The Passing of the Dragon (2024)

You can read this beautiful short story for free here: https://www.tor.com/2023/09/13/the-pa...

Ken Liu has done it again. The Passing of the Dragon is a brilliant and impactful story, I believe, should be read by every reader, reviewer, artist, and author.

“An artist craves an audience, but maybe not all audiences are crave-worthy. “

Art is subjective.

As a reader and book reviewer, these three words are a firm steel-forged belief in reading and reviewing books. Art is subjective. What I read and experience will never be the same as other individuals. Sure, we will brush and touch upon some emotions we inherently feel similarly. Sorrow. Happiness. Wrath. And more. But my overall reading experiences and visualizations will never be completely the same as another reader's. It is impossible, and that is okay. It is one of the many beauties of art.

“Everyone is heroic, the protagonist of their story, the only story they’ll know from the inside out—true, unflinching, joyous in the face of the void. There is light in everything. It is all so beautiful.

I am someone who doesn’t believe there is a 100% objective quality in the matter of storytelling. What has been perceived as awful has often been perceived as a masterpiece by other readers, and vice versa. If a series has been highly praised by one or thousands (the numbers don’t matter) of readers, how is it that one's opinion that the book is mediocre should be valued over the others? Who are we, or anyone, to have the confidence and criteria to merit something as objective as if they are the gods of art whose opinion should be fully valued over someone else’s? This is something that has been bothering me for years.

“It’s the fashion among some “aspiring artists” at the co-op to formulate their critiques in the harshest terms possible in the belief that they are doing the victim a favor because a “thick skin” is necessary for artists. She’s never really understood their logic, however, since a thin skin, a vulnerability, a sensitivity toward the nuances of reality—a readiness to perceive dragons—is necessary to see the world’s beauty, to feel the tingling in the fabric of the cosmos that is at the foundation of all art.”

The number of comments and opinions I’ve seen in my life of people claiming their “opinion” as a fact and what they analyzed as the must-be-accepted truth and should be prioritized above others, resulting in a clash of ideals and opinions throwing hatred instead of making healthy discussions, simply because they want to be selfishly believed and praised over the others is utterly baffling to me. We are all different individuals. When we read a book through the simple act of reading, we sometimes forget the reading experience is influenced by many factors. We, as humans, are always subconsciously or consciously influenced by a myriad of powerful (subtle or not) components in our lives. The food we eat, the stories we absorb, the cultures we live in, the language we speak, the information we hear, the relationships we preserve, the heartbreaks we suffer, the struggles we endure, and many more. The factors are limitless. And we brought all of these with us when we read a book. There was never any possible way that any series could ever be claimed as universally loved or hated when there is an infinite thread of connections deciding our reading experience. I am adamant about this notion.

“We’re all trying to tell our own story… And we make other people parts of our own stories. We’re meant to bring our stories together, to speak and listen and know that the stories are real and they matter. I’m glad you are a part of my story, and I’m sorry I didn’t listen to your story as well as I should have. Thank you.”

I consider Ken Liu as one of the best authors of all time. The Dandelion Dynasty and his collection of short stories are some of my favorite stories to read. And The Passing of the Dragon counts. Some would not agree with me, and that is valid. None of our opinions are wrong, and none of them are objective. It is our respective rights and freedom to feel that way. And I, as someone who has spent an unforgettable adventure in the Islands of Dara and The Lands of Ukyu and Gonde, and have the honor to converse with Ken Liu, The Passing of the Dragon made me feel like I am back chatting with Ken Liu again over the importance of subjective reading experience, art, reading, reviewing, and stories. I absolutely love this short story about an artist who fears she’s failing and seeks inspiration from one of her favorite poets. What she finds is something magical, unexpected, and life-changing. Just like us readers when we read life-changing books. The entire short story is practically highlightable, and I strongly encourage every reader to read The Passing of the Dragon and form their own opinion on it.

“Life is one long story we tell ourselves to make sense of the world, and in our quest for meaning, we make other people players in our own psychomachia. Sometimes the consequence of doing that can be terrible, like what happened to me. But it’s worth remembering that everyone is trying their best to look for their dragon, to find the heart of their story, and to then tell it as well as they are able.”

Art is subjective.

The world of art would be in a calmer state if we all embraced these three words. This is, among many reasons, why an incredible story like The Passing of the Dragon matters. And I am pleased to be one of its audience.

Write the story you want to write.
Read the story you want to read.
Paint the story you want to paint.
Tell the story you want to tell.

“It’s okay to take art that’s out there and make it part of your own story, to read into it what you want, desire, need—it’s inevitable, really. Maybe that is the only kind of universality possible.

But we should also try to remember that each artist has their own story. An artist doesn’t just crave an audience, but an audience who can hear that story, who can affirm that the story matters.
Everyone deserves that.”

See Also

Best Unique Items Every Path of Exile Player Should Know About[3.24]Storm Rain of Conduit Hierophant Build - Odealo's Crafty GuideFloricorpse - reyl0s - Multifandom [Archive of Our Own]Hard to imagine today ... when poets and poetry drove up newspaper circulation

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✰ read for free on tor.com

“We’re meant to bring our stories together, to speak and listen and know that the stories are real and they matter.”

it is a brave act to put yourself out there, and it is even braver to continuously keep putting yourself out there again and again and again. from poems to paintings to book reviewing here on goodreads. humans can be so passionate, especially when inspiration is involved, and extra when we are trying to make connections to make the world and everything beautiful in it feel less lonely.

online spaces can be hard and scary, but they can also be so very rewarding. especially when you find people who find the similar magic of your heart. if you're reading this, please know i am so very proud of you, always, and all the magic you allow yourself to see and hear and feel.

trigger and content warnings: depression, anxiety, one sentence mention of loss of a loved one in past, online harassment and bullying.

blog | instagram | youtube | kofi | spotify | amazon

“We’re all trying to tell our own story,” Solana says. “And we make other people parts of our own stories. We’re meant to bring our stories together, to speak and listen and know that the stories are real and they matter. I’m glad you are a part of my story, and I’m sorry I didn’t listen to your story as well as I should have. Thank you.”

Kay gets up to make the two of them some tea. It’s still early in spring, and the air is chilly. It’ll get better.

***

Wow.

This is just… I really do not have the words to express how much I loved this short story. There’s so much of it I want to quote and share, but the best thing to do is just read it for yourself.

As an author who receives reviews, and also as a reader who writes them, this really was an impactful message in every possible way. It was beautiful and painful, raw and transcendent.

I found it beautifully written - from the poetic opening and descriptions of winter to the power of the vision to the incredibly, concretely, real fallout. And the hopeful ending.

Lyrical and stunning, rich with emotion and feeling and depth and so much more. It’s a fantastic look at what art is, and what artists go through, and how everyone is floundering when trying to tell their own story and when others shape that narrative to fit their own desires.

Just outstanding from beginning to end and highly, highly, recommend!

***

“It’s okay to take art that’s out there and make it part of your own story, to read into it what you want, desire, need—it’s inevitable, really. Maybe that is the only kind of universality possible.”

“She doesn’t like everything she reviews—who can?—but she strives to see what the artist was trying to show. It’s surprising how rarely people do that.”

‘—each artist has their own story. An artist doesn’t just crave an audience, but an audience who can hear that story, who can affirm that the story matters. Everyone deserves that.’

‘It’s about not being turned into a prop in someone else’s story. It’s about believing that there is meaning in the universe, that you can see a dragon and tell people about it and not have them accuse you of having butchered mushrooms instead. She doesn’t say any of that, of course. Talking with Jack sometimes reminds her of trying to have a conversation with a pigeon. You think you’re making progress until the pigeon takes off, leaving a wet plop behind on the picnic table.’

‘—a “thick skin” is necessary for artists. She’s never really understood their logic, however, since a thin skin, a vulnerability, a sensitivity toward the nuances of reality—a readiness to perceive dragons—is necessary to see the world’s beauty, to feel the tingling in the fabric of the cosmos that is at the foundation of all art.’

Although both are completely different, it made me think of Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation. Surely I’m not trying to imply that there are any significant similarities between the two. But ‘art’ is explored and essentially used in different ways in both (and while I can’t say what Moshfegh’s ‘goal’ was precisely in her writing), Liu’s ‘story’ satisfies something I found ‘lacking’ in Moshfegh’s. Don’t get me wrong, I ‘enjoyed’ her story a lot, but it leaves one with a gaping hole of ‘emptiness’ (if not then, she teases the void in one even wider than ever (but I appreciate that for different reasons regardless)). But I especially love how Liu’s doesn't conclude his with the protagonist having some continued form of freakish reliance on some subpar artist like the one in Moshfegh. One can argue that Liu’s lack ‘realism’, but I'll take it — a more optimistic and hopeful end is nice sometimes.

‘No one at the Fresh Food Basket knows she paints; no one there has connected her to the “Mushroom Lady” (or, if they have, they haven’t said anything to her). She can just be an employee, playing a role, her own story as opaque to others as theirs are to her. They don’t know she’s drowning, and that can be strangely comforting.’

‘Kay feels awkward. She’s been avoiding her friend. She feels bad that Solana is working so hard to make her feel better, and it doesn’t work—it’s like Kay is failing her somehow.’

‘Because Kay can no longer paint, she reads. She’s fascinated by the experiences of artists whose signature work was misunderstood, drafted into stories they didn’t agree to. Octavia Butler, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, even the curmudgeonly Robert Frost.’

“If I cared about being understood, I’d stop writing.”

A rather ‘simple’ narrative on the surface, with so much underneath — layers and layers of loveliness to slowly unpack. To me, I thought it has so much ‘beauty’ with so much hard-hitting ‘substance’, and enough poignancy; and absolutely without the commercialised ‘romance’ of ‘winter stories’ (whatever that means, but I brought that up because it’s a story set in ‘christmastime’). Definitely deserves more than one reading session. I like that even though it essentially deals with/explores ‘bigger’ themes and ideas, the writer saved room/space for ‘cuteness’. It was ‘cute’ to me, but I’m not sure if it was meant to be ‘cute’. Mushroom plushies are just ‘cute’ — that’s non-debatable, no? A longer/fuller review later (but perhaps I’ve shared enough of my thoughts), as a little reminder — the ‘story’ can be read ‘online’ here.

‘They don’t have much success. It’s hard to get people to love a mushroom, even in the form of adorable plushies, and no celebrity takes up their cause. In fact, a popular singer who Kay has never heard of is caught on camera making disdainful remarks about the fuzzy oversized mushroom shoved in her face by an activist at one of her concerts. The obviously meme-able moment causes a minor ripple on social media before it’s forgotten.’

‘Life is one long story we tell ourselves to make sense of the world, and in our quest for meaning, we make other people players in our own psychomachia. Sometimes the consequence of doing that can be terrible, like what happened to me. But it’s worth remembering that everyone is trying their best to look for their dragon, to find the heart of their story, and to then tell it as well as they are able: the activists trying to save their valley, the Chilton fans celebrating their favourite poet, even Aaron H., even the trolls who called me a plant and a hack.’

‘—what she does is seen as insufficiently ironic, lacking rigour or distance. But she doesn’t mind. She’s not writing for other critics and isn’t interested in their good opinion. (The critics are also trying to tell their own stories, like everyone else, and maybe they deserve their empathetic audience, too—it’s just not going to be her.)
We’re all doing our best to see the dragon and record its passing.’

‘There are still a few people at ArtNow who call her “the mushroom lady”; she still struggles with tuning them out.’

To add a little more here, I involuntarily laughed reading the mushroom bit above. But mostly because I thought the character was sort of endearing. Might have mentioned the last time I read something else by Liu, but ‘characterisation’ is always, always so well done in his work/writing. At least I really like them (in a I can't help not liking them sort of way). I don't care too much/enough about a solid plot, but ‘characters’ however are a different story. For some reasons or another they just matter a great deal more to me.

‘Each wingbeat feels like a breath taken by the universal lung, the perpetual bellows that drives all Life in the Dao De Jing. The creature is the platonic ideal of Creature, the very Form of all consciousness.’

‘Instead of describing her images as metaphors for Big Tech, for the surveillance state, for the convergence of the digital with the physical, she writes about the wonder of exploration, of seeing the mechanistic as indistinguishable from the naturalistic, of admiring the physical exuviations of our infinite-facultied mind. She writes about the yearning for the numinous—’

‘She doesn’t like everything she reviews—who can?’

“How can you not see the beauty in every moment of this world, the universality of every experience?”
“Life is one long story we tell ourselves to make sense of the world, and in our quest for meaning, we make other people players in our own psychomachia.”

Ken Liu has done an amazing job crafting this short story. He talks about relevant topics: being an artist, creative process, society’s relationship with art and artist.

Kay is a painter unsure about her creative career, she goes to a place where a well-known poet used to live. There she experiences a very special moment that inspires her art, and the story takes off. I love how the time of a year becomes the general mood of a story.
On a personal level, I related to text a lot. We artists are all going through similar scenarios. At the end I thought that I am really happy to be an architect, the situation is way better in this field. Each struggle makes us a better person and helps us bring more light to the world. Ending left me uplifted.

„It’s okay to take art that’s out there and make it part of your own story, to read into it what you want, desire, need—it’s inevitable, really. Maybe that is the only kind of universality possible.“
„But we should also try to remember that each artist has their own story. An artist doesn’t just crave an audience, but an audience who can hear that story, who can affirm that the story matters.“