Some questions of key interest involving listening: How are we to bridge the gap between listening and hearing. What is the focal length of a listen? How is the act of listening an act, how do we listen? how is listening different than other accumulations?  What is space to listening and then the space listening enters into is where? Are we listening to silence in the presence, feeling complex vibrations or something other or more than that?

Upon reflection I would note tempo, beat, rhythm… these create a most interesting structure of listening, I find it to be the source of our connection even though the function is irrelevant.

The only natural practice that has revolved specifically around listening for me is in trying to to hear and process numerous streams of noise at once, like two conversations and music or different rhythms and words, how can i separate them? How do they play together? location, directionality, volume, What addition or loss is there? How does it feel to listen to more complexity versus nothing? What is living in the sound that I haven’t noticed before? How do I invent listening in me? I ask these questions while fragmenting my focus as wide as possible.

At one point in my teenage years, I suddenly became aware of a kind of soundtrack playing in my mind in conjunction with my life that I had never noticed before. Suddenly it was always on, playing commercial jingles from when I was a kid, songs I didn’t remember, music I’ve never heard, songs i like, sounds, etc etc. I don’t experience it now, but I remember the quality of noticing something that had seemed to always be there then allowing it to fade away again, real but unnoticed. As though I could simply tune into it whenever I wished.

A quiet night behind my grass hut.
Alone, I play a stringless lute.
Its melody drifts
to the wind blown clouds and fades.
Its sound deepens with the running stream,
expanding till it fills a deep ravine,
and echoes through the vast woods.
Who, other than a deaf person,
can hear this faint song.
Ryokan