Interviewer’s Note: In response to all the queries and comments I’ve received about “selfies,” I’ve decided to take a moment to interview myself about these snapshots into the modern soul. I even came up with the questions myself, though myself also thinks that these questions derive from my preoccupation with myself, or from self-delusion, since there is no such thing as a selfless selfie. -PT
Patrick Timmons: So what made you decide to give this interview about selfies?
Patrick Timmons: What’s a selfie?
Patrick Timmons: You know, it’s a picture that you take of yourself using your mobile phone. Selfies are everywhere, at the Academy Awards, on the frontlines in Syria, even politiicians have selfies. Especially politicians have selfies. You take them everywhere, from every angle imaginable from any place.
Patrick Timmons: Careful with your pronouns. You take them, you mean.
Patrick Timmons: It’s the same difference. Do you think you wold ever take a selfie?
Patrick Timmons: What do you think we’re doing now? I’m not sure I can take a selfie with myself. It’s beyond the laws of physics. I don’t think I have the hand-eye-I coordination. Have you seen the contortions people get into trying to get a good angle? Not possible: noses and chins always seem bigger. What lies beyond the self, that’s what interests me.
Patrick Timmons: In this culture, nothing lies beyond the self.
Patrick Timmons: Are you calling me pre-modern?
Patrick Timmons: No, only out of date and unselfinterested.
Patrick Timmons: That sounds like a veiled compliment.
Patrick Timmons: It’s not. I’m pointing out your self-denial.
Patrick Timmons: Mine. Don’t you mean ours?
Patrick Timmons: This is way too much introspection for me.
Patrick Timmons: We’ll only know once you publish your selfie on social media.
Patrick Timmons: What’s social media?
Patrick Timmons: The end of the self.
The selves of writer Patrick Timmons live in Mexico City, Juárez, El Paso, and New Mexico: @patricktimmons.