Welcome to The Interlude
An editor's letter.
Will there be a space for my thoughts? Are my thoughts deserving to be known?
As a writer, I ask myself different versions of these questions, subconsciously and consciously, several times a day. I’ve published hundreds of thousands of words about other individuals: musicians, artists, and other notable figures. But when it comes to my own ideas and projects, I don’t share the same generous, laissez faire attitude. I’m firmly in the belief that, in this era of “journalist as a personal brand,” there are too many unedited newsletters and mismanaged blogs, filled with ramblings that would have been better left as a diary entry or a voice memo. Starting my own might feel like a futile exercise in adding to a chorus of noise (which doesn’t square with how I communicate as a Scorpio Mercury). As an editor, I’ve learned to be discerning about other peoples’ work, but especially my own.
At the same time, I still think that blogging is a way to carve out your own digital space. When young writers ask me for advice on how to land their first story without having any impressive clips in their portfolio, I recommend that they start their own blog. I’ve commissioned writers based on the strength of their self-published work before. It’s a way to buck the gatekeepers of traditional media, and so many of the writers I admire have built their own profiles by self-publishing. (I’m thinking of Alice Sparkly Kat, Yanyi, Joshua Minsoo Kim with Tone Glow, Terry Nguyen.)
I, too, got my start with blogging. As a high schooler growing up in the suburbs of Maryland, I uploaded mini reviews about Troye Sivan and Autre Ne Veut to my Tumblr page called The Dilettante. There were also live photos that I snapped at concerts at the 9:30 Club and U-Street Music Hall. That blog helped get me into music school. It also led me to contribute to a small D.C.-based music blog, which led to my first internship at The FADER, which led to my first paid writing job.
So with The Interlude, I’m returning to this spirit. Not the spirit of putting whatever the fuck I want on the internet recklessly, but of giving myself and my thoughts the time and space to exist, because perhaps no one will let me do the writing I truly want to do until I permit myself first. This instinct has only intensified as freelance budgets have been slashed across publications, and it’s been harder to place the stories that I’m the most passionate about.
It isn’t just that “media is dying,” either. I feel that my writing has gotten better, but my utility to mainstream media has lessened. Maybe it’s that my interests and voice have grown too far away from the media’s center. I’m tired of getting pitch ideas getting rejected, because it was too weird or niche or gay or critical of white supremacy or the timing was off. I’m tired of editors only hitting up my inbox for Asian American Heritage Month or Pride Month, as if my ideas are only worthy in these few weeks when they can cash in on “identity-based stories.” I want my stories to be stories, full of rigor and life, and not about the identifiers.
When I first created The Interlude in 2018, it was intended to be a document of my early 20s through music, an outlet for me to make sense of that tumultuous period of growth and transition. (The title comes from the Frank Ocean song “We All Try,” in which he sings, “I don't believe our lives are simple / And I don't believe they're short, this is interlude.”) I quickly abandoned the project after realizing that spilling my emotional turmoil and love life on the internet didn't feel entirely right. Around that time, I got a therapist.
This time around, I don’t want to commodify my feelings or my personal journey. I want to take my ideas seriously, give them room to grow, and see what happens when I’m not thinking about whether a story will “perform well.” I don’t want to be useful to others anymore. I just want to figure out the kind of writing I want to do and what kind of perspective I occupy, after almost a decade of grinding for a check.
So on The Interlude, there will be music and cultural criticism, but not the kind that is motivated by clicks and likes and ad revenue. There might also be personal observations, but I will try not to make them gratuitous. I will publish interviews, because I love talking to artists, but I will push myself to write original thoughts and arguments. I will take myself seriously, but also try to have fun.
Tomorrow, we launch with an interview with Andrew Thomas Huang, the filmmaker who has made music videos for Björk, FKA twigs, and Kelela. He’s one of my favorite visual artists ever, because he fuses traditional folklore with futuristic, cybernetic aesthetics. We had a conversation back in November 2022 for a publication that ended up killing the story, so I’m excited for it to finally see the light of day.
I hope you enjoy reading ツ
With gratitude,
Michelle Hyun Kim