musician
Are You Listening?
Sunday 08 November 2015 LyricsBlog
We have been listening to some pretty intense free jazz this week in class. Intense. Like, the kind that you can’t even really tap your foot to because you can’t find the beat. And you definitely can’t hum along... I had no idea of where the harmony was, if there was a structure, a melody even...
It’s hard work listening to music like that. It’s the same with avant garde classical music, like the concert I went to a few weeks ago by Krzysztof Penderecki. Music like that puts you on edge. You can’t relax into it, like with Bossa Nova or a nice warm waltz. It wrestles with something inside of you.
It’s hard to listen.
So after talking about the boundaries that free jazz challenged, and what we found so hard about it to appreciate, we were asked the question, “what is listening?”
At first I thought it was a silly question. What’s listening? Well, of course it’s... it’s... but I couldn’t think of a coherent, succinct answer that could really sum up what listening means.
Actually, it is one of the most passive, sometimes even involuntary acts that we can do as humans. Don’t wish that you could just turn your ears off sometimes and not have to listen?
But even though it is such an automatic part of our lives, the act of listening is a complex process. It is, in it’s most basic form, turning our attention to the sound waves that are hitting our eardrums. If I listen now, I hear the steady hum of my air conditioning unit, I hear my fingers typing on the keyboard, I hear a muted wave of traffic 20 storeys below me, and occasionally I hear the call of a bird or the beep of a horn.
Listening reminds me of where I am. It places me squarely in my surroundings.
But listening to music can have the total opposite effect. When you really listen to music, you can be transported to other universes: lost in a sea of sound or emotion or memories.
When you actively listen to music, that is; when you give it your full attention (yes that means turning off all of your other devices...) you allow yourself to fully appreciate all that the artist has layered and placed into their work. There is a difference between hearing and listening.
For example, a lot of people have heard The Police’s song “Every Breath You Take”. In fact, it’s the world’s most played song on radio. But a lot of people have never really listened to it. Most people think it’s a nice, happy love song about being committed to each other.
But when you listen to the song, you will discover that it is about something much darker, much more sinister. It’s about control, about fear and losing love. It’s a little bit creepy, when you really think about it!
When we don’t listen, we miss the point. We don’t fully comprehend.
This is true for music, but also for so many other aspects of our lives. Who are we not properly hearing in our lives? Whose voice is being drowned out? Do we ever just listen to one singular voice? Do we ever make time for silence?
Are you listening? You might just hear something that will shake you up.
It’s hard work listening to music like that. It’s the same with avant garde classical music, like the concert I went to a few weeks ago by Krzysztof Penderecki. Music like that puts you on edge. You can’t relax into it, like with Bossa Nova or a nice warm waltz. It wrestles with something inside of you.
It’s hard to listen.
So after talking about the boundaries that free jazz challenged, and what we found so hard about it to appreciate, we were asked the question, “what is listening?”
At first I thought it was a silly question. What’s listening? Well, of course it’s... it’s... but I couldn’t think of a coherent, succinct answer that could really sum up what listening means.
Actually, it is one of the most passive, sometimes even involuntary acts that we can do as humans. Don’t wish that you could just turn your ears off sometimes and not have to listen?
But even though it is such an automatic part of our lives, the act of listening is a complex process. It is, in it’s most basic form, turning our attention to the sound waves that are hitting our eardrums. If I listen now, I hear the steady hum of my air conditioning unit, I hear my fingers typing on the keyboard, I hear a muted wave of traffic 20 storeys below me, and occasionally I hear the call of a bird or the beep of a horn.
Listening reminds me of where I am. It places me squarely in my surroundings.
But listening to music can have the total opposite effect. When you really listen to music, you can be transported to other universes: lost in a sea of sound or emotion or memories.
When you actively listen to music, that is; when you give it your full attention (yes that means turning off all of your other devices...) you allow yourself to fully appreciate all that the artist has layered and placed into their work. There is a difference between hearing and listening.
For example, a lot of people have heard The Police’s song “Every Breath You Take”. In fact, it’s the world’s most played song on radio. But a lot of people have never really listened to it. Most people think it’s a nice, happy love song about being committed to each other.
But when you listen to the song, you will discover that it is about something much darker, much more sinister. It’s about control, about fear and losing love. It’s a little bit creepy, when you really think about it!
When we don’t listen, we miss the point. We don’t fully comprehend.
This is true for music, but also for so many other aspects of our lives. Who are we not properly hearing in our lives? Whose voice is being drowned out? Do we ever just listen to one singular voice? Do we ever make time for silence?
Are you listening? You might just hear something that will shake you up.