Reading as Interaction, as Encounter
This is something I've been reflecting on, and which I wish had been shown/taught to me earlier.
I used to think of books as something like repositories. Of knowledge stuff, of stories, of experience.
And so reading was like a process of extraction. Extract entertainment, joy, information, knowledge. Get thee into the reading mines!
Note: this model of what reading is isn't wrong. It captures some important things, but it feels incomplete. And leads to bad pedagogy, I think.
---
Now I see reading as interaction.
A book (or piece of media, or person, or world) is no longer a static repository. It's a potential.
What feels more important now is the reading itself, the whole process of encountering material and, well, meeting it.
This feels like it opens up more possibilities. There are certainly uncountably many kinds or modes of encounter, but here's one that has been very rewarding: treating reading as conversation. How do I respond to this idea, this turn of phrase? What does it make me think of and feel? How am I implicated by this? What is it missing? What does it point me toward?
This makes reading different. Slower, in many ways, but more rewarding. I'm more engaged, and putting more of myself into the reading, which seems to result in getting more out of it.
---
This leads me to something I want. I want there to be recorded traces of readings (this is what notes/marginalia are, in a way), performances of reading.
The performance would not be like a poetry reading, restricted to just the text, but like a public performance of an individual's (or group's) live encounter – including thoughts/asides/etc.
I want this to exist for two reasons: (1) I wish I had learned about this way of reading much much earlier in my life. So having examples of this and venerating it might help more people encounter this way of reading sooner. (2) I want traces of past encounters, for historical reasons. I want to be able to see how my (or our) relationship to a text has changed over time.