Dipika Kohli
By Dipika Kohli
I hosted a conversation salon in person for the first time in a long time. The theme this time was “Marooned Americans.” I didn’t know what might emerge, but it was a point of inquiry to make sure that I wasn’t the only one interested in meeting up to talk about. It was tough to gather us, but that’s what I set about to do, and as a result, enjoyed a unique moment of asking ourselves big questions about identity, belonging, and being ‘outside’.
This is also fascinating in a way readers of this magazine may’ve also found curious: we are always reading the air, shifting, adjusting, adapting in foreign places while simultaneously wondering where there was, or here is. Somehow the conversation reminded me of one I’d had not too recently, but when I came home I tried to write down all I could recall of it. This is what I wrote about my hesitations about visiting the US.
‘Last year, honestly, I wanted to go there, but I couldn’t go there, and it felt like, it felt like there was just going to be too much to take on, you know? You would probably know. Few people have been around the block, like you, Mattie. We have been in touch for, what, thirty years? Talking… irregularly about generalities and… how to make it in the world without losing yourself, or overcompromising, or selling your soul.’
‘I know, Dipika. Things have gotten quite out of hand, if you ask me, out here.’
That was putting it delicately, I think. Mattie used to be so outspoken, but it looks like, Stateside, things have changed. It’s normal that things change, but to just what degree the delta is that you’re talking about is a matter of how little you know until you next speak to a person. Someone you know, but don’t know now, because let me try to… well… the me of now and the Mattie of now are different people, and the us of then was a different thing, and that’s… how it is. Growing, and changing, naturally, as we age, we are sharing at points to process. To trade stories.
We’re calling, and it’s the 3rd of the month, and I’m looking forward to the next two weeks. That’s because this one is the first of what will be a string of calls in November, a time I’ve aside with a Calendly full of options around the clock, so that people whom I haven’t spoken to for years, like this friend, and others who are scattered around the world can opt in, to book time, to catch up. Tonight, it’s my best friend from Phnom Penh who left. Tomorrow it’s two high school friends who are trying to coordinate, on a Zoom.
I try to imagine what Mattie and I would say, if Mattie were still alive. Talking about origins and continental drifts. How I might go, ‘But, I’ve only been over here, this whole time.’
‘Oh, it didn’t start with you moving away, Dipika. Things have been sliding into a steady decline since the sixties. There were good things going on, then. We were doing things, important, big things, to change the systems, and we were getting places. The music was so much better then, too.’
‘I, um. I don’t know about the sixties… but the jazz was good, wasn’t it?’
‘Oh, yes. Definitely. That was the best time for jazz, but I don’t know. Gary doesn’t care much for it, which matters only because Gary used to play jazz drums in college and that’s what I remember thinking was cool about him, but now, no, he’s just… accounting all the time.’
‘I thought he’d have been retired… did you see Whiplash?’
‘Yes! And no, dude. No. Gary will never retire.’
‘I wonder how… that’s been… for you.’
‘I’m… I wish I could somewhere else… It seems so relaxing and tropical where you are. The juice is so fresh, I remember from visiting. The tuk tuks, so convenient, you don’t have to book Uber, you can just go.’
‘You can. I didn’t realize… that you were… dealing with so much stuff there. I wish I had been there for you, all this time. I wish I could have listened to you.’
‘You had your own life. Everyone’s busy with their own lives, now.’
‘Yes. That’s true, but it’s also not true at all…’ The time is going but we’re okay with that. We’re okay with the changes and being alive with whatever falls to hand, to add to the composites. Artful is what we deem to be. Quality is what you like, and ZAMM, and all that. But there’s more. Wu wei… with art… a kind of not-doing, a letting of things become. This is what I picked up here in Southeast Asia. In the conversation salon with others from the United States, I saw it clearly: how very different I am. In a year of paying attention to the art of making things, this Year of Composition, I see now that what it is has far less to do with material, shape, or sourcing than it does with the processes of unfolding. Making… part of the art of it is noticing, while we are letting the making make itself.
Dipika Kohli is an author who is based in Phnom Penh. Discover her books at kismuth.com and other projects at dipikakohli.com.
