touch/presence

I rarely enjoy reading academic books the way that I I've enjoyed reading Peters' Speaking into the air. It's beautiful. As I understand him, he argues that we can never reach communication as the meeting of two minds. But he's far from adhering to solipsism (of which he writes a great deal). In a way he's not to different from James Carey and his ritual understanding of communication. It's all about sharing time and place. He eloquently explains what most of my informants seem to suggest: Being still matters, and people who care for each other will seek each other's presence. This seems rather self-evident, right? Well, it sort of indicates that communication really isn't about the meeting of minds. In that case, a telephone conversation or an instant messenger chat would suffice.