One of the first quotes that was interesting to me about this conversation was the question: "What is your earliest memory of writing?" To which Conforth responded with something along the lines of he had his "own little library." That idea was something I used to enjoy as a kid -- collecting things or writing down snippets of the beginnings of stories had always been fun for me. Being able to relate to Conforth in the first couple minutes of the audio stream was really cool.
Another quote I found interesting was said by Conforth: "When I'm playing my best guitar, I forget that I'm playing, and it's like the guitar is playing me... I forget that I'm writing, and the pencil or pen does the writing for me." Conforth speaks of writing as a performance and links it to the performance within the genre of fine arts. These parallels are fascinating for me because I am really enjoying the artsy atmosphere at U of M. The fact that such an academic pastime, like writing, can be referred to as something akin to painting is intriguing. In academic writing, I sometimes don't enjoy the process as much as I would if I were able to write about a topic of my own choosing. Conforth had a different take on the issue.
Conforth also mentioned the ability to "create culture" with academic writing. He said in order to do this, one needs to place themselves in the writing, otherwise it's not a culture, just an observation of one. This made me think of the discussion we had in class about doing the same thing in our third essay assignment. After hearing an except of Conforth's book I began to see what he meant. His tone while reading carried flawlessly over to his normal conversation. This suggests that he is writing his academic piece as himself, not as a scholar or a third party observer. His powerful tone and voice in his writing is really moving, and makes me want to try something like it in the future.
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