Dipika Kohli
By Dipika Kohli
It is five minutes to twelve noon in Phnom Penh and hazy with the exact kind of heat most of us will avoid at this hour. It is coolest in rooms with high ceilings but no matter what your setup, it’s a collective wait. Sure, there are stray motos and people on tuk tuks going places, or big cars, but by and large, you see less motion and commotion at this time of day.
Does a place and time make a story? This question came up in reflecting on what to share with you here about ‘Composition.’ I realize it might be on the nose, ‘story,’ but we can’t fully address the art of composition, as I had set out to do in the Year of Composition, without prodding into the substance of what makes a story.
To me it is the art of it, in other words, the heart of it, that lingers past a reading or recounting of a good story that is what I really love.
I fully accept that things are more complex with ways we absorb, ambiently or attentively, words or pictures fed to us online. The sheer volume of it. (In looking for a statistic on just how much is getting made, I found myself lost trying to assess the credibility of sources, the reliability of self-styled experts branding themselves as researchers, and the usual slog of wondering if something is just too old to bring up: too many options.)
When we talk about ‘what’s a good story,’ what are we talking about, now? Is it educational? Informational? Entertaining? Pre-internet, maybe. How about now though? Surely there must be more metrics on the carousel. Shocking? Juicy? Sensational? Shareworthy? Or: Will the algorithm like it?
There was a time, at our small community newspaper’s office, we’d get together on a Monday morning, put on the kettle and brainstorm a list of story ideas for that week’s paper. There was a casualness to it, someone’d notice if we were out of milk and you’d hear, ‘I’ll just run to the store for a half-pint.’ We sat together and talked to each other in old school, zip diskette, newspaper making ways. Inevitably, something fun or light or ‘Did you hear?’ would come up, and we’d veer to that for the cover story. This idle catching-your-ear type of article would be one that made sense in the context of there, and then.
We would ask questions of the people who knew things, we would draft, edit, revise and publish, every week, like that.
Around that time, I went along to a writer’s workshop, and I met someone there who quoted a famous magazine editor who said, apparently, that besides the news and ‘what, so what, now what’ styled stories, it was her responsibility to source ragged, raw, and real stories of a time and place. Pieces written by surprising contributors, for example, got taken very seriously.
What about today, though? What about ‘content creators?’ Are people who are in charge of shaping what information we get really concerned about that? I wonder what happened to a good old-fashioned story for the sake of story, art for art’s sake, as they say.
A part of me wishes we had more artful stories sent to us by the internet when we query a string. But listicles arrive. Things are clearly generated by machines. I read them, sort of, but when I see their every-word-in-caps headlines and bullet points and em dashes, I quit halfway. Or a quarter way. Or a paragraph in.
But even ‘cultural’ papers, magazines, and sites that used to be of interest in that non-mechanical, humanist way, have been budget-cut to the point of being too thin. They lack pizzazz. (Why does it have to sound so put together, wrapped up in a bow, end it on a positive note, all that? Does it have heart?)
I am debating whether or not to tote along some novels on an upcoming tour. I probably won’t because of the 7-kilogram weight limit on carry-on. But I want to be the kind of person who (still) reads books. I am often told to start a book club because ‘you’d be really good at that, Dipika.’ I do not want to, though. I attended one of these and someone kept quoting what an AI said about the book, so I think that demotivated me.
So let me see. Where can I consume slow writing? Where can I go to talk over it, quietly in low-key gatherings, where it is friendship and conviviality that is the goal not showing off how well we memorize or pretend?
Stories that move us, stories that change us by showing us a side of life that we can connect with and relate to. ‘We can find good friends in books,’ I was told by a person who feels this way. A small bar with leaves going up all the walls, somewhere in Da Nang after someone’s wedding. Exiting the afterparties, four of us traded ideas amongst tall shelves full to the brims with books in English, German, Dutch and of course Vietnamese. It reminded me of libraries in the Triangle.
I forgot that I used to read, and I forgot how great stories and people who care about them help us to talk and talk to ourselves and feel less alone. Fear, love, estrangement, bitterness, mirth, awe, cruelty: these are themes already written about, over and over. Maybe I will take a novel, after all, on my trip.
It is starting soon. By the time you read this, I’ll be in a new scene.
Dipika Kohli is an author who is based in Phnom Penh. Discover her books at kismuth.com and other projects at dipikakohli.com.
