At first I think it must be me. Maybe my interview requests aren't getting through, or if they are, they're too forward, or too personal, or too impersonal, or too acontextual. A friend offers to get me in touch with his friend, a MacArthur prize-winning architect, and I send him a draft of my request. I think things will go better if my email is lyrical and loose. It doesn't; he asks me to formalize my inquiry, says this isn't going to get past the architect's marketing guy. So I rewrite the request, try to remind whomever's going to be reading it of my credentials, personal and professional. I don't get a response. I ask my friend if he's heard anything, and after a few weeks he hasn't, so I email the press office myself, and receive a very kind—though very firm-rejection. I try my old contacts. Rejection. I try a beloved architect/interior designer, part of a four-person New York City-based firm with its hands in pretty much everything: restaurants, bars, ranches in the Napa Valley, fashion. I ask her for comment, and she says something like, It's so nice to hear from you but it's just not the right time.
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