The suicide note can also be used to increase the hurt. Further, certain suicide techniques can be used to increase the hurt to others, and suicide can be carried out for the purpose of hurting others. I do not see how it is possible to remove the hurtfulness from it. — Metaphysician Undercover

That's why it is often argued that suicide is extremely selfish. — Metaphysician Undercover

Language is also like jewelry or a shiny toy when used with some creativity and vitality. — Tom Storm

In writing, you can say what you need to say safely and carefully, with time for preparation, in a way that many could never do in person, in conversation. — Tom Storm

I think that has resulted in the spoken word influencing how I write. I find a lot of academic writing pointlessly stuffy and long-winded, but a danger of writing more directly is that academics can think you're just stupid — mcdoodle

One difficulty in learning from Fosse, as regards philosophical writing, is that silences and pauses are subtle and illuminating in fiction or memoir, but unwise in writing about thought. — mcdoodle

And you can put pauses in literature, but it's not the same thing and it's not more social than the rest of the writing process, which isn't very social. — Bylaw

Less discipline, less skills, poor time management and so on. Also, I think they were people who needed to be embarrassed or afraid of the teacher. — Bylaw

If I may also reply to this...I think Fosse is also referring to the musicality of spoken language. In music every pause, and its length, are carefully considered. In 'drama' in the widest sense, pauses provide and transform meaning. In comedy, for instance, timing is everything. The saddest exchanges can be made funny to an audience with the right pauses. — mcdoodle

I've written quite a lot of drama and feel the craft side of Fosse's remarks are on the mark. — mcdoodle

Secondary, to the intrinsically hurtful act, there is usually a further communicative act associated, with the suicide act. This may be a suicide note, which may serve to either increase or decrease the hurt, often very intentionally, or the suicide act may be accompanied by a physical assault on others. When the others are designated as enemies, this may elevate the hurtful act to the level of honourable. In this way of looking at suicide, whether it is considered good or bad, depends on how the hurt of the secondary level of meaning, the more explicit meaning, is directed. — Metaphysician Undercover

Even here, in a much more direct form of writing communication than in writing a novel, say, where I may get a response in an hour and we can say all sorts of things to each other, even this at the social level is a shadow of a face to face meeting. And it's a lot more direct than a novel. — Bylaw

I do improv (improvisational theater) now, and that's very social. Further when I'm not in the room doing improv, there is no interference when being social with others — Bylaw

I create in a few art forms and one of the reasons I write much less than I used to is precisely because I want something more social...in the experiencing. — Bylaw

Any writer who thinks they came up with everything on their own is confused. But the experience, is very alone. — Bylaw

Just because we can learn to survive longer and longer without human interactions does not displace the fact that imagination/psychosis will substitute the sensations of social interactions. Writing is clearly one method of ‘replacing’ social interactions. — I like sushi

So if a reader thinks that suicide is being promoted through the use of the silent language, this is not necessarily the author's intention. And if the author's intent is to leave the subject ambiguous, thus allowing that one reader might see reason to move toward suicide, while another might be moved away from it, the author could feel as Fosse described. — Metaphysician Undercover

The silent language is somewhat different because it employs ambiguity to work with possibility, allowing the audience freedom to think and imagine these possibilities. So the silence is essentially ambiguous. — Metaphysician Undercover

See what I mean? — I like sushi

On a superficial level we can state that we do not write something for anyone but by stating so we do actually appreciate that we usually do and therefore cannot escape that expressing anything is a reaching-out into the world not some isolated incident. — I like sushi

We cannot act outside of human social interactions. — I like sushi

If he feels comfortable in it, then he does not feel guilt. Feeling guilt is a matter of knowing oneself to have done wrong and it is an uneasy feeling. When he says that fans thanked him, this is confirmation that he does not feel that he has done wrong. Therefore he is expressing that he does not feel guilt. — Metaphysician Undercover

That's why I say it's not a matter of whether people understand him or not. When it comes to the silent language it's a matter of understanding "silent language" in general. When you understand that it works with possible meaning rather than actual meaning, you can start to see how powerful it is in its capacity to persuade people. The meaning comes from somewhere other than the words of the author. God? Maybe. Consider for example, Donald Trump as an artist of the silent language. He didn't actually tell those people to storm the palace, yet the silent language told them that it had to be done. — Metaphysician Undercover

I propose that when Fosse was asked to write drama he saw the need to confront the difference head on, in order that he could proceed into the public sphere. This is when he discovered the silent aspect of language, which he was not familiar with, because he was immersed in writing only. — Metaphysician Undercover

For example, the inside of a literal hut is detached from its outside, and that's a property it shares with the metaphorical hut in the mind of a writer. Arguably there is no hut inside Fosse's head, yet it is a useful way for him to describe how he experiences writing. — jkop

Writers withdraw from busy social activities in order to think, observe, and write, and one's use of language might then, perhaps, acquire a "silent" or "listening" quality. To find out whether there is such a quality, or whether the description is meaningful is not obvious to me, but it seems to be a meaningful description for Fosse as he titled his speech 'A Silent Language'. — jkop

It is in this context that I approach what he says at the end of the speech, concerning suicide. He says that there are many suicides in his books. But we must take these representations as part of what is explicit. However, he seems to have some fear of the possibility that some people could interpret the implicit part, the hidden or silent part, as legitimizing suicide. Notice though, that he does not express guilt, so this was never his intention, never the hidden message he desired to convey, so such interpretations of the silent part would be faulty. — Metaphysician Undercover

This balance is what I see as the context of Fosse's "silent language". Notice that I called it a retaliation, and this is because many artists who feel unduly constrained by the rules of the system will find a loop hole, or a secret way within their own mind of getting around the rules or making fun of them, ridiculing the system, or whatever, within the art itself. That's how I see "the pause" which he used. — Metaphysician Undercover

Fosse gives an example of "Septology" in the relation of one Asle to the other Asle, and the hidden message one could conclude concerning the "now" of time. (I'm not familiar with the writing.) — Metaphysician Undercover

Language is based on shared labor, causal constrains and such, not whether an individual user happens to be alone. — jkop

To the extent that one can experience social life by writing about it. A writer constructs, discovers, reconstructs and in some sense participates with the characters that he or she writes about. Also when writing about oneself. — jkop

do you lean to a particular type of philosophy? — Daniel Duffy

I'd say writing is a social activity that one can practice privately. In this sense it can benefit the introverted or socially isolated. — jkop

Having a fear or inability in some aspect of your chosen field may be common. I worked with actors some years ago and most were pretty shy and fearful of public speaking. Comedians are often sour and glum. Etc. — Tom Storm

I've met several iterations of most of these over the decades. People are contradictions. — Tom Storm

Reasons for suicide are similarly diverse. Some people are just fed up with living. Some people are unwell. Some are unable to deal with trauma. Some are reacting to situational factors. Suicide is one word for many situations — Tom Storm

Most people seem to write for themselves and an audience of readers they hope to acquire. — Tom Storm

So suicidal characters in good writing transcends just being characters in the plot, they aren't just devices or causes for dramatic tensions or tragedy, but a communication of ideas that exist on the fringes of our experiences as people and individuals in and beyond society. — Christoffer

And it also seems that people are utterly terrified that they would start to be seduced by the idea, that they would somehow get infected by the thought and do it to themselves. — Christoffer

But I think the main part is that suicide is primarily a failure of society and the people around the person committing suicide. — Christoffer

It has always figured in the literature, even oral tradition of self-sacrifice and self-destruction. — Vera Mont

Why? Climate may factor in, culture and a historically fatalistic disposition? — Vera Mont

Idealistic North Americans, in any case, are far more prone to denial, even of what is staring them directly in the face, than are the more realistic and pragmatic North Europeans. — Vera Mont

Because it is part of the human experience. Death by sickness, death by old age, being murdered and committing suicide are constant outcomes in our human lives. — Christoffer

What Fosse is writing there is exactly what happens with fiction in relation to reality. No serious author is promoting suicide, not even Camus did so as he positioned it as the negative relation to his solution for the absurd. People who experience suicidal thoughts need to find good exploration of the concept they experience, it gives perspective and in almost all cases exposure to such ideas in fiction lead to calming such thoughts rather than triggering them. I've seen stuff in fiction that makes fun of suicide to the point of almost being tasteless and it still seem to help suicidal individuals overcome their negative thoughts. — Christoffer

We need more writing like his than we need overprotective uneducated anti-intellectuals stumbling around thinking they are helping other people. — Christoffer

So he has found a unique way of carving out a form of language that is familiar to others, yet unfamiliar as written-and-literary.

It seems to me that in prose and drama, Fosse is arguing that he tries to escape himself into a way of writing which nevertheless, in a Bakhtinian way, has meaning only in multi-voiced dialogue between the writer and the reader. (He specifically contrasts poetry as a form whose meaning tends to refer only to itself) — mcdoodle

When it was announced that I had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, I received a lot of emails and congratulations, and of course I was very pleased, most of the greetings were simple and cheerful, but some people wrote that they were screaming with joy, others that they were moved to tears. That truly touched me. There are many suicides in my writing. More than I like to think about. I have been afraid that I, in this way, may have contributed to legitimising suicide. So what touched me more than anything were those who candidly wrote that my writing had quite simply saved their lives. In a sense I have always known that writing can save lives, perhaps it has even saved my own life. And if my writing also can help to save the lives of others, nothing would make me happier. — Jon Fosse

Did you assume 'Durr-ham' instead of 'Duh-rum' lol — Daniel Duffy

County Durham. — Daniel Duffy