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The shape of a listener « the jsomers.net blog

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You could not say a word and still be thought a great conversationalist, so long as your interlocutor ends up doing the kind of talking they like to do. That’s what it means to be good at conversation. It’s not about saying interesting things or absorbing what someone else says. It’s about extruding the right kind of talk. The picture I have in mind is of a pasta maker. I imagine someone turning a little hand crank, working a glob of dough into clean hollow tubes of macaroni or waves of lasagna. That’s what conversation is like. Conversation is like making pasta the old-fashioned way, except that in conversation what you’re working into form is someone else’s ideas. At the heart of the process, you, the listener, are just like a pasta machine—a machine so obnoxiously simple that you hesitate to call it one. Because all it is is a shape. * * * As a talker I have all kinds of configurable settings. Entering a conversation, there are many knobs I can turn: I shine—I come into my own—under

The shape of a listener << the jsomers.net blog the jsomers.net blog. About Subscribe Read More Contact me The shape of a listener by James Somers , May 23, 2012 You could not say a word and still be thought a great conversationalist, so long as your interlocutor ends up doing the kind of talking they like to do. That's what it means to be good at conversation. It's not about saying interesting things or absorbing what someone else says. It's about extruding the right kind of talk. The picture I have in mind is of a pasta maker. I imagine someone turning a little hand crank, working a glob of

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