Play Me?

“'Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, yet you cannot play upon me.”
 — Hamlet: Act 3, Scene 2

“You are the sun; I am the moon. You are the words; I am the tune. Play me.”
 — Neil Diamond, "Play Me"

“I've seen the mountain top and it ain't what U say. Don't play me. I already got laid.”
 — Prince, "Don't Play Me"

“play me: to tease or to mock”
 — Urban Dictionary

The expression "play me" has a multiplicity of nuanced meanings, but both the eloquent and the mundane usage questions the ability of anyone to know anyone else well enough — well enough to presume understanding. It is rather commonplace to encounter someone who "protests too much"; someone who presumes too much, however, includes everyone.

Nevertheless, one must presuppose something about another person to interact with him. Otherwise, how can you begin? Personal interactions are, therefore, analogous to iterative procedures for successively better approximations (e.g., an algorithm for square roots by Newton's Method).

So then, for a continuing personal relationship, one that is not merely a futile exercise in aggravating discourse, one must bear in mind that each interaction should serve as a better approximation, in an infinite series of improvements toward complete understanding, which will always elude us because we exist in spacetime.

A reasonable facsimile to a good relationship, therefore, requires timely interactive iterations. Sporadic iterations lose the efficacy of preceding improvements to the approximation, and must revert to a reinitialization of the iterative process.

Post #856 Play me?