Pictures of You
The ever-loquacious Anonymous asks:
Will Daughter/Alice be part of the publicity? Will we ever see her?
Excellent question, Anon, if I may call you that. After no small amount of deep conversations over our caffeines of choice, Consort and I decided that it's very unlikely Alice will do publicity with me.
Highly unlikely.
Almost immeasurably unlikely.
(History has taught me that to say "Never" is to do that very thing, usually within a lunar cycle. So sometimes I mean "Never" and just don't say it.)
Just because her mother has this weird hobby of writing about her doesn't mean my daughter was shaped to be a foot soldier for either side of the education battle. The picture part, though, was trickier. I knew it was normal human curiosity to want to see her, in some ways the heart of the book, and most people would think nothing more than "Huh. Looks nothing like her mother." But every time I'd think about signing off on a recent picture of her -- handing it to some worthy person in marketing -- I'd actually grow ill. It felt wrong, and intrusive. She never asked to be a public figure, even tangentially.
Then, a flash; the kid is one of those people whose appearance changes dramatically every few years as she grows. Not me; there are pictures of me at six hours old where I'm recognizably Quinn, only bald and puffy. But Alice shapeshifts with the ease of Madonna in her heyday, which meant I could use a picture of her from when we started this whole homeschooling adventure, four years ago -- thereby giving a contemporaneous visual to go with the article, or the interview -- and be reasonably comfortable that I had exposed Alice 5.0, but not Alice 7.2. Is it justification and denial? Yeah, probably.
Will Daughter/Alice be part of the publicity? Will we ever see her?
Excellent question, Anon, if I may call you that. After no small amount of deep conversations over our caffeines of choice, Consort and I decided that it's very unlikely Alice will do publicity with me.
Highly unlikely.
Almost immeasurably unlikely.
(History has taught me that to say "Never" is to do that very thing, usually within a lunar cycle. So sometimes I mean "Never" and just don't say it.)
Just because her mother has this weird hobby of writing about her doesn't mean my daughter was shaped to be a foot soldier for either side of the education battle. The picture part, though, was trickier. I knew it was normal human curiosity to want to see her, in some ways the heart of the book, and most people would think nothing more than "Huh. Looks nothing like her mother." But every time I'd think about signing off on a recent picture of her -- handing it to some worthy person in marketing -- I'd actually grow ill. It felt wrong, and intrusive. She never asked to be a public figure, even tangentially.
Then, a flash; the kid is one of those people whose appearance changes dramatically every few years as she grows. Not me; there are pictures of me at six hours old where I'm recognizably Quinn, only bald and puffy. But Alice shapeshifts with the ease of Madonna in her heyday, which meant I could use a picture of her from when we started this whole homeschooling adventure, four years ago -- thereby giving a contemporaneous visual to go with the article, or the interview -- and be reasonably comfortable that I had exposed Alice 5.0, but not Alice 7.2. Is it justification and denial? Yeah, probably.
posted by Unknown at 9:57 PM
2 Comments:
I think that is a good idea, and Anonymous has some of the most interesting questions. :)
And it has just turned over publication day (at least here, not quite yet there in CA). Congrats. I'm so excited to read it!!!
I just read the article about your book in Time. Great blog!
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