Found and worth remembering:
“The kind of talk Farber taught me to prize is a quiet thing. The range of circumstances in which its delicate attunements are possible is rather narrow; rising to the occasion of talk requires a steady, undistracted attention that in turn depends on an acceptance, however provisional and temporary, of the world as it is. . . . Its tones vary—it can be light or melancholy or confessional—but in its essence, it is playful and gratuitous. Though it often contains elements of argument and analysis, its first aim is not to solve problems.” (from an Emily Fox Gordon essay published in American Scholar, Autumn 2019)
The title of this post is an oblique reference to King Crimson’s lyric for “Elephant Talk.”