Issue 3: "Story" [a letter from the editor]

The following is a modified version of the prompt sent out to the writers for this issue.

These prompts are hard to write because writing is a hard thing to do. These prompts are hard to write because they’re recountings of obsessions, obsessions I try not to look at too hard for fear of scaring them away. I cycle through interests rapidly, slowly, randomly, fearful that if I were to ever really focus on one, to apply myself, I would find myself wanting. And so I dip, and the wheel turns, and I dip again. Sometimes I trip and fall in.

Tell me a story, she whispered. Tell me something true only for yourself. Tell me the story of this knife at your throat, tell me about the markings on the blade. Tell me something that will convince me to keep going.

Apophenia is an interesting phenomena. Gambler’s fallacy, confirmation bias, pareidolia, all of these sit underneath its umbrella. Generate random noise, random visual cues, random words, random bits of information in any form and human beings will try to structure it, give it meaning. Finding God in a piece of toast is a blessing, not a curse. The alternative is you’re stuck with a piece of toast.

I prefer to speak orthogonally whenever possible. Prefer is the wrong term, as it implies choice. I speak orthogonally. It is who I am. I am so sorry.

Do you ever watch someone speak? Do you ever watch how they use their mouths, their faces, to convey meaning? I’ve ruined people for myself by doing this. A lazy mouth and a dull pair of eyes is a thousand betrayals waiting to happen.

The stories of our lives are told through text messages, snaps, stories, emails, and tweets, a bizarre concoction of the actually temporary and the I-wish-it-were-temporary. I can’t imagine what comes next.

Reload the page. How do you feel?

I am not academically rigorous and for that I apologize. I am a magpie who picks up shiny pieces of glass and stores them away for future display, forgetting what they were originally. But look how they glimmer! Look at how proud I am! And they smile and nod, a few honestly.

I like lies. A well-crafted lie is often more interesting and more honest than the truth it seeks to evade. A lie where both parties know the truth is the most interesting lie of all. I’d rather be told an entertaining lie than a boring truth. Bad lies and bad liars offend me.

I think I am obsessed with narratives. I am obsessed with what narratives say about their creators, about what the gaps reveal. Structure matters. Delivery matters. Aesthetics matter. I would be more than happy for everyone to use this prompt as a technical exercise: tell me a story, whatever that means, and then hack it to pieces, marvel at it, then stitch it back together. Narratives can be Jenga-towers, before the fall: pieces pulled out, slowly and surely, until you’ve figured out exactly what stands on its own. Narratives can be the ruins of a Jenga-tower on the ground: something happened here, and I must figure out what.