FootprintsintheWind.com

If we are trying to assuage some need by talking, what need is it?

:- Doug.

“What we are doing is finding out what it is we are doing.” John Cage in Musicage, p 169. He appears to be speaking of conversation. How much of conversation is of this nature? Observing this cropping up in one of our conversations, what is the next step we can take to add to the life in this conversation?

:- Doug.

[Whispering:] Perhaps it would be best if I wrote my book on water.

:- Doug.

It’s not always peace and sweetness that will have the best effect on our conversation. It might be wrestling.

:- Doug.

What are the phases of well-shaped conversation? Is conversation shaped like a funnel?

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2122

Conversation is not primarily communication. It is cooking.

It’s making something that wasn’t before. It’s creating. It’s digesting—outside the body and brain. It’s something we carry out that no one carried in.

It’s breaking down the fibers with heat and adding textures, flavors, and sauces. It’s cooking down to essences. It’s building up to nourishment. It’s the difference between milk and crème brûlée.

Please pass it on.

© c 2022, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/291-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

What is our responsibility in and to conversation?

:- Doug.

How might the fifteen transforms apply to conversation, if at all? What is good shape in a conversation? What to local symmetries look like?

:- Doug.

My focus is with theoria and praxis. Spreading it to a wider population is my work only as to the next one or two.

:- Doug.

Do people converse differently based on their age?

:- Doug.

Even now, I seem to have run out of steam, so will let things rest for today. Energy is necessary to conversation as it is to writing and thinking. So are ideas, and we can sometimes run out of them, or out of the energy to figure out where to dig a little deeper. So maybe there are fresh energy and new seeds available by using, like Cage, random acts of chance. ‘Tis a maze.

:- Doug.