but in the way where I would want to engage them and be engaged with them about whatever we were talking about. Foster a certain kind of respectful intimacy where you learn about the person, what drives them, what their passions are, so you’re not just getting sound bites. Sound bites aren’t good on a date, and they have limited functionality for interviews. The more engaged the person is, the more likely it will be mutually beneficial, regardless of the context.

For me, my interview method has been defined by nerves and nausea, and I’ve learned that I’m much better at talking to directors than I am actors, because directors tend to be, like me, intellectual narcissists. They can ramble on about little details about process and production, and asking about their vision (with more specificity than someone in a crowd at an audience Q&A asking, “WHAT IS YOUR VISION, GRAND POOBAH?”) is effectively asking them to talk about themselves.

That is what you want, sort of, on a date, right? That intimacy, engagement, and narcissism, if you’re a masochist like I am. So I overwhelm my date with a barrage of questions: How did you start doing what you do? Where do you live? What fictional character do you most identify with and why? What was a moment in your life where you needed validation but didn’t receive it?

These questions don’t only serve as forms of engagement but, for me at least, tests and gauges of potential partnership longevity. It reminds me of the time I tried to make my own James Bond fan club with an entrance quiz that required an 80% score or higher. So it’s like that, but a fan club for me. Another couple of my favorite questions are, “Do you read any articles in print or online? Do you like reading or being read to?”

I’m an awkward person and I only like talking about myself insofar as talking about movies, so I try to veil my anxieties in questions so the pressure is mostly off me. Hopefully it’s back and forth, volleying with follow ups between us, but sometimes I’ll get one of those people that, I don’t know, is worse at interacting with human beings normally than I am. Those awkward people are the best to watch react to the words, “My father died when I was in high school, but I don’t think I need another therapist.”

Just get it over with, is my motto. Rip the band aid off. The worst they can do is run screaming, and were that to happen, that would be my next solipsistic personal essay. Such impulses are why waiters have texted me to thank me for the flattery even though they’re straight and why I spent an ungodly amount of money buying a Death’s Head Moth for my best friend Amber as a graduation present. Like Nike told me to, I just did it. It’s the only time I will pay attention to a sports thing, unless Messi’s butt is involved.