'The word 'listen' contains the same letters as the word 'silent'.'
-Alfred Brendel (Pianist)
When I was visiting home, I started talking to my mum about how her recent pupil's concert went—a usual topic at a guitar teacher's household. Yet one thing stuck in my mind.
She said that what she found astonishing and worrying was the lack of appreciation for kids who played a solo. Referencing performances of adult students and me, she noted that even a few years ago, the most obvious reaction would have been kids coming up and saying, "I want to play like this too," or parents expressing appreciation.
None of that happened. She then tied it in with our culture fostering egocentricity, often to the degree where we can't truly listen to others.
During a recent Chamber Music Concert, I was one of the youngest listeners. I'm 30.
I get it, it's not very sexy, Instagram-able, and what's worse, you're forced to just listen.
Clearly, not an attractive proposition in our age.
And I'd lie if I said didn't in between wonder how they got the locomotives in the back through the door, or why they didn't decide to light candles for more winter eve ambiance. Those things indeed went through my head.
But then my attention returned to listening, trying to grasp the melody, the emotions. Since then, I've thoroughly fallen in love with one of the piano trios they performed.
When was the last time you were actively listening? Just taking in what's around?
As I hiked through Saxon Switzerland's forest, I listened to the splatter of the small stream, the wind rustling the conifers, and occasional rumbling from a rock afar falling.
And my breath, the sound my feet made on the forest floor, at times cracking a dead leave beneath them.
It was refreshing. I would love to bottle that soundscape.
All too often, we drown out what's around.
The spread of noise-cancelling headphones the best indicatior for our desire for almighty power over our auditory environment... do we really listen?
"We live in an age of cacophony. Everyone talking and thinking out loud, with no space or oxygen left for quiet statements and silence."
Ronan Hession in Leonard and Hungry Paul
We're constantly broadcasting. Our main purpose is to be louder, catch more attention, be more visible than all the others.
A never-ending crescendo. Like In the Hall of the Mountain King by Edvard Grieg. It starts piano and with plucked strings but ends with conductors jumping around and percussions pushed to the limit.
If you want another musical equivalent of a person who'd kill it in our loud world, there's no better than Richard Wagner.
Schumann once said about him: "For me, Wagner is impossible.. he talks without ever stopping. One can't just talk all the time." Chilly Gonzales suspects that Wagner must be compensating by trying so hard to impress with bombastic music.
I think Schumann is right; one can't just talk all the time and expect people to pay attention.
Yet, that's exactly what we kinda do with all the yapping.
Are we trying to compensate?
What if, what we need more than anything, is to listen instead of entering into discussions as if they were Gladiator fights, armed with insults and our eyes set on victory.
"Our media culture ... encourages brief blurts of opinion, rather than the working out of complex arguments. The tone is shrill, as if people are shouting to be heard. People don't listen anymore, everything is me, me, me."
Martha Nussbaum in The Monarchy of Fear
If everyone shouts, what's one to do?
In school, I learned that those who shout do so because they are out of arguments.
I don't feel like entering such competitions in shouting, loudness, or attention-catching.
While online, there might be no equivalent for it, in music, there is. It's silence.
Barenboim pointed out that silence is always quieter than the strongest piano and also has a higher impact than the loudest fortissimo.
This brings us back to Brendel.
Silent and listen are maybe two sides of the same coin. Without being silent you can't listen.
And isn't to listen an act of love?
Why, then, aren't we doing it more?
Music is turned into background music, less and less something we acquire, actively consume, make our own. At best, something we share a wrapped version of at the end of the year. Curation outsourced to an algorithm.
Podcasts something we listen to while doing other things, never fully focused.
Others telling us something, at worst, just obstructing us from talking.
" What little Momo could do like no one else was: listening. This is nothing special, some readers will say, everyone can listen. But this is a mistake. Very few people can really listen."
Michael Ende in Momo
Zuhören
In German, we have a word for active listening: zuhören. It describes listening with focus and attentiveness.
There are worlds between passive and active listening.
You'll know when someone isn't really listening to you - the frustration that builds when you constantly have to repeat yourself - retell the story of your life to the person who just couldn't be asked to lend you their ear.
"Nothing and nobody exists in this world whose very being does not presuppose a spectator [&listener]"
-Hannah Arendt
Why is it so important to us to be heard? Probably because, if it's true that at the bottom of the self, there's nothing, it's only in exchange with others that we become someone. Much of who we are is the narratives we tell ourselves and others. Much of how we make sense of the world happens in direct interaction with others.
But all of this pre-supposes that we take on the role of taking things in. And reflect, think, and stop shouting for a minute.
There's always a bias for doing something rather than nothing. Listening might look like doing nothing, but I'd argue true listening is far from that.
True listening might even help you in the art project that is the self.
I've made my peace with the fact I'll never be able to listen to all the amazing music out there - that's why I listen attentively to the pieces I do pick. Repeatedly. To the point where I can hum entire symphonies along - making them my own, part of me.
A part of me I share in my writing. I'm deeply fulfilled when someone gets back to me telling me that they ended up listening to the music and enjoyed it. (Pathetique and Brahms No1, for example)
According to Erich Fromm, listening is an art form like poetry. How fitting for the author of The Art of Loving to also write about listening.
True listening is the first step to understanding.
Understanding is the first step toward seeing the world with another's eye. And to love.
A tenant for empathy. An appreciation for the other.
For without the other, how would we define ourselves?
"I believe that everything in this world has a story to tell. We are born to see and listen."
Tokue in the movie Sweet Bean
As the new year starts, I plan to continue listening actively to the people, music, and places around me. Not despite all the other options I'd have but because of them.
It's because there's so much more out there wanting attention that I want to make what I listen to count: people, places, music, and silence.
Because it's only in contrast with the latter that any sound obtains meaning.
Thanks for reading 💚
Highly recommend the movie Sweet Bean - it's slow, beautiful, and moving.
