[FRIAM] A public letter to Nick, cc: any that write here

[thompnickson2 at gmail.com]

When two tennis players slash it out for the cup they are playing against
one another.  But they are playing for us.  Why can't that be a kind of
conversation?

Nick Thompson
ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of jon zingale
Sent: Monday, February 15, 2021 1:12 PM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A public letter to Nick, cc: any that write here

I appreciate and am interested in *stylistic exploration* of this medium.
This is in part what makes an Exquisite Corpse so exquisite. For example, I
appreciate that public lectures need not be an individual yammering at a
podium, that it may instead appear as a panel discussion, interview, or any
manner of collaborative performance. I love the trialogue style of *Two New
Sciences*. There may ultimately be something perverse to it, but I think it
is a perversion that is more than called for. While we may *all* one day
come to understand in our hearts such performances to be simply a
fetishization of a by-gone era where letters and privacy had meaning, I
believe there is still very much a need to work through the vast storehouse
of modalities, to identify those seductive qualities (entertaining,
engaging, inviting, irresistible) of communication that continue to serve.
For me, the verdict is still out as to which modalities are
(counter)productive. "Misunderstanding" may be too harsh an inference, and
ceasing to act in light of such an inference may be too rash an outcome.

There are temporal qualities afforded by variation in modality. I do not
expect everyone to hold their tongues (e-pens) to the end, I expect to
present a loose framework for the flow of a discussion and for it to become
unfocused and poorly defined. Ultimately I expect all interactions to
dissolve back into the nothingness from which they were born. In the
meantime, these loose frameworks serve to vary the structure of a dialogue,
even if only transiently, and to invite shifts in perspective. Writing can
often benefit from a prompt or a prompted form, I think of the public letter
as such a form.



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