Listening
"For nearly all of the time humans have been on the planet, regular conversations across the species border were an everyday natural part of life. Sadly, this seems like a strange invitation in our world today; most people have difficulty initiating such a conversation. Perhaps this is because we’ve been taught from a very young age to perceive nature as separate, a life-less object, a commodity. This mistaken perception seems to be at the foundation of our cultural ills.
In The Lost World of the Kalahari, Laurens van der Post writes about living among the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert and describes how shocked they were that he couldn’t hear the stars. At first they thought he must be joking or lying. When they realized he really couldn’t hear the stars, they concluded he must be very ill and expressed great sorrow. For the Bushmen knew anyone who can’t hear nature must have the gravest and deadliest sickness of all.
Humanity’s ability to perceive the sentience of Earth is critical to our survival and to all life on Earth. Eco-psychology reinforces insights from naturalists like E. O. Wilson, who suggests that we possess 'an innately emotional affiliation with all living organisms,' a biophilia.
Longing to be in conversation with nature can catalyze us. And perhaps the natural world longs for this relationship with us too."
In his book Sensitive Chaos, Theodor Schwenk makes obvious our cultural tendency to focus so much on the physical elements of water that we tend to forget and no longer understand its essence, its flow. And maybe the way we listen has suffered a similar atrophy.
We know the audible spectrum of vibration and can measure our ability to hear the frequencies within this realm. Opening ourselves beyond the physical experience of hearing there is the more boundless experience of listening. We might listen to our own inner voice or creative muse as an intuition and find comfort in the familiarity of it all. Sometimes it is possible to hear from a loved one at distances far too great for sound waves or find ourselves in conversation with a favorite tree.
I mention this because of the way that David “listened” across species and beyond the physics of sound. Whether he was communing with whales, giving voice to a watercourse or helping us to hear what an author, dancer or filmmaker was hoping to convey, he truly listened in the best sense of the word.
The video linked below was made several years ago when we were recording the album Gratitude. Lyman Smith, Ginny Jordan and Taylor Fraser edited the footage while using the music from the album so beautifully it can easily slip into the unconscious realm.
"Reverie" and "Untold Beauty" are an invitation for you to take a deeper dive into listening in the same way David did as he brought the music into consciousness.
Love,
Mickey