Listening Waves

Dear Sonic Strings, 

I have been listening to all the scientific theory of the day that we are in fact , strings, waving, creating resonance... sound.... MUSIC. We are music, part of the ONE song, the Universe. That science has finally caught up to the mystics is delightful. Let the music play! I’m always hearing a particular song with the fans on high in the summer heat. With two fans in the same room, one is lower and one is higher and they are in harmony. One’s rhythm is the steady heartbeat, the other adds the tones and the melody.  We have a bird who adds in a little grace note here and there and there is an occasional clicking sound that seems to be something catching in the wind of my little cave. What does your soundscape sound like? 

World Listening Day is happening this Monday July 18th. It is a day when organizations and individuals around the world will be listening to the sounds of the world in honor of R. Murray Schafer’s birthday. R. Murray Schafer is a Canadian composer who created the World Soundscape Project and wrote the book “The Tuning of the World”.  I had debated A LOT about doing a listening event but in the end I feel I would much rather INSPIRE a listening event in each one of you. It is more important for me to offer a meaningful and deep experience than to simply put on a show. That has always been my deepest truth and often my greatest challenge. This has also been my struggle with coming back to performing. My desire to sing again is so strong but as those of you who have experienced it know, I never just sang, I sang the energies I felt in the room, or the person I was singing for. When I took my leave of that environment because of chronic illness and personal chaos it was heartbreaking. Coming back, to leave myself vulnerable on stage, terrifies me. This is my deep listening to my inner truth. Rest assured I sing to myself everyday and hope to find myself back to singing with you, soon. I have an idea about how I would like to see it unfold. Thoughts becoming things and things manifesting faster these days, let’s hear. 

So, let’s look at listening. I will share with you some of my upcoming book on Integrative Sound Practice. 

How we listen, creates our life. Listening is in fact a form of touch. If you close your eyes, your ears will sense the vibratory motion of the air and create an image of the space you are in. Your eyes can process information at only 1/50th of a second. Your ears process at 1/500th. In that time, the sonic reflection of the room is determined by the temperature, the humidity, the room size and the depth of your breath. Your ears will tell you everything you need to know in the space around you to decide on your sense of balance and well-being between your inner world and the outer world.

Listening is about flow. A talented listener will receive the flow rather than take in. They let the sound flow in on them. Sound flow comes in to us in different ways. Think of listening like an iceberg. All of the passive listening happens in the 10% above the water, while the intuitive listening happens in the 70% below the water. Where most of the real active listening, the 20%, is happening is at sea level where most of the action is really occurring. This is where the waves are hitting the iceberg and where the flow is taking place. What is most fascinating about this analogy is that the iceberg, like our listening can tip at any moment without warning, completely changing the dynamic of our listening flow and environment.  It’s interesting to note that icebergs can sing and carry harmonics for up to 50 kilometeres. The air that is trapped inside them, that can be released in pops and cracks can be up to 15,000 years old. Perhaps our own inuititive flow is much more valuable than we realize and much more worth listening to. 

When we interpret what we hear according to the way we listen, we can open ourselves to the world of possibilities. When we listen with narrowed attention, we find specific things of vital interest to us in our world. By accessing these different forms of listening we can change how we listen to our daily lives and the soundscapes that surround us. 

I leave you with a simple reminder that LISTEN and SILENT are spelt with the same letters. Engage both consciously as you walk through your day.

The traditional way in which to celebrate World Listening Day is with a sound walk. This is where you go out into your environment, be it natural or urban and listen to your soundscape. If you have a recording device, or any kind, record it for playback later. I invite  you to take a sound walk. Use your 3 levels of listening and see if you can even flip the iceberg and bring your intuitive listening to the forefront and your passive listening below. Most of all, enjoy all the sounds that surround you. Music is all around you, if you listen. If you record it. Listen to it again, later when you are in a quiet room or on headphones and feel your experience in a different dimension. 

Enjoy your listening event!

Sonic Blissings, Anny